Get a box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda. You’ll find it in the clothes detergent aisle of the supermarket. It’s not very expensive. $2 maybe.
Follow the directions on the side of the package for slow running drains. Basically, you make a solution of the soda (with water), pour it down followed by HOT water. I used in on a slow running bathroom sink drain that had hair and soap scum wrapped around the stopper which I couldn’t budge to pull out to clean. It worked perfectly. Then I did the kitchen sink. The worst thing in the kitchen is the coffee grinds that escape down the drain and build up in the piping.
I think I’m failing to understand the part about it’s a rental apartment and answers other than ask the management company to fix it and if they refuse, stop paying until they do.
I’m saving up these tips for whenever I don’t have an apartment maintenance guy to call; all he does is pull out huge wads of hair and then run some kind of solution down the drain…it takes him less than 2 minutes…and I know this.
But huge wads of hair will literally make me gag and vomit—I can’t even watch the Turbo Snake commercials or I’ll start feeling queasy–so I figure I’m paying for the guy to come by and deal with it for me twice a year.
(In-between I use Drano. I’m curious about this ammonia solution though; I may try that next time.)
I was told by my dad who worked with a plumber for a while that Drano and other chemicals does NOT work on a badly clogged drain. It might dissolve a little cooking grease, but a big wad of hair/gunky soap/whisker shavings sitting down there? Uh, uh, it just sits there floating on top of the real mess that has to be physically removed. He said people think, hey, just pick up a bottle of Drano and fix it, avoid a plumber’s bill! It’s a ripoff. When my bathtub drain slows down I use the plunger and extract a handful of impacted hair using various instruments, then plunge again until it starts draining faster. But the bathroom sink gets full of whiskers, shaving cream, toothpaste, and soap and nothing gets that out except removing the stopper and applying the snake. (holds nose just thinking about the mess…)’
One suggestion I’ve heard but haven’t tried is using a garden hose. They have more pressure than your house lines. Just run it in through a window, set the nozzle to its highest pressure setting, put it down the drain, and wrap a towel around it to close it off. Then have somebody outside turn the water on. The spray will supposedly blast out everything that’s clogging your pipe.
Like I said, I haven’t tried it myself but it doesn’t sound like it could hurt anything to try it.
a bamboo skewer works really well. just break a bit off the end so there is a rough end to the skewer, put the rough end into the drain, twirl, and viola, icky, yucky hair gets stuck on the rough end and you can pull out quite the icky clump.
break off the bit with the icky clump and you have a nice new rough end to go hair catching again.
to help with very oily soaps or scrubs, try using antigrease dish soap just add a bit to the water as it drains. also helps in cleaning bath rings.
There’s another thread on here about this. That’s how I learned about the washing soda. Sorry, I’m not searching for it; someone else can if they want. It was sometime within the last year I think…
Anyway, it was an answer from a professional plumber, if I remember correctly. He said NEVER to use Drano, lye, whatever.
It’s not that it isn’t tested, but if you have an actual clog, and the drain cleaner doesn’t fix it, you then have to submerge your snake, a tool that spins rapidly and is known for some amount of splashing, into a highly caustic solution…solution that can cause some nice burns of it ets on your skin, and even nier ones on your eyes.
Of course it is. But it can cause damage to some pipes, and if the plug is too solid for the Lye to work, you then have to get the lye out before you can proceed. A extra $50 from most plumbers. It’s also very dangerous, and most dudes don’t use it correctly, which makes it even worse.
It’s a scam, whether it’s tested or not, sold to the lazy and/or hopeful. It might dissolve something minor that’s making the drain a little slow. A rock hard hunk of compacted hair, coffee grounds, grease, toothpaste - what do you think a bottle of lye is going to do with THAT?
Have you removed the drain linkage? Many times, the rod that holds the internal drain stopper gets stretched-which means that the darin will not fully open. Take the two screws on the drain control out, and pull the plud up. Shorten the linkage (by turning the screw a few turns, then replace.
This will solve your problem.
The last place you ever want to use Drano is on a kitchen sink. The lye mixes with grease and makes the hardest soap you can imagine, leaving the pipe blocked by a rock-hard glob of stuff that either needs to be chiseled out or just replace the pipe.
I’ll remember this. The entire point of soaps and detergents is to let water rinse away greasy things. This was a question on a chemistry lab test. Don’t use soap on the lab equipment; it’s not greasy enough.
I had great success recently with an enzymatic drain cleaner that I bought at a hardware store (Lowe’s). It’s a yeasty-smelling powder. You start by running warm water down the drain to warm things up a bit; the enzymes are more active in warmth. Mix a couple of scoops in a pint of warm (not hot, the heat will kill 'em) water, and pour it down the drain. Then, let it sit for at least 8 hours, while you go to work or to bed.
The little enzymes or bacteria or whatever’s in there eat away at the organic matter in the drain. After 8 or more hours have passed, flush some water down the drain and see how it’s going. If it’s still slow, you can repeat it; shouldn’t take more than three treatments. Oddly enough, when I did it on my sink, it cleared fully the day after I rinsed the sink; guess the enzymes needed more time to work. But they don’t react with anything inorganic, so they won’t hurt pipes or burn you. Of course, that also means that it won’t work on plastic that gets down the drain, or anything like that, so don’t bother if your kid flushed an action figure down the toilet.