Preventing Clogged Drains
Clogged drains are terrifying – being that they are costly, time-consuming, and generally a pain in the butt to deal with and not to mention their ill-timing and the potentially unhealthy smell emanating from a backed up system.
As soon as one discovers a clogged drain, there seems to be only a few options available: calling a professional or using harmful chemicals.
In any case, getting an expert plumber can cost a homeowner about $100, and this cost may go much higher depending on the degree of the clog as well as any resulting damage from long-standing backup.
Even though the plumbing line of your own home is free from clogs, you may still experience backups into your home from larger clogs along the main lines which unnecessarily strain the municipal wastewater and sewage systems, and are potentially harmful to our environment.
The Basics
The first step to preventing clogged drains is to have them cleaned.
We tend to forget our drains with our routine home cleaning, but clearing our drains of debris is as essential to the health and comfort of your household as wiping down your kitchen counters and scrubbing your toilets.
Normally, if you mind what goes down your drains, you shouldn’t often need to have them cleared of debris – maybe only about once a month.
Yet, some drains like those of the shower, bathtub or bathroom sink will require more frequent checks since hair is usually accumulated there.
Loss of hair due to shaving or shampooing is quite natural and happens every day, but it takes only so little to ultimately have a drain pipe blocked. When you consider also the toothpaste and soap being used, you can easily see why it is possible for clogs to be so stubborn and occur so quickly.
For your drains cleaning, we recommend you perform these maintenance routines:
Weekly Maintenance
Raise pop-up stoppers located in bathroom sinks, remove and trash any debris, then rinse off the stopper and reposition it in the drain.
Take out the cover from your bathtub or shower drain and take out any accumulated debris using a hair catching brush or a bent wire.
Preventing Clogged Drains: Monthly Maintenance
Use a strong disposer brush to clean up your garbage disposal or grind up table salt and some ice. This will help cut off the slime and grease from the disposal sides. Then use cold water to flush it out and deodorize with half of a lime or lemon.
For a bathtub, take out the overflow plate and lift up the pop-up area up to the rocker arm or spring. Take out any debris that may be accumulated and rinse properly before repositioning it.
You can maintain all of your home’s drains using a bacteriological drain cleaner. We strongly suggest using Roebic K-67 as it is completely biodegradable, non-corrosive and harmless to your plumbing system.
It is a much safer option for your household than chemical cleaners.
Preventing Clogged Drains: Keeping Drains Clear
Now that there is no longer any debris in your drains, let’s ensure they remain that way! You can do a number of easy things daily to limit the amount of substances that cause clogs going down the drains.
Have mesh screens positioned over every drain – shower and bathtub drains in particular – to trap food particles, hair, and other slime. This is possibly the easiest, yet most efficient way you can keep your drains clog-free.
Pro Tip: Install mesh screens below the shower drain cover.
Before taking a bath or showering, ensure to brush your hair so as to remove loose hair. This way the brush traps most of the hair and it can go down the trash rather than the drain.
Although hair may still go through the drain, the amount should be well reduced.
Bathe your pets outside in the warm weather. If you need to bath them indoors when it’s cold, cover the shower drain with a wash cloth to trap excess hair and trash them afterwards in the garbage.
On the other hand, you can make use of a washtub rather than your shower or bathtub.
Depend less on your garbage disposal and use a compost bin. In addition to saving energy and water, this will reduce the possibility of clogging from solid, slimy substances going down the drain.
Teach kids the essence of drain maintenance in your home, and the effects of its misuse on our environment and municipal sewage systems. Ensure they realize that toys must never be flushed down the drain, and smaller toys should not be played with while in the tub.
Get a sturdy plunger and/or drain snake (sometimes called a sink auger) and know how they are used. Clogs sometimes happen no matter what we do.
Either excess toilet paper is flushed, or something is accidentally dropped down the sink, or anything at all – that’s just life.
However, you can save some money by taking care of minor clogs yourself instead of getting a plumber. We never recommend the use of any chemical cleaners. But if you totally must use one, then do so scarcely.
Preventing Clogged Drains: Your Toilet is Not a Trashcan
Your toilet is not a garbage can! We cannot say this enough.
Your home drains – garbage disposal, sinks, toilets, etc. – just aren’t intended to take the composition and size of the many things we send down them regularly, and neither are our municipal wastewater systems and septic tanks.
Please watch the things you put down the drains.