You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Our bath has always been slow to drain, I’ve tried to rectify with a plunger, tried rodding it but couldn’t get anything past the bend, tried soda crystals etc. none have made any difference.
Working on the assumption that this is a biological blockage, what god awful chemicals should I slosh around that won’t destroy the cast iron bath l, eat the enamel or the ancient plumbing connected to it?
Mr Muscle sink unblocker should be fine - it's not that nasty, or put down an old net curtain wire and a hook, and pull out the crud.
If you look on amazon you can get tools which have a small hook, a 90 degree point, and 45 degree and a sh
point, all with handles ( about the size of a modelling paint brush).
If it is like my house hold, the plug gets jammed up with my wife's hair, that wraps its self about the plug drainer, trapping all the other festering bio material.
Use the above to hook it out - It will be like the scene from Alien with John Hurt
I tried all sorts of chemicals and a wire snake which does go round bends but nothing worked. The old school plunger did eventually do it. I blocked up the overflow and filled the drain then went crazy with the plunger. The block turned out to be my daughter’s hair which she had been cutting. It had congealed into a solid lump!
Can you remove the u-bend?
Some water in the bath and the "plunger" but you need someone else to make sure the overflow is covered tight maybe a damp towel and start plungin
We had a slow draining bath and had tried everything. When we had a whole new bathroom put in it was still draining badly. The builders had to go into pipe work below the utility room floor to get to the blockage. It was years worth of ming apparently.
Semtex
The thing about chemicals escaping through the first little hole is only partially true.
They soften and start dissolving everything before the blockage. Eventually the dissolve one bit enough to escape but the rest of the crud is now softens and more likely to move. After the chemical has done it's stuff run a load of hot water down there, or just have a hot bath and let it drain. This will clear a lot of the crud that has built up and then been softened. Not perfect but often a lot less destructive than trying to physically push the blockage through.
HG make decent unclog products.
Had similar recently in the wife's bathroom. Chemicals were tried but made no difference because they collected in the bend. When I took it apart, I found the hair/soap/toothpaste rubbery black sludge was in the vertical section between the plughole and the end. Easy fit once it was apart though.
Is that Mr Sheen himself that makes umpteen things clean with his white creamy froth out of his aerosol promoting HG products
Used these things on our bath/shower plughole, Results were grim but it worked!
[img]
As mentioned if you can’t remove the u-bend then any of the many sink unblocker you can buy will do the job. The gel or foaming ones is what I’ve had the most success with, not they don’t disappear through a small hole the create. It drops into the u-bend and continues to dissolves what’s in there.
We had a 'drain man' come out after failing with chemicals / hot water etc (for weeks) and messing around with one of those slinky rod things.
He had an industrial hoover (looked like a wet and dry hoover you'd see a professional cleaner use - type thing) and hoovered the drain for about 45 mins.
It took that long but it worked - it pulled a LOT of crap out.
I suspect he has created a vaccum-sealing end for it. I didn't really pay any attention to what/how he was doing, I just let him get on with it!
It's probably just clogged up with hair, so the best thing to do, is remove the hair, and not let too much hair go down the drain in future.
Well definitely NOT Hydrofluoric Acid… So I’ve heard…
Based only on watching a tv show with extremely questionable scientific claims, hydrofluoric acid would dissolve the hair that's blocking the drain, but not the pipe if the pipe is made from the correct plastic. What's the worst that could happen?
I used to work on a plant with HF… Jesus that stuff scared me. Burns were apparently horrific. Once burnt through your skin and flesh, the fluoride ions would start stripping calcium out of your bones. Well before my time in the ‘good old days’ (70s) a guy apparently had a face full sprayed at high pressure from a failed gasket. Died a pretty horrific, agonising death.
What’s the worst that could happen?
As above, even a relatively small spill on your skin if not treated fast and with the correct antidote can be horrific and you may die. A horrible death as it strips calcium out of your system screwing up the way your electrolyte balances regulate muscle activity, leading potentially to convulsions and if that's your heart muscle, cardiac arrest and death.
Although burns are apparently very painful, they don't start on exposure, and can take minutes or hours before you realise, by which time it's now creating the systemic effects too. If you were to spill it on yourself best do a good job so you know it and can react.
Some clean rooms use it for deep etching of wafers for semiconductor and micromachining work, but many won't allow it on site. We do and with our H&S advisor, I wrote the procedure for using it which includes having a buddy in the room with you, who is equally trained on HF use so if there's even a hint of a spill, they can crack open the antidote and get it started.
