How to Unclog Drains Without Chemicals
(Page 3 of 5)
December 2007/January 2008
By Steve Maxwell
Push the snake down the clogged pipe. When you hit an obstruction, turn the crank handle and the snake chews its way through. Basic snakes cost less than $50 and extend about 12 feet. You can rent longer professional models, both manually operated and those connected to an electric drill.
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If the blockage isn’t near enough to the sink to reach with a snake, look for other places to gain entry to the pipe. Building codes require that drain systems include clean-out ports at strategic locations. Unscrew the cover to gain access to pipes for augering.
Clearing a Toilet
Although the pipe leading from a toilet doesn’t have a trap, the internal passages of the toilet act as a trap by holding water in the bottom of the bowl. These passages are usually where toilets get plugged.
Start by filling the bowl with enough water to seal around the rim of a toilet plunger. Put it in place over the opening in the bottom of the bowl, then work the plunger up and down. Go gently at first, there’s no point in sloshing filthy water around if a light touch will do the trick. Work up to a more aggressive pace if gentle plunges don’t work. If this doesn’t work and you have the option to wait, let the plugged toilet sit overnight. This sometimes softens the blockage, allowing the plunger to work even though it wouldn’t earlier.
If the blockage can’t be dislodged by a plunger, reach for a toilet snake, which is like an ordinary drain snake except it’s covered in protective rubber to prevent scratches to the toilet bowl finish. If all these options fail, then it’s possible the blockage exists past the toilet. Shut off the water supply to the toilet, drain the tank, remove the nuts that hold the toilet to the floor and lift the toilet. The large pipe at floor level offers a good place to work a drain snake down to dislodge the blockage.
Is your toilet a chronically slow flusher? There are several possible causes other than a partial blockage. Your toilet could be old, it could be bad or it could be both. Mineral deposits accumulating within passages of high mileage toilets often reduce flushing action significantly after 20 or 30 years of operation. Toilet replacement is the solution. Just be sure to install a low-flow model that has a proven track record of good performance. (Click here for a list of the best models.) The first generation of low-flow toilets never flushed properly, even when they were new. Your lazy flusher could be bad by design.
A blocked vent stack can also cause poor flushing because it fosters a temporary vacuum within the drainpipes. If fresh air isn’t allowed to replace the volume of water that moves through the pipe after a flush, then slow, ineffective action is the result. Code-compliant, plastic vent stacks rarely get plugged, but the old galvanized-metal stacks found in some homes grow progressively more plugged with rust as time passes. Eventually they close up. Try ramming a steel rod down the vent pipe from above. (You’ll need to get on the roof to do this.) Any blockage will be obvious.
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