How to Unblock a Sink - Best Easy Way - No Chemicals

Unblocking or unclogging sink wastes can be difficult, especially if you decide to do an amateur plumbing thing and take various bits of waste pipe apart.

Perhaps fiddle around with a bit of bent coat hanger.

Or the ultimate in throwing money away – hire a plumber.

Waste unblocking is just about my favourite household plumbing job nowadays.

It’s easy and I get valuable Brownie points for doing it.

It doesn’t involve potentially dangerous chemicals and once you have bought the original piece of equipment – it’s completely free.

The only problem I have is that the deal is so straightforward I’m going to have difficulty in making a proper article out of it.

I mean, I can show you a picture of a sink, but I guess they all look pretty much the same, right?

Let’s discuss the alternatives to ‘my’ method and then I’ll show you the thing I use.

If you want to save time, skip to the bottom. If you want a little sarcasm or humor – read on for my not so secret way of how to unblock a sink.

Hair is a real problem, especially if you have long hair or someone (mentioning no names) insists on stuffing handfuls of it down the drain hole.

They seem to do this deliberately.

Fat is another problem. The kitchen sink gets all sorts of stuff poured down it. Fat congeals and sits in the u-bend.

Add in the other detritus of our lives and a blocked waste can be a regular occurrence.

None of this is my doing.

I don’t cook and my hair is less luxuriant than it used to be. Chances of blocking anything are sadly remote these days.

Remember those rubber things, like a giant, well, rubber thing I suppose.

You place it over the waste hole and plunge away.

They can sort of work.

Problem is they have a plunge and a suck action, so if they succeed in moving anything it may go down or it may come up.

A bit random in my opinion, and they don’t always shift the blockage.

I don’t like chemicals. Especially cleaning ones. But the worst are the ones for cleaning ovens or clearing drains.

They may or may not work.

I have not tried them.

Anything that requires me to wear protective gloves, eye glasses and have all the windows open does not make me feel this is good stuff I’m using.

Whatever you pour down the drain will end up in the sewage system somewhere.

In the back of my mind is the testing element of this type of product.

Did they test it on animals?

It’s the thing in the advert below of course.

Yes, I am trying to sell it to you.

Yes, I realise that means you can’t believe a word I say.

However.

I bought one myself a while back in order to deal with a slow draining shower.

When it arrived I couldn’t put the job off any longer, and I wasn’t entirely sure this thing would work.

So first I had a look at the shower drain hole.

I poked and fiddled around.

I got a bit of coat hanger and bent it and fished for a bit.

No joy.

I didn’t have any chemicals for the reasons above. I didn’t want to take the shower apart so I would have to use this tool.

Yes. I know I had bought it. But buying something and trusting it to do the job are two different things.

Anyway I had no choice. The shower wasn’t draining and I had this piece of equipment.

Let me explain the pressure a man is under when he tackles a job he has not done before. There may be someone else, let’s call them a wife, who is already saying “we should have got a plumber” and “don’t you go making it worse”.

The desire for Brownie points is equally matched by the fear of screwing things up.

I unpacked my new tool.

Filled it with water, it’s a simple suck up water thing like a large water pistol, and I pointed and pressed its plunger.

A jet of water shot out. Great fun. Wish I’d had one as a kid. You could soak someone with it.

I did the same thing, only this time pointing it down the drain hole. I reckon the first jet cleared the blockage, but I did a few more to make sure.

The shower drain was fixed!

...

When the sink was the next thing to get blocked I didn’t hesitate. Couple of squirts and job done.

And best thing of all, because I already had this thing – it was totally free.

The tool creates a fairly powerful jet of water which appears to clear most blockages. The blockage moves around the waste trap and out, and gone.

Sorry, that’s all the technical details.

My fear with using this was that it might move it along a bit, and then get stuck again. Blockages occur around angles and there aren’t that many angles in your plumbing. It’s the u-bend that is the problem area.

Move the blockage past that and you’re flowing again.

I would say that a jet of water is about the most environmentally friendly way to clear a blocked drain. No chemicals, and no plumber either.

That’s it. I wish it were more complicated, but I’ve just about managed to string it out to a proper article length.

Thanks for reading, and good luck.