TLDR...don't use HF.
Are you messing about with a normal plunger or have you gone big? One of these unblocked the shower used by my two teenage daughters,
One Shot if you can find it. It’s your only chemical hope. It’s proper nasty.
I find this type to be very effective - it shifts a large volume of water:
https://www.screwfix.com/p/sink-bath-unblocker-125mm/13894
not they don’t disappear through a small hole the create. It drops into the u-bend and continues to dissolves what’s in there
In a kitchen sink where it's grease that is true.
This is a bath. It dissolves the great around the hair but not the hair.
"having a buddy in the room with you, who is equally trained on HF use"
The buddy will need a strong constitution and a willingness to ignore the victim's noise as he works.
Had to stop stone cleaning under Southwark Bridge once as they were working over a live walkway with no guarding, exclusion or first aid in place. No one had read the documentation.
It dissolves the grease around the hair but not the hair.
AFAIK it does a pretty good job on the hair, well it did on my ex wifes (Thick, curly blonde hair, like springs) and my girlfriends (Kinky, waist length when wet, shoulder length when dry and natural.)
So the shower and bath traps only get mechanically cleaned once a year now (didn't start using caustic until i'd been married nearly 10 years, and had cleaned many many many traps by hand...)
Cap full of caustic crystals and a kettle of boiling or near boiling water and it's done.
Don't want to stoke the flames of a gender war here (it's not just women that have long hair) but it sounds very much like you have all had similar experiences to me.
I have cleaned out so many plugholes: flatmates long hair, wife's long hair, girlfriends long hair, daughters long hair. Not once has the long haired person done anything other than vaguely wonder why the bath is draining so slowly, and never have they made an attempt to clean the plughole!
Although my wife, who has the shortest hair out of all my plughole sharers has bought us this, which does seem to catch quite a few hairs and is easier to clean than the plughole:
This is a bath. It dissolves the great around the hair but not the hair.
Except the ones that can dissolve hair. Just read the labels.
“having a buddy in the room with you, who is equally trained on HF use”
The buddy will need a strong constitution and a willingness to ignore the victim’s noise as he works.
Fortunately (a) we've not had a spill in living memory; (b) if you do get small qtys on you apparently you won't feel it until a few minutes later - that's one of the 'look out for' - clean rooms are generally warm, you're in a plastic/tyvek coverall from head to toe... and was that a bead of sweat you felt inside your double gloves, or was it......
and finally (c) as a research lab we use ml quantities, anywhere using industrial quantities have substantially more in place (you'd hope) that a mate with an hour's training and 3 bottles of gluconate. Although as per stingmered and
Had to stop stone cleaning under Southwark Bridge once as they were working over a live walkway with no guarding, exclusion or first aid in place. No one had read the documentation.
"you'd hope" probably wouldn't satisfy the HSE if they came a-calling.
**
Anyway, enough of this - mert, tell us more about your girlfriend (kinky)
[i]ex wifes (Thick, curly blonde hair, like springs) and my girlfriends (Kinky, waist length when wet,[/i]
You lets your wife (now ex) and girlfriend shower together? I can see why you describe the ex-wife as thick and the girlfriend as kinky when wet. Fair play sir!
Kinky = Afro.
Though she was *exceedingly* kinky too.
Now no longer a girlfriend due to deciding having another child was a priority...
The non-chemical way is a kettle of boiling water before plunging/rodding. It softens the gunge (mainly the fat in conditioner).
You lets your wife (now ex) and girlfriend shower together? I can see why you describe the ex-wife as thick and the girlfriend as kinky when wet. Fair play sir!
Ha, no. Ex wife long gone before girlfriend appeared on the scene.
It's difficult to get it to wriggle round the first bend, but with persistence it goes. First time I got it to go all the way in I pulled out a clump of hair and ick that looked like a dead rat! it was pretty impressive it squeezed back through the plughole. Disgusting and satisfying at the same time.
When you say “soda crystals” do you mean soda crystals as used in days of old for washing stuff (basically soap), or caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) they are very different chemicals with very different safety precautions required. Sodium hydroxide, I believe, is the active ingredient in IMac and other hair removal products so will with time eat hair. It’s nasty shit and will damage skin and in particular eyes if you are not careful. It can of course also damage metal etc too. My understanding is that the good commercial unblock products will also be NaOH based and may deploy it in a gel format to either help it sink to the blockage or stop it washing away at the first sign of movement. That all said I’ve always found mechanically removing the crud was actually easier, more likely to work etc.
