I don’t like the effects of the nasty chemical sludge left behind after using most de-cloggers, so I don’t use them.
Since I have long hair, and shed like a Golden Retriever apparently, I have to de-tribble my shower drain every couple of months or so. You too can become a master de-tribbler!
Unscrew the poorly-named hair-catcher thingy.
Peer into drain and mutter ominously at the tribble, works better when they’re stunned.
Grasp your tool, the twisty end of a metal hanger works, I prefer my extra long needle-nose pliers.
Plunge the tool into the drain, twist/pinch until you’ve got a good grip, apply steady even pressure and slowly back the slimy hair tribble out of the shower drain.
Screaming in horror and going “Ewww, omg lookit that thing, ewww!” are optional additions to step 4.
So, what happened? I still think a mild base, like a weak baking soda solution would be the best way to neutralize the acid in the pipes, because the CO2 bubbles would tell you if it’s working.
You can mix chemicals, you just have to know what you’re doing (and obviously that guy didn’t.) Then again, I know how to read the bottles, draw the molecules (or look them up), and know the reactions. That said, I’ve never mixed household cleaners because I don’t see what good it’d do. I just got a bottle of CLR (bought it because I couldn’t find any 16% HCl at Wal-Mart and I’ve got a rust stain in my sink.) I’m a little mad that I had to go to the manufacturer’s website and pull the MSDS instead of just being able to read it off the bottle. Interesting. Mostly water, with some lactic acid, gluconic acid, lauryldimethyl hydroxysultaine, and 1-butoxy-2-propanol. Yeah, don’t want to mix it with much of anything.
Just so this thread has a smidge of practical information on drain cleaners…
The primary application for acid drain cleaners is drains that contain or might contain (cooking) grease, oils or fats.
Fats plus lye (most caustic drain cleaners) = soap. Lumpy soap. Hard soap. Ain’t gonna dissolve for three years soap.
If your kitchen drain’s backing up, do not use regular “Drano” cleaners, or you’re apt to make a bigger problem requiring hands-on mechanical methods to grind up and scrape out the hard soap, or replace the pipes. Either use a snake, a plunger, an acid cleaner, or save some time and just call a pro before a slow drain becomes an expensive mess.
I have a better suggestion- but only IF the drain is still working, just “slow”. Run very hot water down it, with the addition of Dawn type anti-grease detergent. The Dawn is optional. Keep running the very hot water down the sink for several minutes after it starts running good.
In fact, with your kitchen sink- do this every so often if you think you are apt to get grease down that drain.
But yes, don’t use Drano.
Oh, and don’t use your sink disposal, either, if you can help it. Toss that stuff or compost. Disposals will ruin your septic tank (if you have one) and often cause nasty clogs.
Without beating this to death, I would agree with you that the general term “oxidation” or “oxidized” would apply when the oxidation state of the element has been increased. However, I still believe that my critique was correct by virtue of the fact that appleciders threw in the parenthetical “rust” which definitely is a reference to a reaction with oxygen.
My use of “rust” and “oxidize” were probably not synonomous here. I threw in “rust” because most people wouldn’t understand “oxidize”. In retrospect, “dissolve” might have been a better choice than “rust”.
Moving away from the hijack here- VCO3, what happened in the end?
Well, it stayed just as plugged for about a day. I kept filling the tub with water and letting it slooooooooowly drain through hoping to at least flush the acid junk through.
Then, just this morning, completely clear drain. I don’t know what happened in the interim, but the drain is draining like it’s completely brand new with not a hint of stoppage. I don’t know if the clog caused a problem further down the line and they called someone to deal with it, but without any further intervention it has completely cleared up.
Just a few notes…
I cannot stress enough that this was some sort of Drano/Liquid Plumr knockoff, not pure hydrochloric acid that I just picked up at some Mad Scientist’s Mart. I bought it at the dollar store, it was explicitly meant for clearing clogged drains, and so on. I cannot imagine that it would cause the sort of problems mentioned like “instant rusting” of the pipes, “hundreds of dollars in damages and pipe replacements” and so on as it’s a commercially available product, and moreso it’s billed as a rust remover as well.
