Slow Drains

No worries Mama!

The reason that I normally shower instead of taking a bath is that all the dirt that was on you is now soaking in the water. This is why I get so completely grossed out when the tub is draining slowly, and you end up standing ankle deep in whatever filth you were trying to remove from your body. Yuck.

So, the other day, the drain in our bathtub was slow. It had probably been getting slower for a while, but I noticed it all at once. Normally, this would result in a trip to the store to figure out which bottle of caustic and very expensive sludge was the one that would make the water flow nicely again followed by another trip to the store because the three treatments in the first bottle did not do the trick. (Ultimately, there was usually a partial bottle that needed to be stored somewhere - but where do you even keep stuff like that?) At some point, I would panic because the stuff dripped on something, and then I would wonder how many more times I could clear the drain before the pipes had holes in them and were leaking into the basement. When the drain was finally flowing again, I would need to run about 100 gallons of water down it to convince myself that it was all gone, and there was no longer a danger of chemical burns on my feet. Frankly, a slow drain has always been a high stress all day project for me. This time though, I said enough is enough. There HAS to be a better way.

There are a LOT of suggestions available on the interwebs. The trick is to find one that actually works which takes trial and error sometimes. It could not be any worse than my normal method, so I figured that I did not have much (if anything) to lose. After looking at a few sites, I decided that this website gave instructions that looked the most likely to produce successful results. 

I did add a few steps and make some modifications. For starters, they did not mention removing fur balls first, but I unscrewed the catch thing on the drain and using a needle nosed pliers pulled out a dog colored hairball about the size of a guinea pig. You would think that she was never brushed. The water was still draining slowly after that, so I continued with the instructions from the site.....big pot of boiling water down the drain, half a cup of baking soda, let it sit while I worked on other projects for a bit, microwaved a mix of one cup water and one cup vinegar for a couple of minutes before dumping it down the drain, put another big pot of water on the stove, and dumped it down the drain when the water boiled. 

It worked.

The first time.

No special trip to the store for supplies since I had vinegar and baking soda in my pantry.

I spent less than $1 for the fix instead of at least $10 for a bottle of drain cleaner.

I do not have a nasty bottle of caustic sludge that needs to be carefully stored out of reach of small children and pets.

I took a shower and did not worry that the skin was being dissolved off my feet.