Tools worth owning
- A cup plunger for sinks and tubs, plus a toilet plunger with a fold-out flange.
- A barbed plastic hair-grabber strip for hair in tubs and basins.
- A small hand-crank drum auger, about 7.5 metres.
- A bucket, rubber gloves and old towels.
- Channel-lock pliers for trap slip nuts.
Sink or tub
- Remove the stopper. Hair often comes up with it.
- Try the barbed stick down the drain to pull hair.
- Plug the overflow opening with a wet cloth so the plunger has seal, then plunge firmly with a few centimetres of water in the basin.
- If that fails, put a bucket under the P-trap, loosen the slip nuts, and remove and clean the trap.
- Feed the hand auger into the trap arm in the wall, cranking as you go. When it stops, rotate and push gently until it breaks through.
- Reassemble the trap and run hot water.
Field note. Skip chemical drain cleaners. A solid plug seldom yields to them, older pipe suffers, and whoever later cracks open the trap gets splashed with caustic water.
Toilet
Use a flange plunger, pushing slowly at first to remove air, then firmly. If plunging fails, a closet auger reaches through the trap without scratching the bowl. Do not keep flushing a clogged toilet; the bowl will overflow.
When to stop and call
- More than one fixture is slow or backing up.
- Water rises in the floor drain when you use another fixture.
- The clog returns within days.
- The auger meets something solid that does not budge.
- There is a sewage smell.
Those signs point to a blockage in the main line, which needs heavier equipment. See drain cleaning and main sewer line clearing.