Well, then my property management is made up of the type of people that renters hate - they refuse to perform even basic and routine maintenance without us having to make a big stink and put up an enormous fight just to get them out here. When they finally DO send out maintenance, they only employ a surly russian guy that grunts, leaves enormous messes behind when even performing basic maintenance, and can barely speak english but managed to call my wife “stupid” last time he had to come to the apartment, coincidentally for the clogged tub drain (thank God I wasn’t here when he did that!). To put it kindly, they’re real slumlord bastards even though we live in a nice neighborhood and pay good money for this place. I’d be willing to cause a big crisis if that’s what it took to get them to actually fix the problems!
Either way, it’s been completely clear for a day now and there’s no sign of burst pipes or panic in the rest of the building, so I’m going to assume that everything’s cool.
And another Q: now that it’s draining clearly and I’ve taken several showers, can I safely assume that the solution has “washed out” of the pipes and the drain area? For example, if I want to use a bleach-based solution to clean the tub, how long should I wait before I can be confident that no residue of the acid junk remains?
Turn the tap all the way to HOT. Run it like that for as long as you can, say 5-10 minutes. At that point in time both the remnants of the clog and the HCl will all be long gone. (The HCl is likely all gone now, but let’s make sure about the clog, too, eh?)
Get some of the Ezymatic drain cleaner and use that (or just lots of hot water) every 3 months or so as maintenence.
I tried that on my shower last night, using a latch hook instead of pliers, and it worked better than anything else I’ve tried. Thanks for the advice!
No screaming, but I gagged a few times. I’ve only lived in this apartment for six months. There’s no way that all that hair in the drain was mine. ::shivers::
Wow, I just tried pouring a teapotful of boiling water down the shower drain – AND IT WORKED! Better, faster than any drain chemical I’ve ever tried. Even better than taking a crochet hook to the gunk. Didn’t even need the baking soda (although I’ll keep it in mind for a really stubborn drain).
You’re welcome. I’m an expert on non-toxic cleaning, and non-toxic drain cleaners are easy and good.
About lye & grease making soap…If you have ever seen a plumber remove a section of pipe with nasty dark green soap in it, you would never use lye drain cleaner again. Lye is good at dissolving hair clogs. Hair is part of you, and lye is also good at dissolving other body parts, including skin. It’s just too risky.
Baking soda, vinegar, and boiling hot water will usually do the trick.
I second DrDeth’s answer about the amount of HCL still there and what to do about it. Actually, his answer is probably a little on the cautious side, but that’s never a bad thing.
It’s worth a try. Turn off the water to the toilet tank (the cut off valve should be under it), flush twice, then put boiling hot water in the toilet and flush. Repeat if necessary.
Well, it likely won’t hurt, but boiling or just plain very hot water is best for cutting grease (kitchen) or soap residue (tub) drain problems. In a toilet, I just flush, plunge, flush, plunge, flush, flush, flush, flush, flush, flush. The enzymatic drain cleaner will work in the toilet pipes, however.
If you do this, and then the enzymatic stuff (use as directed, but the beauty of this stuff is that it is very safe in comparison to lye or acid)) and it’s still slow- call a plumber. What likely is the problem then is a solid item caught in the “trap”.
Oh, and instead of pliers or hooks, try what I suggested here “For the shower, there is this neat little plastic thing that has backwards hooks on it that you can push down the drain, and on the way back it’ll clean out a lot of hair and gunk.” It looks like a strip of plastic about 2 or 3’ long. They sell them at hardware stores. Man, you get some serious “ewwww” with one of those things. Neat.
That wasn’t a very bright idea. Nevertheless, if you know what chemicals you’re mixing and what they’ll do, mixing chemicals is fine. Not everyone is as ignorant as your friend.
It’s not risky unless you can’t use it without spilling it on yourself, and even then the bigger risk is to your clothes since it takes quite awhile to do anything to your skin. In the few chemistry courses I took, I used sodium hydroxide all the time. In fact, I used the pure granules once when there was a beaker with stubborn crud on it. Just filled the thing about halfway up and topped it off with water. Sure got hot as it dissolved (I left it in the fume hood in case it spattered. Safety first.), but I didn’t lose any flesh in the process. Drano’s not a great idea for all sorts of reasons, but you don’t have to use fearmongering here - it’s not going to leap out of the bottle and rip the flesh off your bones. Besides, it takes awhile for it to eat through your skin. You’d notice concentrated sodium hydroxide on your skin - it has a distinctly slippery feel. (Once again, been there, done that.) It doesn’t turn your flesh into goo all that quickly.
