Recommended fluid-based drain cleaners?

If you have a Grahams available then buy Dambuster and use with extreme caution.use a small plastic funnel to pour straight down the waste.

Caustic soda can also give good results .

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (max-man) wrote in news:42791fcd.561749578 @news.freeserve.net:

There are also physical methods. Before replacing our bath, we had a similar problem. I kept it at bay by using one of those coiled spring drain 'things'. Amazingly, it would go right through the trap and a couple of metres along the pipe. Not perfect but worth a go and a lot cheaper than gallons (sorry, litres) of chemicals.

Or a sink plunger. I found (with my kitchen sink) a washing up liquid bottle was the right diameter in the 1/2 bowl plughole to clear a slow running blockage with vigourous agitation.

We've had great success with a cheap plastic drain clearing pump. Sort of concertina-y thing about 30cm long, 4cm diameter. Fill with water, bung up the overflow, run some water into the bath, remove plug, quickly apply pump and PUMP.... Forget where we got ours from but can't be hard to find.

Hi

Caustic Soda - sodium hydroxide. Cheap & works a treat - follow the instruction on the package to the letter though.

Dave

You might get good results with a wet-vac.

Thanks for all the suggestions - looks like I have plenty of options. :-)

Now you've done it. People will get ratty about C****** S***, acid, and all sorts of things. However, try rodding it out with a bicycle brake cable outer (make sure the end hasn't got any sharp edges).

Most of the liquids aren't ideal for this. They're good at blockages, where they can sit against it, but they tend to wash past quickly and have relatively little effect.

So recently I've been trying some American enzyme based stuff from Wilkinsons. My kitchen sink drain is also too shallow an angle (and it would require tidying the garage to get access to it).

As to acid v.s caustic soda, then alkalis are much better on fatty deposits, acids on limescale. Apart from that, such as hairballs, then there's not much to choose between them.

Supplementary Question. What dissolves soap?

Apparently it was a whole bar of soap, dropped into the toilet pan, and flushed. It is now somewhere beyond the U-bend, not that far away probably because the toilet is said to drain slowly after a flush.

Acids.

Just hope there isn't a roll of paper down there too. 8-(

From experience, paper alone is hard enough to extract - but a good coating of soap upstream makes it impermeable.

Water - eventually!

Dave

Beware if you have pushfit waste pipes though.

Friend used on of these in his kitchen and popped the pipes apart pumping water out behind his units :-) took a while to fix as well as the backs of the units ended up having to be cut out.

Darren

Solid caustic soda and a kettle of hot water.

Watch out for corrosive boilding splashes.

If you haven't played with caustic soda and hot water before, the net nannies will come along and tell you to use a wetsuit, fully enclosed breathing apparatus, and a fume cupboard, but eyes apart, it will hurt if it gets on your skin, but no more than any other burn. Wash splashes off with cold water, and use clothes that you are chucking anyway. Anything that is effective at dissolving human hair works just as well on wool, and cotton.

It will actually boild the water in the U-bend generating nice localised agitation and pressure which helps dislodege the muck.

Once dislodged wash the pipes through with LOTS of cold water to dilute the alkali on its way downstream. Otherwise it can attak pipes and seals a bit.

Bleach is similar but much milder and not so exciting. Or effective.

That's a bloody silly suggestion, you should use a dry suit.

Anyway, max-man, I told you you'd start 'em off.

Just rod it through with a bit of bike brake cable, or you can even buy a special item to do the same thing (it is better, in fact).

Hi,

A length of galvanised fencing wire with a hook or loop may do it, does the trick on my shower.

cheers, Pete.

You don't need the hot water. Caustic will boil quite nicely when added to cold water. However, the crystals often form a solid mass if you don't stir them. The initial heat seems to bond them together and, while they dissolve over time, they may add to the blockage initially.

It doesn't hurt when you first get it on your skin but it will seriously soften it up over a period of time, like half an hour, as anyone who's got it inside their gloves will testify. If you want to see what's under the base of your fingernails, this is the method to use.

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Ok thanks.

Soddes Law always rules.

It seriously hurts when you get it on within a few minutes I can assure you.

But cold water as for a normal burn, fixes it quickly.