Using One Shot drain clearer in sinks

[John Smith]

As I've noted a few times, it may be that some water was added to concentrated acid and the heat from the reaction (not the acid) melted a plastic pipe.

[David Lang]

That's entirely possible, we simply don't know, but it would make no sense to remove all the water, add the acid & replace the water.

I suspect pilot error played a large part.

[Vir Campestris]

I keep HCl for drains. It's in a plastic bottle.

It ate my plastic tweezers, which I'd used because I thought they'd be OK unlike the steel tools.

Andy

[cl]

I'm amazed that Hydrochloric Acid affected plastic tweezers. It's not the *acidity* of Sulphuric Acid that makes it so corrosive.

Concentrated Nitric Acid and Hydrochloric Acid don't even affect the skin all that much, I remember simply washing spills off our hands at school (not likely nowadays I suspect). Nitric Acid used to leave yellow marks. Concentrated Sulphuric on the skin is another matter altogether.

[DerbyBorn]

I hope you know the cause of the blockage and can fix it.

Poor plumbing? (A poorly cut pipe can attract hair and grease) Grease? Hair? Soap made of animal fat - change to shower gel and liquid hand wash

[newshound]

It's an oxidising agent.

[newshound]

That's from the MSDS of a sulphuric acid supplier. It's hardly surprising that they say it can attack almost anything.

A better strategy is to look at data from suppliers of plastics, and many common plastics are reasonably resistant to sulphuric acid up to "battery acid" strength. When you get stronger than this, or up to oleum (fuming sulphuric acid) you need to be more careful.

There's also a big difference between leaving it in contact with plastics for long periods, maybe years, and letting it soak in a trap for half an hour before flushing it away with a large excess of water.

[Martin Bonner]

Lovely stuff oleum. A saturated solution of sulphur trioxide in pure sulphuric acid. (SO3 in H2SO4).

Very hydrophilic, and an extremely powerful oxidizing agent.

[Димитър Тодоров]

replying to John Smith, ??????? ??????? wrote: The main idea is to rapidly generate gases in combination with the acid to unclog the drain. Bravely and quickly add the water and cover the drain with some plastic cup to avoid splashing, because the gasses are so rapidly generated, it sounds like a shot of a gun (hence one shot).