How bad is Drano?

Factual Questions
21

Drano crystals is just sodium hydroxide (lye) with aluminum chips. There may be slight amount of other stuff in there, but it is mostly lye. When wet, the lye dissolves, eats the aluminum, creating a lot of heat and bubbles. The Liquid Drano (and similar products) are caustic solutions that have been jelled to help them “pour through standing water and get to the clog”. Very similar to the crystals, but there isn’t any aluminum and the water is already added. When used as directed, the caustic should be safe for pipes.

I can believe engineer_comp_geek’s anecdote about it eating pipes. I have seen it. Nickel-Plated brass pipes. These were very popular P-traps about 50 years ago. Lye will corrode the brass, but it takes a long time. The directions for Drano call for allowing to sit for 30 minutes and flushing with cold water for 15 minutes afterwards. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that in his example, the Drano was added in the evening and allowed to sit overnight before flushing, regularly. This will corrode the brass pipe.

Caustic drain cleaners will clear hair clogs (common in the bathroom) by dissolving the proteins. Strong caustics do a good job of dissolving proteins, which is why they are so dangerous to handle, as your skin is also made of proteins (as is just about everything else in your body) and dissolving them is not generally a good idea.

Caustic drain cleaners will also clear grease clogs (common in the kitchen), by saponifying the oils (turns them to soap).

The acidic drain cleaners I have dealt with are sulfuric acid based. While dangerous to handle, I am less concerned about strong acids than strong caustics. Both are bad, but the caustics are generally thicker and are more difficult to wash away. Both will create fumes that will irritate your eyes and nose, but the casutic will blind you if if gets into your eyes. The acid will, too, but you have a chance to save your sight if you wash it out quickly enough. Not so with the caustic. Strong acid is bad. Strong caustic is worse.

So, to answer the OP, yes, Drano should be be safe if you use it as directed. I would not use it if the drain is completely clogged. If it just drains slowly, it should be OK. Be sure to rinse well after the recommended rest time and there should be no lasting damage. Once diluted, lye (sodium hydroxide) poses no environmental danger.

22

Last time I checked, Walmart had it—but it was in the hardware section, not with Drano and the other household cleaning supplies.

23

My aunt was complaining about a slow drain in her bathtub, and I just unscrewed the pop-up drain plug and was able to remove the hair.

OP, have you looked to see if there is an easy way to open the drain to remove the hair that is probably plugging up your drain ?

24

My tendency towards adventurous exploration of domestic technology has indeed covered the wonderful world of electrics and my attempts to reverse engineer the curious arrangements of wires used around the home.

However, it will not be televised. Tinkering is a long, drawn out process of fumbling and improvising as you figure out how something is supposed to work and what has gone wrong with it, then work out how to fix it. Much of it is boring and would be difficult to film. Though it is not without moments of trepidation and excitement.

So if I end up ascending to the pantheon of the terminally misguided who grace the Darwin awards, it will be left to some other fellow to deduce the fatal steps.

Working out how some dodgy tradesman has screwed up the work on your home and then fixing it all yourself is very empowering.

For that, you need ‘the straight dope’ in a world that is full of half-truths and misinformation.

25

It has one of those rotate-to-lock-open drain caps, not sure how to take it off.

But that was moot, in the end I went with the Drano gel. I used 1/5 bottle as recommended and followed it up a half hour later with a kettle of boiling water. Bang, that was it, drain unclogged.

I noticed that the area around the drain where the Drano has pooled was shiny and clean as could be. So I used an extra dollop of Drano gel to scrub the rest of the shower. It wasn’t quite as effective as it was not standing in a shallow pool across the whole bottom of the shower, but now my shower is almost completely clean.

I’ll move out of this place before I have to worry about that drain again. I will own the next place, so I suppose I should invest in the magic snake for the sake of the pipes, and save the leftover Drano for when the shower gets really grimy. But I’m not a bad person for using Drano after all- thanks, 'dope.

26

Muriatic (Hydrochloric) acid is the standard fix for mineraled up toilet channels.

27

My cheapo snake was like, $25 at HD, and it’s never encountered a clog it couldn’t get.

28

Zip-It has worked for my occasional shower or sink clog. It’s just a simple piece of plastic, but zoom in on it, the little teeth really grab hair and pull all sorts of gook out.