Posted by Jaqueline Quintana | Posted in General | Posted on 01-04-2011
Tags: consumer tips, contractors, drain cleaning, General, home, home construction, home improvement, home improvements, maintenance, plumbing, remodel
It’s the rare household that doesn’t occasionally have a problem with their drains stopping up. Most people will have encountered the issue at least a few times in their lives. But if it happens to you, you don’t need to run and call the plumber. Make a few simple attempts at clearing your clogged tub drain before you pay for the professionals.
Make sure that your drain is free of hair. This might seem simple, but don’t just use your eyes to do this. Put your finger or a pair of tweezers (careful not to drop them) into the drain, and feel around for globs of hair. Sometimes these get stuck just inside the mouth of the drain, where they aren’t visible. A big gross wad of hair means you are in luck, though you might not feel like it while you’re holding it.
There are several options for dealing with a true drain clog. The first, and simplest, is just to run a lot of hot water down it. Use the tap if that seems to be working, but even if the tap water isn’t working, try pouring a few pots of boiling water down the drain. Sometimes this is enough to loosen up the clog.
A natural method that’s worth trying is pouring baking soda and vinegar down the drain. The mixture reacts and bubbles fiercely, and this agitation might be enough to loosen clogs stuck in the pipe. To do this, pour the baking soda down the drain first, then pour in lots of vinegar. Let it bubble itself out, then wash it down with hot water. Repeat if necessary.
After trying natural methods of drain cleaning, people are faced with a choice that many do not even know about. Most people go straight to the caustic cleaners. But caustic cleaners are harsh on the environment, and potentially hazardous to pets and children living in the household. So you might want to consider purchasing a drain snake.
Drain snakes are long pieces of flexible metal coiled tubing that can be threaded down into a pipe. They have bulbous heads on the ends, also made of wire coils, which either clear the clog or grab it and pull it out. They are worked into a pipe by turning a handle. Snakes can be purchased at almost any home supply store.
Some tubs come with drains that have permanent hair traps built into them. These prevent you from threading the snake down the primary tub drain. Before you go to the trouble of removing the overflow drain plate, check and make sure your hair trap doesn’t come out. If it really doesn’t, you’ll have to unscrew and take off the plate covering the overflow drain. You can then thread the snake into the pipe through that opening.
After you’ve tried everything, the last option is a plumber. Don’t feel bad that you couldn’t do it yourself– some clogs just need equipment or expertise that the average person doesn’t have. Plumbers have expertise in the subject of a clogged tub drain, and also have tools that you or I don’t own and wouldn’t know how to use if we did.
Sometimes you just need to fix a clogged tub drain for expert drain cleaning in San Francisco
