SEE OUR SPECIALS
When you run your toilet, shower or sink and the water takes too long to drain, chances are you’ve got a clog somewhere in the drain line. The best way to get rid of these clogs is to call a drain cleaning service, but that doesn’t always have to be your first move. Plus, there are steps you can take to prevent clogs from forming in the drains of your home. If you want to know how to handle a drain clog and how to prevent them in the first place, here’s what you need to know about these services.
What Causes Drain Clogs?
Before you work to prevent a drain clog or get rid of one, it’s important to understand what causes those clogs in the first place. While clogs are caused by different things in different drains, the basic principle is the same: some kind of solid material is blocking the drain.
In bathrooms, drains are often caused by soap and hair scum in sinks and showers. The causes of toilet drain clogs vary a little more because people tend to flush so many things down their toilets. Toilet paper is specifically designed to break down with water; flushing things that aren’t will lead to a call to a drain cleaning service.
Kitchen sinks are also a common spot for drain clogs because of all the food that goes down them. Any food that’s large or difficult for your garbage disposal to break down should be thrown in the trash instead of the sink. You should avoid items like egg shells, coffee grounds and greases, fats and oils in particular. Preventing these clogs in the first place is the best way to save money on drain cleaning services.
- Preventing Drain Clogs
The one good thing about drain clogs is that there are a lot of steps you can take to prevent them. As a matter of fact, preventing drain clogs is actually really simple if you’re willing to put a little effort in.
You can start by making some changes in the bathroom. For starters, make sure you’re only flushing toilet paper down your toilet. If you’ve been using “flushable” wipes for some time now, chances are you’ve already got a bit of a clog building up. Putting a sink strainer in the bathroom sink and shower drain can help catch and hair and soap that may build up and cause clogs, although you will have to empty it manually.
Your kitchen sink is arguably the most important to take care of if you don’t want to call a drain cleaning service. You can pick up a sink strainer that allows you to remove moisture from food in the sink so you can simply throw it away. Since you’re not putting a ton of food down your garbage disposal, chances are you won’t have to call a drain cleaning service.
- Drain Cleaners
The truth is, you never know when you’re going to have a clogged or even slow drain. You should do your best to prevent these problems, but you should also know the right route to take when preventative maintenance doesn’t work.
Your first instinct when you’ve got a clogged drain might be to reach for a bottle of Drano or some other popular chemical-based drain cleaner. While these cleaners are capable of knocking out some fairly tough clogs, they can also react with certain pipe materials and cause them to break down. Over time, your drain pipe may even begin leaking because of the damage caused by a chemical-based drain cleaner, which means a lot more than a drain cleaning service call.
Enzyme-based drain cleaners are the best way to go if you want to keep your drains clean without causing any damage. The enzymes in these drain cleaners are capable of eating away at the organic material that causes clogs without actually reacting with your pipes in any way. If you’ve got a drain that’s just starting to slow down and you want to wait a bit before calling a drain cleaning service, an enzyme-based drain cleaner can be a good temporary substitute.
- Professional Help
As hard as you may try to prevent drain clogs or get rid of them yourself, that’s not always possible. It’s hard to keep the drain pipes in your Brandon, FL, home clean forever, especially if you have a large household with a lot of children. If you can’t get a drain unclogged with an enzyme-based drain cleaner, you need to call a drain cleaning service to do it for you.
A professional drain cleaner can get rid of the clog in your pipe manually so you don’t have to worry about only partially removing it. Even if you’ve got a tough clog deep in a drain pipe, a camera can be used to locate it and a snake can be used to remove it.
It’s important to have professionals take care of any drain cleaning that goes beyond using a simple drain cleaner. Using snakes and augers can cause a lot of damage to drain pipes if they aren’t used properly, so make sure you’re hiring a professional to handle any manual drain cleaning you need done.
- The Right Way
At the end of the day, it’s not easy to keep the drains in your home clean. Even if you’re careful about what you put down and use a drain cleaner regularly, there’s still a chance you’ll have to call a drain cleaning service at some point.
For homeowners in the Brandon, FL, area, you can count on Drain Flo Plumbing to remove even the toughest clogs from your drains. Not only that, we can handle all your other plumbing needs as well. If you’ve got a drain clog or another plumbing problem, give Drain Flo Plumbing a call at (727) 474-4178 today.
