I have four daughters.
My four daughters have long hair.
That long hair finds its way into our drains. (Yes, despite our telling them to get it into that thing called a waste basket.)
Said hair might flow down the pipes. But said hair does not. Life is not that easy. Instead, some evil house spirit catches the hair just as it begins its voyage and turns it from a luscious thing of beauty into a gunky demon of drain death.
You would think that Drano could defeat this black magic. But Drano gets its butt kicked every time. Drano is in the pee-wee league against this thing. Drano is like a kitten. And gunk demons don’t listen to kittens.
So for the last few years, we’d blast with Drano and then still have to stand up to our calves in water when we took a shower. Or wait as the sink decided it might finally slowly empty and leave soap scum, whiskers, and toothpaste on the sides for everyone’s viewing pleasure. And then we had to do the slow clean (I hate the slow clean).
Recently, I was strolling along in a hardware store and saw this.
Click on the picture. Get a good look. I bought ye handy yellow flex sword. And I did verily slay the monster lurking in every drain in our house.
I am the MAN!
If you have drain issues, let me suggest you be the hero and buy your own sword. It’s called the Zip-It drain cleaning tool. If you’re a weird-o, in addition to being the hero, you can also use it to draw forth disgusting things to scare nieces and nephews with. Just saying.
For a tub drain, those hair catching drain stoppers work pretty well. But they should be cleaned fairly often, with four daughter that might be daily. But it is a easy clean.
Caustic drain cleaners work, if regular applications are used, maybe twice a month. Not when the drain is clogged. When the drain is clogged the cleaner has a hard time making to the clog.
If you do use drain cleaners before the drain is plugged, the better way is to pour it down the drain when the drain is not going to be used for several hours. Overnight is good. After the caustic has done its work, run lots of hot water to flush the drain.
If or when you use a caustic, do all the drains in the same room at the same time.
Be careful with the caustic it will stain or eat away some metals used in sinks and tubs. Not just metals, but many materials that the caustic comes into contact with.
I am in the same boat, 4 daughters, one wife. I found this tool at the big box store about 4 months ago. It has made cleaning all the drains a much easier task.