An old tradition on the AudioHolics Steam Vent, are occasional threads where someone just vents on life’s frustrations. We used to call these threads “What Grinds My Gears”. It’s been a few years since I saw one of these. This one is about my fun time being a DIY plumber.
My main purpose here is to crow about how I finally succeeding in clearing a blocked drain. This was a bathroom sink – my bathroom sink – not my wife’s – her sink is about 4 feet to the left of mine. She has plenty of hair. I don’t. That rules out a hair clog.
My house was built in 1993, that sink and drain pipe is nearly 29 years old. It’s never been completely blocked, but over the years it did drain slower & slower. I finally decided I had to clear that sink drain. I’m a dedicated DIYer, especially when it’s a job that looks like it can’t be that difficult
. I’ve repaired toilet flush & refill valves, replaced shower, bathroom & kitchen sink faucets before. If I needed to install or join water supply or drain pipes, or natural gas pipes, I’d call a plumber. But clearing a clogged drain seemed easy enough. I’ve cleared my wife’s hair out of the shower stall drain, easy with
one of these, but I’ve never had to clear a more serious drain clog before.
So I bought a snake (called a drum auger on Amazon) with a 25’ cable. It was made in China, came without any directions, and its red case had raised print in Chinese, no English at all. I even spent a few minutes on YouTube to see how you use these spooky looking things.
In a moment of self-doubt, I also bought a large jug of Liquid Drano. It contains a lot of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), a nasty caustic compound. In theory, NaOH works well at dissolving clogs made of organic debris, by a chemical process called alkaline hydrolysis. My first effort at clearing the clog involved using that stuff twice, thinking I could avoid the trouble of removing the U trap under the sink. It didn’t help. In fact, I think it made the drain clog worse. Before the Drano, the sink drained slowly. After two treatments, it hardly drained at all.
Lesson #1 – Avoid using Liquid Drano. Just don’t bother.
The first thing I did on Friday, was clear out all the stuff in the cabinet under the sink that I’d accumulated over the years. Quite a lot of it was junk.
Next I started removing the U trap under the sink. That U trap hadn’t been removed in 29 years, so it took a lot of effort to start those big plastic rings turning. I’m about 2½ times older than that sink. With my somewhat arthritic hands, it was hard getting those SOBs to budge, even if I was comfortably standing up. But I was lying on a hard tile floor, reaching under a sink into a bathroom vanity cabinet. I eventually did get it off, without destroying it, but with a lot of pain & cursing. At my age, even getting down on the floor or up from it is plenty hard. I probably had to do that somewhere between 15 and 20 times before I was done on Friday.
Plumbers are young, they have much stronger hands than I have, and they’ve done all these simple jobs before. They probably have better tools that I do too.
(Continued …)
