How to Unclog Any Drain _ Ask This Old House

Look at this , Richard literally everything , but the kitchen sink actually just about .

So I thought we would just take a minute and go over all the ways that you can actually get a stoppage and then clear them .

And the most common quite often is the toilet stoppage .

It usually happens when people are over or kids .

It's a big deal .

So I thought it would make sense to start with sort of seeing what happens inside of a toilet bowl .

This is the water line right here , right ?

And you see water right here .

But people don't realize , I don't think that there's a passage way that comes up here , goes up this little short leg and then down through this really convoluted path , you notice it gets slightly smaller as you go down here .

And so if this had solid waste and paper jammed in right here and you try to take a plunger and just push it , you actually could work against yourself and you could compress it .

So actually the tip I want to give on a plunger is get it seated right here .

Push down a little bit , a little bit , a little bit just to get a seal and then pull it back the other way .

So now you're gonna actually draw that stoppage up a little bit just to break it up and then it should get clear .

Not always though .

No , they make an ex a tool expressly for clearing these things .

So if you took a regular wire and just tried to clear this , you would scrape this China .

So this is called a closet A .

So if you see right here , there's a protective coating right here on this arm .

Now , what you do is you advance this gently up through , it'll just pass through here clear in any stoppage .

So the action would be like this and somewhere inside the guts that wire , push it , push it , push it , ok .

It has a hook on it .

So it's sort of like fish and caf I kind of Richard , but I got one , I know you're a plumber .

I get it .

All right .

So now on a lavatory , we can start the attack with a , on the lavatory with a plunger .

But there's one important call out and that is if you look right here on any lavatory that's legal , it's supposed to have a thing called an overflow right here .

It might be at the front , it might be at the back like this .

Uh But what happens is if we now put a plunger on it and there's a stoppage below it , what's gonna happen is every bit of the force you do here could come right out at you .

So it's really important to block this off so that all that hydraulic force going down and not out at you .

And , and typically when we're getting these clogs , they're in the trap quite often .

Here's the typical sort of cross section underneath the sink .

You've got a pop up assembly in a lavatory .

You got this linkage right here .

This is a place where hair will often clogs .

Oftentimes you can take apart the trap and dump it out and see what's going on .

But many times you've got to come down , you pull this out and you gotta come down with a wire .

So similar to your closet a over there , this is gonna just push it down , you just advance it gently , there's a , there's an advance right here .

So you do a little , then you lock it , you just keep on advancing , driving it down through , but you're not done yet .

Just imagine this trap is right here .

So you get down through the pop up assembly down through the trap and you come to here now in a lavatory , it might be just a short line right here and the wire has a choice to go .

You hope down where the stoppage might be because that's where the liquid is going .

But if it's p plumbed properly , there's a , a line that goes up and ultimately out through the roof .

So that's the vent .

You hope that by gravity , the tip of the wire would go this way .

You just keep doing it and doing it or you bend the wire and you , and so , and sometimes you have to cut it and put a clean out in , ok , similar on a disposal .

And so now with this , you have to take this apart and find a way to get the wire down in here .

Got you .

I do want to call out one thing on a lavatory though .

You think it was hard to get the wire to go this way ?

I showed you this because this is how well you know this bathrooms that have two lavatories and this might be , this might be the way that the plumber roughed it in .

Ok .

So you , you cut down through here with the wire .

Where does it go over here over here ?

And it comes , it comes waving to you out the other sink when it really wants to go .

Come here .

Ok .

So if the original plumber cared at all about us , they would have done this so that the wire , do you see this ?

The wire would have no choice but to go here .

And this is actually not legal in many , many jurisdiction .

So it's , it's literally just a highway for the wire .

Now , it actually will put it going in the right direction .

That's right .

So it won't go up the vent .

Ok .

Alright .

So that's lavatories .

And this is also the drain .

Now , in a bathtub , bathtub , you can use a plunger , but the same rules apply .

That was over here at the lavatory because this is an overflow right here .

So if you did this , you'd have to pull this plate off , block this off .

Let me hold it up here .

So , so right now this is the bottom of the tub right here .

This is the , and this is the part you'd see in the tub right here .

Valves up , here's the , here's that mechanism to do it .

You take that off , you do this .

And so if you do this , you gotta block this off and then the force of that plunger would push this way , right ?

Ok .

But what people make the mistake is they take the wire and they go in here , it's no different .

So it's got , it can come back waving at you again .

I , I don't understand how you made it through a career plumbing .

It must have driven you absolutely crazy .

So you really wanna do this , you wanna come down this way .

So don't go through the show .

You don't go through that .

You come down through here and then just gently advance , gently , advance , tighten this up and just come down and you come right down through the trap and then you'll clear it because again , I think it's important for people to realize that the clog is not typically here , the trap , it's gonna be in the trap oftentimes , which is always down here now , there can be hair in the , in the mechanism .

So , I mean , that could be here .

And so is that from the personal collection I just brought it from home , is that the personal , I don't have any money to lose ?

All right .

So that's an important tip to come down this way .

Ok .

And this is all the stuff that's gonna be up at the fixture where the trap is .

But sooner or later it goes down to the basement or down below into a larger pipe .

And so at this point , you may have to step up from a little wire like this to get a more a bigger power wire .

And so at every change of direction , every time water comes down here and turns this way by code , it's supposed to have a clean out .

Ok .

So this clean out now becomes a place that a wire could go in here .

And I wanna make this point , you know , if you run a wire in there , you really want to find a way to run that wire and run it in there and also run water down the drain .

Because if you looked inside of a , a long kitchen sink drain , and if you looked , you'd probably see the bottom quarter or bottom third just filled with , with solid waste .

And so if you just ran a wire in there a little bit , it wouldn't necessarily flush it or clean it .

So you really have to find a way to run the wire , bang it around inside , disturb it , loosen it and let the water run throughout the whole thing .

Ok .

So that's , that's really important .

And then I wanna call out something that's pretty interesting .

Isn't this a for a water hammer ?

Well , no , no , it looks like you've been paying attention .

What is this thing ?

So this is gonna use the power of hydraulic force .

So with this coming through our clean up , right ?

You take this off , you , you connect this to a hose and you would put it down inside here as far as you wanted it to go .

Say you want to get down to this point .

So we're driving it downstream .

This is specifically made for clearing cloud .

So now what it's gonna do is it's gonna fill up , right ?

The water's gonna pressurize this and make it filled up .

You can't fit that one .

It's gonna fill up that void , but look what's at the end little hole .

So now that would pressurize and seal off right here .

No water is coming out .

No , it would , it wouldn't come this way .

And now this small hole would now pressurize and force water down to where the clog is .

Ok .

So this actually has some advantage to get into places .

I will caution you if you've got ancient galvanized piping , you're now putting pressure where there hasn't been any pressure for a long time .

So you could expose a leak .

But it's , it would be a way to sort of easily push that clog down the downstream .

It's unbelievable .

So there are a lot of places where it can go wrong , but there are a lot of solutions that , that , that's right .

So what most people want to do is do this , they want to put some chemical down there .

I just wanna put a caution out to you .

If you have a real stoppage , this chemical is not going to make a difference .

It's only going to add to danger for the people that do have to come along afterwards right there .

So what do you think never use ?

It's if you have maybe on an ongoing basis to sort of get organic matter that might be there , but nothing beats the mechanical solution to clean the wire , flush it and keep that pipe clean and , and you know , and this also if left in there , I've seen it where it sits in that long horizontal old pipe and it eats away at the bottom of that pipe .

And most importantly , you can't go fishing with this .

All right .

That did .

Thank you very much .

Thank you .

Thanks for watching .

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