Unclogging your own drain: what could go wrong?

Recently, as I ventured into the kitchen after dinner, I happened to look down at the sink as water began rising up from the drain. I called my husband, Dan, into the room to take a look, and he quickly turned off the running dishwasher. We stood in the kitchen pondering our next move. If you are like us, we don’t want to spend extra money if we don’t have to in order to fix something. So we tried a method which worked for us in the past.

Hot water, baking soda, and vinegar normally work well to unclog a drain, but our first mistake was not emptying the water out of the sink before we began so the baking soda could get completely down the drain. We also have old pipes with years of build up. My husband kept up this process for a few hours with minimal luck. Here is a step by step guide to show you how to unclog your drain with natural ingredients you have around the house.

At this point, it was time to go to bed, but Dan decided to stay up and keep working at this task. He eventually found some remaining old drain cleaner in the basement from when he used that on our bathtub drain in the past, but that was unsuccessful as well (did I say we live in an old house with equally old pipes?). As a side note, we use this drain weasel hair clog tool to unclog our bathtub drain, which I recommend, and I don’t have to use unwanted chemicals in my house.

But onto my story….He finally gave up at one in the morning. The following day was Sunday, so we headed off to church with our drain still plugged. My husband mentioned our problem with a friend at church who agreed the next step would be opening up the pipe to clean it out. Surprisingly this had little effect.

Our friend also suggested a drain snake, if we needed another option before calling a plumber. Not being experienced in this area, I was unsure how this worked, but my husband decided to give it a go. After acquiring the snake in the evening, Dan was at it again. I had to leave and when I came back no luck. Discouraged we headed off to bed defeated again by this annoying plugged drain.

If you are keeping track this was day three in our adventure. You can probably imagine what our counter looked like with dishes from 5 of us in the house and not being able to put anything in the dishwasher, because we couldn’t finish washing the dishes from a few days before.

The next day Dan decided to go buy a bigger drain snake since he realized this clog needed something heavy duty. He came home with the purchase of this ramped up drain snake and went at it again, feeding the metal down the pipe. After a few tries, I heard sounds of joy coming from the kitchen.

Then my husband walked down to the basement to check that no pipes had been harmed during this process. Our glee over unclogged pipes was soon dampened when Dan discovered some of the debris that had accumulated over the years, made its way out the open pipe in the basement right behind the washing machine. I made my way downstairs and to my horror I saw black, brown and grey globs all over the top and back of the washing machine, and on the floor. When the force from the freed clog came exploding out of the exposed pipe, it also knocked the open lid of the machine shut!

Cleaning commenced soon after getting my grubby clothes on. It took quite awhile to get everything clean. I was having fun using a small spray bottle to clean areas we couldn’t get to with a rag. Let’s just say I got a little carried away using that spray bottle, and I may have over used it getting gunk out from around the knobs of the washing machine.

We went to wash all the rags and the lights from the different stages of washing were lighting up when they shouldn’t and making a clicking noise. We ran the load to see what would happen, and the cycle wouldn’t finish all the way. Needless to say, I went to bed and didn’t sleep well because the thought that I killed our washing machine kept going through my head.

Fortunately, after unplugging the cord of the washer for awhile (yes you would be correct in thinking we should have unplugged it before we did any of our cleaning-especially with us spraying water all over) and running another load, the washing machine recovered from the ordeal! And our pipes are probably the cleanest they have been in years!

What did I learn about having old pipes?

1. Don’t ignore signs that your drain is starting to slow down.
2. Be diligent in preventing food and grease from going down the drain.
3. Maintain the pipes by using the hot water, baking soda and vinegar method once a month or as needed.
4. Don’t stand in front of the washing machine if my husband is unplugging the kitchen drain!