I think what OP needs can be found off-world
Chemicals don’t work because by nature as soon as they make a teeny tiny hole trough the blockage they disappear.
The solution to this is MOAR CHEMICALS.
Within the bounds of not killing the water treatment plant. Shouldn't be an issue as dilution and neutralization take care of it.
Sodium hydroxide, buy it in bulk ~5kg, not for about the same price as a single bottle of Mr Muscle. It does the double job of both breaking down proteins and fats, and turns the fats into surfactants which dissolves more fats. Other than adding something to it to thicken it (which is all Mr Muscle is) you can't do much more.
Add at a rate of about 1:20 to as much water as required to shift the blockage.
Might just be crap plumbing though, my bath drains like like a hoover, because it's pretty much a U bend into the soil pipe so it gets some serious suction going. The shower on the other side of the house is pathetic (and does need the odd dose of sodium hydroxide to clear the drain smell) as it has a ~10m almost horizontal run through the floor.
If the nasty chemicals are not working, you might want to check the grey water pipe as it exits to the drain.
I had the same problem and solved it by clearing a blockage where the pipe was leaving the house.
Got up a ladder, took pipe junction off and poked around in there IIRC.
Edit: grey water pipe = water from bath & sink, actual pipe may be black 😀
On the back of this discussion, you inspired me to check my outside drain - all the grey water from bathroom and kitchen goes into an 'open' drain outside with a grill over, so that stuff that doesn't clog the pipe then gets caught on that grill rather than disappear into the sewers.
I say inspired.... you're all bastards for 'inspiring' me (boak)
A 2l bottle of full fat coke poured down the plughole. 😉
I think that hair conditioner is often to blame.... gloopy crap that builds up in the pipes.
"if the pipe is made from the correct plastic. What’s the worst that could happen?"
You get a nasty burn and all your calcium is precipitated and you drop dead.
Sodium hydroxide is good for the drain cleaning but not sure if you can still get it, and if you can for how much longer. Chemophobia is rampant and many once household substances are now illegal (even the flavouring on salt and vinegar crisps which MUST be in blue packaging BTW). It may be spared due to the ignorant only looking at acids.
It is important to add the solid caustic to water, never the other way round as dissolving the stuff generates heat. Sodium hydroxide is very nasty - easy to handle safely but eye protection please!
BITD caving lamps used to run on acetylene gas, generated from calcium carbide lumps and water. Cavers had a ready supply of calcium carbide lumps and it was often used to clear blocked toilets, flush a handful of carbide into the bowl, and just wait for the gas to shift the blockage. All went well until a caver with a lit cigarette in his mouth popped into the loo at a caving club hut - kerbooooom!!!
Fortunately I’ve not had any blocked drain issues, the nearest thing was I’d get home after Joey had enjoyed a long soak in a bubble bath, to find a wide river of foam along the front path halfway to the gate! Partly because it just sat on top of the grate in the drain, which was set about a foot below the path, and partly because dry leaves would blow down the street and collect in the drain.
I’ve stopped the leaf issue by putting a small paving slab over the surround, after I startled a hedgehog and it tried to nosedive down the drain…
I did have an issue with the bathroom sink overflow not working, and smelling a bit off, through decades of soap from the soap dish and other detritus collecting down there, along with it being a hard water area. I discovered that pouring a capful of kettle descaler down there, was very quickly followed by an eruption of dirty dark grey froth out of the overflow and straight down the plug hole!
A couple of capfuls cleared it very successfully. 😁
Dad always gets caustic soda out for unblocking drains. Can't be good but it works.
all the grey water from bathroom and kitchen goes into an ‘open’ drain outside with a grill over, so that stuff that doesn’t clog the pipe then gets caught on that grill rather than disappear into the sewers.
Known as a grease trap, a basic sedimentation system used on old fashioned sepctic systems. You're supposed to get it cleaned annually ... ours was a right pain as tree roots love it cause it to block and the greywater backs up.
Fortunately we've got a new treatment plant installed that processes all grey and black water in our garden and irrigates with the treated water. It's a thing of beauty... assuming we don't get extended power cuts!