Troubleshooting Your Drain

There are some problems around the house that you can avoid for weeks or even months at a time. For instance, if your wallpaper is a little faded, you don’t have to deal with that right away. But you typically can’t wait for a more opportune time to deal with things like leaky faucets and drain issues. Both of those can cost you more money in the long run, so you’re better off addressing them as soon as possible. Yes, that’s true even if it’s the weekend and you’d rather be watching Netflix or taking a nap. Read on to find out more about troubleshooting your drain.

If the drain is slow

Think back to a time when you’re in the shower one day when water starts pooling at your feet. Or you’re brushing your teeth and notice that the water in the sink isn’t going down as fast as it used to. When that happens, you’ve got a few options to keep a slow drain from turning into a drain that just doesn’t work at all.

You can start by pouring Drano, getting a plunger, or both. Drano is sold in just about every hardware store, and you can even get it at most grocery stores. All you need to do is pour it down the drain, wait a few minutes (check the bottle for specifics) and then flush the drain with hot water. Plenty of people have to do this every few months to keep their drains working properly. And if you get a plunger, make sure you get the kind that’s designed for a shower or sink drain. Some people will use a toilet plunger in their shower, and that’s not ideal. Beyond that, you can research the best drain plungers or just use grab whatever the store nearest you has on its shelves. Either way, don’t forget to seal the overflow drain before you get started.

If those don’t work, then the problem may very well go deeper. By deeper, we mean into the city sewer lines. If that happens, a plumber might need to use industrial drain cleaner to clear out the lines. In that case, you probably aren’t the only one dealing with drain issues. If a section of the city’s drain is bad, then chances are other people in your neighborhood will be dealing with it as well.

If there’s no draining at all

What if your shower just won’t drain at all? That means things have escalated, and now you’ve got a bigger issue. It’s possible for this thing to happen overnight, but it’s more likely you ignored the warning signs. In that case, you need to proceed directly to calling a plumber. That’s important because, as a layperson, you can perform some basic maintenance tasks. But if things get bad, you have to call in a professional.

It might help to think of your drain as like a smartphone, especially since most of us spend a lot more time thinking about our phones than we do our shower and sink drains. If your iPhone freezes up temporarily, you can try restarting it to see if that helps. But that’s obviously not going to work if, for instance, you’re going down your apartment stares and drop your phone, cracking the screen. In that situation, you’ll need to call in a professional for an iPhone 6 screen replacement, since trying to replace the screen yourself is not going to end well.

There’s so much that goes on in your pipes that you don’t know about. Most people don’t think about the possibility that tree roots could get in their sewer line and mess things up, but plumbers deal with that sort of thing on a weekly basis. There’s just too much information you don’t have, so if a few simple attempts at troubleshooting don’t work, it’s time to bring in a plumber.