Big Problems in Bathroom!

We have been in our house less then a year. The first week that we moved in the toilet started bubbling when we would get showers or baths. We had a plumber come out to check it out. He got roots out of the pipe and wanted us to have a camera sent through the line. Since it was right before christmas we could not afford it. ( Not with three children!) The problem pretty much went away for a while. We would just plunge the toilet when it would come to the top and it would work fine. Just recently the problem got really bad. When you flush the toilet it just fills up to the top, slowly draining. When you plunge the toilet the sewage comes up through the bathtub. When you get a shower the toilet starts bubbling, then when it stops bubbling the tub stops draining. We finally had a plumber come out again. He said that the pipe was collapsed under the house ( we live on a slab ) So we took our savings ( $3,100.00 ) to pay for him to rip up the bathroom and fix the pipe. It worked for two days and started doing the same thing all over again. We can not afford to keep having plumbers come out. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem? Please help!

Your plumber needs to get his butt back out there and find where the drain is still not clear. You shouldn't have to pay him again!

I agree with Verdeboy.
Even if you clean roots out of sectional drain pipe, the roots will come back in a year or two. That plumber apparently didn't even get out the main problem, which is probably out in your yard.
The only real (as in permanent) solution to roots is to replace the affected old sectional (cast iron? terra cotta?) drain line with solid glued plastic drain line (white PVC or black ABS) which the roots cannot penetrate.
Good Luck!
Mike

I wonder if this is a problem the seller neglected to disclose? Call (I hate to say this) a good real-estate lawyer.

We talked to the seller when it first started happening. They said they never had any problems with it at all. So it is our word against theirs. The plumber was supposed to run a camera through the lines. I don't know if he actually did or not. We called the day it started happening again and he said maybe it was the leach field????

A leach field is used with a septic tank. Is that what you have, or do you have town sewer connection?

How long ago was the septic tank pumped out? If it gets overloaded with solids and they overflow into the leach field, it gets plugged up and it is replace time, a cleaning may not help. The waste flows into the tank, the solids drop out. Bacteria helps to break it down to liquids. The liquids flow into the leach field, leaving the solids behind thatare left. Eventually, the tank fills up with solids, and then the new stuff has no place to go but directly into the leach field which is designed only for liquids, so it gets clogged up very quickly. Then, there is no room for anything else to flow in, as stuff doesn't percolate easily into the clogged lines.

If you have a septic system, and the line to the tank is clear...he may be right.

We just had the septic tank pumped in may 06. According to the previous owners they had it pumped once a year.