Blocked sink drains can seriously ruin your day. Having an obstruction in your bathroom drain pipe can interfere with ordinary activities such as house cleaning, brushing your teeth, shaving, or washing your face.
If you have a slow drain, there are a few things you can try on your own before calling in a professional.
Even though this is an ordinary problem, ordinary cleaning products aren't going to cut it if you need to get water down the drain.
Here are a few ideas to get your sink drain operational again, as well as what can cause problems with your bathroom sink drain to begin with.
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A bathroom drain can clog pretty easily, unfortunately. Soap scum, hair, toothpaste, and grease can all get stuck in your pipes and cause bathroom drains to drain slowly.
While hair clogs are more common in shower drains, you might be surprised how often they can happen in a sink, especially when you mix in factors like soap scum in the pipe.
If your bathroom sink drain is your problematic slow drain, then some of the tips and tricks below might be helpful to your situation.
There are many ways to unclog a bathroom sink, and some of these will also work for a kitchen sink if a grease buildup has caused some clogs.
Drain cleaner with lots of chemicals isn't always the best way to go to clear your bathroom sink drain. Drain cleaners can be expensive and not great for environments with children or pets.
For most of these DIY methods to clean out the drain in your bathroom sink, you can get the products you need from a hardware store or your local grocery store.
Making your bathroom sink drain clean again has never seemed so easy before!
Here are some different ways on how to clean bathroom sink drain so water can flow as it did before.
Before you try anything involving harsh chemicals, try a method as simple as pouring some boiling water down the bathroom sink in an attempt o loosen the clog and wash it away. If the obstruction is one of the more common ones like soap or toothpaste, the boiling water should loosen the blockage enough to pass.
After this, use a plunger to help further loosen up the blockage and send it on its way.
If you have PVC or any other type of plastic pipes, hot water should be used for drain cleaning since boiling could cause more damage to the pipes than just a clog.
The next method to try would be baking soda and white vinegar.
Mix one cup of vinegar with one cup of baking soda and immediately pour the chemical reaction fizzing mixture down the drain.
This mixture of a cup of white vinegar and a cup of baking soda should work best if you let it sit in the pipes overnight, and then the next morning, make use of a plunger to clear the block and then flush the pipes with hot water.
This is also great for a smelly drain like you may be experiencing in the kitchen since baking soda is great for odors.
You might have thought you would never need a wire hanger outside of a closet, but it is actually an extremely useful tool for clearing debris from the pipes of a bathroom sink.
By bending the wire hanger into a hooked shape and inserting it into the drain, you can easily loosen and remove clogs if they are close enough to the top of the drain for the hanger to catch on to.
If you have a pop-up sink stopper, remove the stopper before getting started. Pop up stoppers can get in the way of drain cleaning using this method.
Simply insert your tool until you meet resistance and carefully use the hooked end to pull it out.
After this, flush the pipes with hot water to make sure everything is once again running smoothly.
You can repeat the process as many times as it takes to clear the obstruction from the pipe properly.
Rather than pulling an obstruction backward or sucking it out of the way, using a drain snake pushes the problem out of the way into areas of the plumbing that should be easier for it to move through.
Drain snake tools usually twist like a handheld and operated drill to loosen the gunk and push it away.
This method is great for when the blockage is too far down to pull out or plunge away.
Before trying to use this method, if you have a drain stopper or a sink stopper, remove the stopper to allow for easier access to the drain.
The drain snake is super effective against hair.
After using the snake, flush water down the drain to clear the last of the gunk away.
After removing the obstruction, make sure you clean around the bathroom sink since things can tend to get a little messy during this process.
Make sure you have rubber gloves to protect your hand for this next method since the chemical reaction could cause some burns if you aren't careful. This just means that it will clean out whatever is blocking your bathroom sink!
Hydrogen peroxide mixed with water is an incredibly efficient method for removing clogs and is safer to be around than most chemicals.
Once you have your rubber gloves on, add three cups of the hydrogen peroxide to three-quarters of a gallon of cold water and stir. Pour this down the drain using both a spoon and a vessel that you won't mind not being able to eat or drink from again.
Similar to the baking soda idea, you should let this mixture sit overnight, and then in the morning, flush with warm water and plunge the drain.
For stubborn clogs, you can use all the baking soda, warm water, and chemical products you can get your hands on, yet the debris is still there, blocking your pipe with grease, hair, toothpaste, and whatever else has gotten stuck in there.
You may not want to use stronger chemicals on your own to remove the clog if you are doing this on your own or if there are pets or children in your home.
24H Plumbing Pros are here to help with all of your bathroom sink related needs.
Contact us if you have a bathroom sink drain that you just can't clean. We can remove hair, grease, and other obstructions from your drain pipe easily. We can also perform maintenance on your other plumbing systems, help with a smelly drain, clean your drains, and deal with things like slip nuts and a pivot rod.
No longer does your bathroom drain have to be a trap for grease and other debris. We help return bathroom sinks to normal and clear your drain using our expert drain cleaning tools and methods.
