From time to time, the water just stops flowing down your drain. You know the situation: you are suddenly standing in an inch of water every time you take a shower, and it takes half an hour after you’re done before the tub is dry again. When you have a clogged tub drain, all you want is for it to flow again.
Before you do anything else with your drain, feel around the top part of the drain and make sure that there aren’t any piles of hair. Even though they might not be on top of the drain where they would be visible, sometimes hair and soap get caught just under the rim of the drain, and clog it up. If you’re lucky, you’ll pull out a gross wad of hair, and your tub will drain normally again. If not, there’s more to try.
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.
If you are to the point where none of these simple remedies seem to be working, you have a choice to make. There is, of course, the option of using traditional, caustic drain cleaners. But these are bad for the environment, and potentially dangerous for pets and children. So, you could consider buying 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 have permanent hair traps built into the drain. If that’s the case in your tub, you won’t be able to thread the drain snake down the pipe. Some of the hair traps that look permanent actually aren’t, so make sure that yours is truly permanent. If it is, you might need to unscrew the plate covering the overflow drain, and thread the pipe down that way.
Sometimes, plumbers are just required. If the clog is too big, too far down, or any number of other things, you might not be able to get it to budge on your own. The specialized equipment and the years of experience in unclogging drains just like yours help plumbers to deal with a clogged tub drain in a way you just aren’t able to.
Sometimes you just need to fix a clogged tub drain for expert drain cleaning in San Francisco