A slow drain in your sink or shower can be very unpleasant. Nobody wants to wait while a sink full of dirty dish water slowly swirls or stands in a pool of soap scum in the shower. And when a drain is completely clogged, it’s even worse. How can you clear out slow or clogged drains? With liquid drain cleaner? No! There are much better solutions. Here are the best ones.
The Problems with Chemical Cleaners
The pH scale ranges from zero to 14. At the low end, with a pH of 0.8, is battery acid. It then ranges through vinegar, orange juice, and coffee before reaching neutral, with water having a pH of seven. Then come alkaline substances such as baking soda, ammonia, and at a pH of 13, bleach and oven cleaner.
The reason we’re telling you this is that it’s important to know that liquid drain cleaner is even more alkaline than that, with a pH of 14. This means it’s classified as caustic or capable of chemically burning organic matter.
Since your skin (and the rest of you) is organic matter, this substance can cause serious chemical burns. The fumes are also toxic and unhealthy for your eyes, nose, and respiratory system. Liquid drain cleaner can even corrode the inside of your plumbing, leaving a coarse and damaged surface that’s even easier for future clogs to cling to. And for all the risk and problems, it doesn’t actually do a thorough job cleaning those stubborn drain clogs.
Home Solutions to Try
There are a couple of options you could try before calling a plumber to unclog your drain. The first is a sink plunger. If that doesn’t jostle your clog loose, there are drain snake options including simple plastic ones with small “legs” along their length (excellent for grabbing hairy shower clogs) and hand-cranked metal ones (which are more robust for breaking apart blockages). If those don’t work, it’s time for professional drain cleaning in Santa Fe.
Drain Cleaning by the Pros
What can a qualified plumber offer that you can’t do yourself? For one thing, we have many years of experience dealing with clogged drains every day of the week, which makes it quicker and easier for us. And we also have some tools that the average homeowner simply doesn’t have access to.
If your little drain snake wasn’t quite cutting it, we have motorized drain augers which snake their way down your plumbing, grabbing and dislodging anything they encounter. If your plumbing problem is hard to locate, we have tiny video cameras we can extend down your pipes, giving us a clear view of everything that’s down there.
And if you have a clog that is extensive or keeps coming back, we have hydro jetting machines. With this powerful tool, highly pressurized water is used to blast away clogs, grease, soap scum, and even mineral scaling all the way down to the sewer pipe that leads away from your house.
Warning Signs of Major Problems
If you have frequent clogs, multiple clogged drains at once, foul odors from your drains, or wet, smelly, or particularly lush green patches in your yard, you shouldn’t waste time on home remedies. Get plumbing help promptly because your problem extends beyond a simple drain clog.
Contact Roadrunner Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing today to find out more about professional drain cleaning.
