Clogged Drain?

The other day I came home to find that my husband had drained off the grease from hamburger in the kitchen sink. Well now the kitchen sink won't drain. I tried hot water first and have used a cheap brand of clog remover. What should I do?

Clogged Drain?
Use a chemical called or contians the ingrediant LYE. It normally comes in crystal form ,but using this will chemically change the grease substance to soap and from there you can wash it away with warm water.Just make sure you read the label, and use is with caution.
Reply:I assume you have a Lowe's in your town, go there and in the plumbing section look for a drain cleaner called FlowEasy. Pour half the bottle down the drain, just be careful with it. Pouring hot water down the drain won't work, it will melt the grease, move it down the line where it will cool off and then be solidified again. I doubt snaking it will help much either. In the future, don't pour grease down the drain.
Reply:Two possible solutions:


1. Most likely you have a clean-out connection on the drain pipe that runs between the sink and the sewer line. With a snake you will more than likely be able to unclog the stoppage. Run the snake to the main house line (probably 25-30 feet). When pushing the snake suddenly gets easy you will be there. If the problem is between the drain entrance in your sink and the clean-out connection it will most likely be situated in the U-shaped water trap (keeps foul odors from coming up through the sink drain). You will need to run a small snake from the sink drain entrance to the clean-out. That means passing through the U-trap which will require a fair amount of force.





2. If your problem is just a grease buildup you can use muriatic acid (a mild solution of hydrochloric acid). Muriatic acid is frequently used in swimming pools and is readily available from pool suppliers and maybe your local hardware store and it's cheap. Using a funnel if you have one, very carefully pour a gallon or two of muriatic acid into the sink drain (not through the food disposal, if you have one) and give it about a half hour or so, then flush with fresh water for several minutes. The acid will eat up the grease. Incidentally, this process can also be used to clean out your washing machine drain but if you use it for that purpose you should flush the connection with a water hose. This process, the result of a plumbers tip, has saved me on more than one occasion.
Reply:When this happens to me I boil water and dump it down. I have two big pots and use both of them to boil the water. It always works for me.
Reply:Please don't go pouring dangerous chemicals into your sink. It just makes things much worse if they fail to clear the clog.


Things worth trying first are these.


1) try a plunger just like you would use a plunger in the toilet.


They make small sink plungers but a normal toilet size plunger will do fine. If that busts up the clog then run boiling hot water until you figure it is cleared.


2) you might be able to break the clog up by pushing a coat hanger or other wire down the drain an wiggling it around.





Note that there are compressed air and other unclogger gimmicks, but a sink plunger costs only a couple of dollars and never wears out.





If those don't work you will be taking the P-trap off of the drain (that U shaped part) and cleaning it out.


It is not a difficult job for anybody who is handy at all, but if you are not a handy type person you will be calling a plumber.





Lye and other caustics are very dangerous and can cause severe burns if you get them on your skin.


My experience with using them has not been impressive either. If it gets to the grease in enough concentration to do anything it turns the grease into hard soap.


You end up with your sink clogged by a plug of hard soap instead of a plug of hard grease.





Try the cheap sink or toilet plunger first. They are cheap. You want the type with the rubber cup on a stick.





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Keep some empty tin cans handy under the sink or somewhere for draining cooking grease into from now on.



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