To clear the drain

[Gary]

I chaps. Outside my kitchen window is a drain trap. It is about 3 1/2 foot deep. The feed from the kitchen goes in about 1 foot down, the outflow is about a foot below that. Below the outflow is a standing water. I have just played a blockage but there's quite a lot of grease and I was wondering what would be the best thing to put down to dissolve the grease. I cannot actually get to the outflow pipe except with a bit bent wire. I have just put down soda crystals but I'm not sure that this will do the job. Any recommendations as to what to put down the trap in order to ensure the grease et cetera is clear. Thanks in advance for any help. Gary

[rttgraham]

I don't know which is the best but googling for 'drain grease solvent' comes up with a whole range of options. BTW, I don't suffer from this anymore since I got my wife to pour fat from her frying pan, etc, into an old kit-e-cat tin and put it in the recycling when it was cold rather than tip it down the drain.

[Weatherlawyer]

mes up with a whole range of options.

m her frying pan, etc, into an old kit-e-cat tin and put it in the recyclin= g when it was cold rather than tip it down the drain.

Isn't tipping stuff like that into drains illegal? It bloody aught to be.

[stuart noble]

Soda crystals will be fine, but more effective with some boiling water.

Try and get a garden hose up the outflow pipe and turn the tap on full blast

[Andrew Gabriel]

I would start by trying to loosen and lift out what you can. I have retrieved a carrier bag full of fat from my parents' kitchen gully this way, and that was by no means all of it. It would take a lot of any chemical to dissolve all that, and you don't want to push it all further down the drain either.

What's left can be dissolved with caustic soda (sodium hydroxude), preferably warm or hot, but it's very dangerous (chemical burns), and self-heating during dissolving it can get it to boiling point and spitting, and it will dissolve you just like it does the fat.

If you don't have caustic soda or don't fancy handling it, ordinary Soda (sodium carbonate) in hot water will work, but not as powerfully.

Dishwasher liquid or powder detergent will also work in hot water. (Tablets will be too fiddly to use.)

Whatever you use, leave there for a while (e.g. overnight). Then stir it up as solids will have settled out (with protection against splashing yourself), and rinse away with hot water which may help keeping any remaining fat from solidifying.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Caustic soda and hot water

[stuart noble]

Caustic boils on its own. No need for hot water. Washing soda is plenty alkaline enough to emulsify animal and/or vegetable fats

[Andy Dingley]

Washing soda, but you have to use it regularly to _prevent_ buildups. It's of much less use once it's set. A kettle of boiling water with it helps too, especially if your water is standing, such as in a trap.

If it's bunged solid, then it's time for caustic soda, but this does have splash hazards.

Acidic drain cleaners (as recently discussed) are no use.

[Phil L]

Weatherlawyer wrote: .

It's not illegal but it's not reccomended.

All manner of animal fats get washed down the drains every day and in small amounts they don't cause much trouble, a plate you've had hamburgers on, sausage and bacon fats etc and not forgetting our own body fats from showering, are 'normal' amounts, in that the solvents used daily - washing powders and liquids and other detergents prevent build up. When you tip half a pint of burger grease down in one go this is going to cause build up fairly quickly. I use the same method as rttgraham, except I use a pedigree chum can as my mutt won't allow a cat near the premises. Non setting oils aren't as much of a problem as hard grease