The Pasta Story

One of our tenants called several years ago and said the drains were not working properly. Nothing was draining. The house is on city sewer and should not have this type of problem.

A quick trip to the house revealed that only the bathroom sink drain and the toilet drain were not affected. Everything else was stopped or flowing really slow.

This was beyond the scope my expertise so, I called the plumber. He came right out and ran a snake from the kitchen roof vent stack and the washing machine drain all the way to the main sewer connection.

The drains started working again with reduced flow. So, he went back to the shop to get a motorized auger.

The auger bored through the obstruction, but we still did not know what was causing the problem. We looked under the house and it didn't reveal anything obviously wrong with the drain line.

After getting the kitchen sink and the washing machine flowing again, we discovered the bathtub was not draining. Off came the overflow drain cover.

What popped out appeared to be MOLDY PASTA! The auger went in and the blockage was removed.

Now, everything was draining properly. Well not quite everything. The dishwasher would not empty.

The spiral plastic hose is absolutely PACKED with more of that stuff. It was so full and hard packed that the we had to replace the hose. We took the dishwasher outside and cleaned it out, but still no output. So the dishwasher pump was taken out. It was packed with more of it.

The plumber removed it from everywhere in the pump and the lines. It did not, however, go pass the pump. That showed us that the pasta came from the disposer. He put everything back together and everything now drains properly.

It turned out the occupant and her children ate a lot of spaghetti. She would pour the uneaten spaghetti in the sink and run the disposal with little to no water flowing into the sink. It never occurred to me that I must instruct occupants on how to use a disposal.

Anyway, the spaghetti would not make the trip all the way to the sewer connection and would solidify in the drain line eventually filling the line. It appeared to harden and then more spaghetti would be added. that spaghetti would harden and eventually the line was completely packed all the way from the street connection to the bathtub, including the drain line into the dishwasher.

The power auger simply ground its way through the solidified pasta. The water flow behind the auger washed everything into the sewer.

By the way, the drain from the kitchen to the rest of the plumbing was a piece of 2 inch PVC about 25 feet in length. How much pasta would it take to fill a pipe like that? Many, many, many boxes.

I now leave the following instructions for new tenants on for to use a disposal.

• First, turn on the water full force;


• Feed the material to be disposed of into the drain;


• Grind it up thoroughly and turn the disposal off.


• LET THE WATER RUN FOR ANOTHER 30 SECONDS before you shut it off.

If a house is on a septic tank there should NOT be a disposal in the house.

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