How to Clear a Bathtub Stoppage

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Typical Sewer Stoppage

Bathtub Drains
The chances are good that the drain system in your home has been ignored for years. Hardly a thought to it have you ever given. Clogged drains are typically seen as an annoyance and can often become a horrific disaster. Here at the empire family of Services we have discovered over the years that, with a simple bit of maintenance, your drain problems are usually gone forever.

The drain is one of the most important features of your home. Hidden in the walls and under floor spaces in your home they never get the credit they deserve, no elegance, no bling and no appreciation for what they do. Without the drain system working to its capacity in your home, your home would quickly become uninhabitable. Your toilets would not flush, your showers would not drain and you would not even be able to prepare your dinner, as the kitchen sink would not function.

Most bathtub and shower drain problems seem, on the surface, to be simplistic. A simple stoppage caused by hair and buildup over the years. The water buildups up around your feet and before you know it your feet are submerged in sewage.
Yes, that water you just cleaned your self is now mixing with the products of your drainage system and your standing in it. Drains are designed to be a line of defense against disease. Consider this: Your home's drain is the first step in a wastewater treatment system, not only in your home, but for your entire community. The sewer drain system in your home carries with it contaminated waste, filth, aerobic bacteria, anaerobic bacteria, soaps and chemicals away from your home. If you have clogged drains, you are swimming in that waste. Worse yet, if you have a leaky line that sewage is backing up under your home, in your walls and the gases, methane gases, are infiltrating your home at every level.
Without drains your showers, your bathtubs, your toilets, and your sinks are useless ornaments.

Bathtub and shower drains are usually more difficult to clear that the rest of the drains in your home. Bathtub and shower drains require the plumber to force a drain-cleaning machine’s cable through the trap and into the drain. The trap is bypassed by the plumber when cleaning most drains in the home and this avoids a significant amount of effort and enables the plumber to have a greater degree of control over what the cable is doing and where it is going.

Bathtub Leak
When a bathtub leaks the homeowner usually does not know the problem until its way too late. If the bathtub is located on the second floor of the home, the leak is often discovered by the destruction of a chandelier or light fixture. An electrical short circuit, the popping noises of a 120v electrical arc in the ceiling followed by the slow drip, drip , drip of water falling through the ceiling onto that piece of furniture is often the only sound of the advanced doom.
When a bathtub leaks on the ground floor on a home with a raised foundation, the consequences are often far more serious. The leakage goes on for days, months or even years. Black mold, mildew, wood rot and contaminated ground soil under the home are often the case, all without so much as a peep of noise. Many times the only reason that we are called to the home to investigate is that the home has become to smell like an open septic tank. No matter how clean and sanitary the home appears, it is infested with insects, flies and the obnoxious odor of disease.

Easy Maintenance
1. Make sure the strainer in the tub or shower is there.
2. Do not ever pour bleach down the drain. Not only does it not clear anything, it kills the bacteria in the drain. The bacterium is what eats what the clogs are made out of and helps to prevent them from forming.
3. Do not use drain-cleaning chemicals. Many harm the piping and the caustic chemicals can make your bathroom a dangerous place.
4. Remove hair from the strainer as it is caught.
5. Lightly clogged drains can be fixed by pouring a half-cup of baking soda followed by a half-cup of vinegar down the clogged drain. This remedy is it can take up to three hours to work, and the combination of the ingredients can create quite a foamy, smelly mess.
6. Never pour motor oil in any drain. I know it sounds like common sense, but it still happens. The oil sticks to everything and even a brand new drain can be stopped up in minutes.
7. Using a plunger. This method actually works if the clogged is before the vent system. A simple slow plunge works well. Fast rapid plunging does not work, so don’t bother trying as you are more likely to get covered in whatever is in your drain than actually clear it. The real secret to drain plunging is it get all the air out of the plunger before exerting force on it. The water does not compress so the full force of the action is exhibited on the stoppage. If you leave air in the plunger, the air just becomes compressed and exerts very little force on the drain stoppage.

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One out of every thirty homes in the U.S. will experience a sewer blockage this year. With some yearly maintenance on troubled drains these stoppages don't have to occur and the damage they cause doesn't have to occur either.

Guarantees

Safeguarding your health and home is what we do best.

Chemical drain cleaners are among the most dangerous household products--hardly a shocker, since these lye-based formulas are meant to dissolve plugs of grease, soap, hair, and ground-up food. Yet most don’t clear undersink clogs as well as old-fashioned mechanical methods, including the humble plunger.

Another surprise: Chemical products labeled “heavy duty” or “professional strength” often proved less effective than their regular-strength counterparts in clearing kitchen clogs made of grease and food, and bathroom clogs of soap, toothpaste, and hair. And two foaming chemicals, from Drano and Liquid-Plumr, tanked altogether in our tests.

Crystals, another type of chemical drain cleaner, attacked clogs with a fury. But if the crystals are exposed to aluminum, a common material in some older sink trim, they can generate a choking cloud of lye-laden gas. Plus, mixing these products with different chemical drain cleaners or with common household cleaners, especially those that contain ammonia, can cause the mixture to burst out of the drai. And if you accidentally pour too much of one product, Heavy Duty Crystal Drain Cleaners, down the drain, can turn into a solid, stonelike block that’s almost impossible to remove. Given these potential dangers, I don’t recommend using them.

Biological cleaners, such as Citra-Drain and Zep, use enzymes or bacteria to chew through clogs. Besides posing less of a health risk to humans, biologicals are less likely to harm septic systems because they don’t kill beneficial bacteria. But they’re wimpy when it comes to quickly removing clogs. However, they should be useful at keeping drains free of organic material once clogs have been cleared.

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