Tub Drain

Author: Dave
Date: 03.11.12 - 6:03am

Been redoing the shower in my master bathroom and came to the point of having to replace the tub drain. It was clearly a do it yourself job I was fixing, the last using luan and kitchen countertop laminate as the shower surround. In all fairness, that had been done in the 80s and the only thing that ruined it was me not recaulking the bottom lip when I should have.

Water got up under and the luan warped. My bad, but still I never really liked it as a shower surround, and the mixer value was junk at this point anyway.

Anyway back to our main topic. the old tub drain and stopper was garbage. I bought an all in one push button drain/stopper unit, but still had to get the old one out.

I bought one of those cheap die cast drain removal tools from home depot for 10 bucks. After some wrenching and even tapping with a hammer, that drain was NOT going to budge. Time for more drastic measures.

Now drastic measures come in 3 forms. 1 hire a pro, 2, buy a 60 dollar tool that uses cam action levers to grip the drain, or 3...macgyver it.

First i was lucky i had a metal lathe, the drain tool I had didnt quite fit the small end was to small, the big end to big. So first order of business was to turn down the big end until i got a reasonable fit. To chuck it, I also had to saw it in half, which was what i was going to do anyway so I could get a socket on the hex body of the tool.

Which brings us to the best part. Now that we can get a socket onto it, that means we can get an impact gun to drive the socket! I am soo glad I didnt try to do this by hand. The drain was a mess and super stuck in there. The 1/2" impact gun could barely get it out!

All in all Win!