Drains, Products, and Services Archives - Page 4 of 4

The Art of Plunging a Bathtub

Sometimes a completely clogged bathtub drain can be plunged free- using a toilet plunger. Plunging a bathtub drain works by forcing a pocket of water or air through the pipe to break up or loosen the clog- which is most often made up of hair and collections of soap in a bathtub.

To plunge the drain well, place the plunger over the top of the drain so that it covers it completely and forms a tight seal against the tub.

Plunge the drain with quick thrusts, about 10 times. You can also start by filling the tub with a half inch or inch deep layer of hot water, to help tighten the seal around the drain and force the air or water pocket to move the clog.

What can also help get a tight seal is to cover the overflow drain below the faucet. Cover it with a wet cloth, or remove the face plate to stuff a wet cloth just in the opening. This can help create an even tighter seal to make the plunging more effective.

Kitchen Sink Odors

Kitchen sinks get a lot of food particles and other debris washed down the drain, especially if you have a garbage disposal. There are a number of “home remedies” people prescribe for their stinky drains, and sometimes they can successfully tame a mild odor.

Baking soda eliminates various odors around a home: for your kitchen sink, pour about a cup of baking soda down the drain and let it sit for about 20 minutes. Then run extremely hot water down the drain. Or, boil a large pot of water and carefully pour it down the drain (alone, or after the baking soda treatment). Instead of baking soda, some people suggest using salt, or chopping orange or lemon peels in the disposal and rinsing them down the drain.

Especially in the case of the boiling water remedy, what you are trying to do is cut through some of the grease that’s trapped in the pipe. Of all the drains in a home, kitchen sinks are the most likely to have layers of grease and oils built up inside them, and the odor you smell is from the decaying grease or food that has been stuck in the layers of grease and is rotting away.

We’ve found that the best remedy for a smelly kitchen sink is to remove the grease. This can be done with a thorough drain cleaning or hydro-jetting, or a regular dose of Bio-Clean. Bio-Clean is an environmentally friendly drain cleaner that uses safe micro bacteria to eat away at grease. Using this regularly keeps grease from building up and odors from forming.

Don’t Put it Down Your Drain: Coffee grounds

A few stray coffee grounds here and there down the drain won’t cause much of a hassle, but a large amount of coffee grounds dumped down a drain at once can cause a clog. Coffee grounds tend to attract grease, allowing small amounts of oils and grease to build up much more easily.

Instead of pouring coffee grounds down the drain, there are a number of other uses for this daily “garbage.” If you have a compost pile, mix used coffee grounds in with the compost to release nutrients into the soil and make the soil more acidic- which helps plants get nutrients from the soil easier. You can also spread coffee grounds mixed with orange peels around gardens to repel cats or other pets that use your garden as a litterbox: the exotic scent discourages them from hanging around the area.

Some say that ants are also repelled by the smell of coffee grounds, so using these as an ant repellent might prove to be an effective alternative to poison traps and sprays. A small bowl of coffee grounds in a refrigerator can also act as a deodorizer for the fridge.

Is my toilet clogged, or just lazy?

Everyone has met a toilet like this before… you flush, and the water seems to just slowly swirl around for a while, and you wait and wait anxiously for what seems like days (though it’s only a few seconds) to see if it will actually flush or (oh no!) overflow. The best way to describe this toilet is “lazy,” because it seems lethargic and slow in its flushing and like something isn’t quite right in the flushing process. It might even take a few flushes to get whatever’s in the bowl to leave the toilet.

The first thing to determine is if there is a clog in the toilet or if it’s a mechanical issue in the tank. To rule out a clog in the line, take a full bucket of water and pour it into the toilet rapidly. If there is no clog in the line, the sudden addition of excess water should drain quickly and keep the water level in the bowl consistent. If this causes the toilet to overflow, your line may be clogged. Plunge the toilet or call The Scottish Plumber to clear the drain.

If you poured a bucket of water down the toilet and it drained quickly, then there is probably not a clog in the pipe. Sometimes water can slowly swirl around the bowl if some of the ports are clogged. The ports are the small holes around the inside of the toilet bowl that feed the water from the tank into the bowl. Over time, lime, calcium, and other mineral deposits may build up and clog the holes. Try poking through them with a small screwdriver to clean them out and see if this helps.

Sometimes a toilet cleaning tab you place in the tank can shrink down and get stuck in a port. If you have placed one of these in your tank recently, check to see if a small piece of it got suck in a port.

Don’t Put it Down Your Drain: Paint

If you’ve just finished painting a room in your home and have some leftover paint you don’t want to keep, or you just found a stash of half-full paint cans in your basement and want to dispose of them…DON’T pour them down the drain- any drain in your home.

Paint is highly flammable and dangerous to add to your plumbing system where its fumes can release into all parts of the house, or the paint can even ignite. Paint will coat the insides of your pipes, shrinking them down and causing materials to build up and clog your drains.

Do not throw the paint cans away or pour them into a city or storm drain either- they can easily leak or leech into the water supply or contaminate the ground. Check with your local city municipality for a safe place to dispose of paint- there are plenty of facilities that accept all types of household chemicals and paints for safe disposal or even recycling. Some hardware stores or paint stores may also have this information.

For cleaning up after painting, follow the directions on the side of the paint can. Usually, for water-based or latex paints, it’s safe to scrape as much excess paint as possible into some newspapers. Let the paint dry on the newspapers before throwing them into the garbage. Then you can wash the roller and brush with warm soapy water. With enough water running to dilute it, the paint can be washed down a drain safely.

However, oil-based or alkyd paints aren’t soluble with water and require paint thinner to clean the utensils. Follow the directions on the side of the cans for these types of paints. (Usually they instruct to soak or rinse the brushes and rollers with paint thinner into another can, seal it, then take it to a hazardous waste depot.) Also- marine or auto body paint may contain lead- so always check the labels of paints and follow their disposal directions carefully.

Also, if you have excess paint you want to dispose of but it’s still fresh enough to use, try finding someone who could use it, before disposing of it. Check with your neighbors, local businesses, colleagues at work, a church or youth group, or any place in your community where you can donate it and it can still be used to paint something!

Unclog your dishwasher

Like any clog, a clogged dishwasher starts with some troubleshooting. There are a few different reasons why a dishwasher can clog, and some of them are simple enough for you to unclog yourself. One of the most common causes of a clogged dishwasher is simply some debris in or on the drain. Let’s start there.

Look for the drain on the bottom of the inside of the dishwasher. Remove the racks if you need to get to it, and make sure the dishwasher has been off for a while and the heating elements are off and have completely cooled so you do not burn yourself. Check to see if there is any debris (such as food from dirty plates placed in the dishwasher) on the drain blocking its flow and remove it. The dishwasher may also have a plastic or metal strainer (which is usually in two parts)- check this for debris, and remove it and clean it off if this is the source of the problem.

If debris is completely visible in these two places, try removing the drain port cover and thread a slim rod or straightened coat hanger a few inches into the drain, to see if you can remove some built-up grease, food, or other debris.

If the clog has not been found, try checking the draining hose itself. Remove the bottom panel of the dishwasher to find the drain hose. If it is folded, has a kink in it or you can see trapped debris in it, do your best to straighten the hose out and untangle it. If it’s too tangled or has a large clog, you can easily and inexpensively replace this hose.

Remember to rinse food off your dishes before placing them in a dishwasher to keep it from turning into debris that can clog the drain.