Do you know that there are 8 210 000 websites devoted to cleaning blocked drains? I didn’t look at ONE of them, till it was too late.
I had a blocked kitchen drain - the water left the sink, but backed up in the outside drain and overflowed unpleasantly on to the paving.
I asked my brother what I should do, not wanting to pay a plumber. He said that most likely a hooked wire would do the trick.
The drain went down so far that I was up to the armpit in dirty water even with the longest piece of wire I had. It didn’t bother me at first. It was just dish water after all – I washed up in it inside, now it was outside. But somehow it had brewed up into a totally different liquid, so I took out as much of it as possible using an old Flora tub.
I couldn’t get the hooked wire down the drain anyway, so after I had washed, I went to Pick 'n Pay and I found caustic soda. The label said to put in one tablespoon and take care. I put in one tablespoon and took care. Nothing happened. I put in another spoon. No reaction. I poured in half the container. Still no reaction. I left it to brew overnight.
Meanwhile someone else told me to push a hose down the drain. Since the bent wire wouldn’t fit, I knew that a hose wouldn’t either, so I opened the manhole ten metres away and pushed the hose from there towards the drain, on full bore with a tight spray, but that didn’t work either.
The next day I went to the hardware store. “Oh, you need this!” they told me – concentrated sulphuric acid. Now I remember from junior chemistry that Acid + Alkali = Salt + Water. That sounded sooooo harmless, I thought, so I took it, even though there was already too much water in the drain. I had forgotten something important – we’ll come back to that.
This label was more scary than the caustic soda label, and I had a vague memory in chemistry lessons of things being burnt black by sulphuric acid, so I also bought gloves, goggles and mask. I had my daughter standing by with a running hose while I poured sulphuric acid into the drain, in case I needed hosing down – 1 tablespoon, 2 tablespoons, half the bottle. NOTHING! I was amazed – no bubbling or fizzing or hissing. We all know what happens when we add vinegar to bicarbonate of soda – it fizzes. But this was dead.
Some part of me kept saying, “Call the plumber,” but another part said, “How difficult can it be to clean out a drain? I can DO this!”
I had heard of things called drain rods, but they cost R495 at the hardware store. Back to the hosepipe AND the wire, and I thought this was quite a clever idea: hooking wire threads through the top few centimeters of hose. And in fact it did make a small impact – when I sent it back up the pipe, it pulled down little bits of stuff every now and then, but it was slow and tedious work..
By now, my common sense was saying even more loudly, "CALL THE PLUMBER!" but every day I thought of a new idea to try. It was like a personal battle that I just had to win, even if I had to chip away with that wiry hosepipe for another week.
After eight days, I had lost heart and was definitely going to call the plumber. However I just had one last good workout with the hosepipe and, wow, a whole pile of gunk came down. I thought that MUST be it, but when I looked at the drain, there was still some water in it, so it seemed worth another chemical onslaught. I went and bought more caustic soda. I put in a couple of spoonfuls, taking care – remember that nothing had ever happened - so I had forgotten the goggles. After a while, I bent over to have a look and WHOOSH – an explosion of hot drain water and various mixtures of chemicals came right into my face. I never saw it coming, just heard a horrible boiling sound and then something like a train coming along a tunnel, and my left eye was in agony.
I had a desperate shower. I visited the doctor for good measure as my left eye was very red and sore. He irrigated it with saline and put in a local anaesthetic and antibiotic ointment and I had to wear an eye patch – probably more for punishment than medical necessity. I gather I was lucky to get off as lightly as I did – merely felt sunburnt for the rest of the day. I know now that I could have got the same effect from using the much safer washing soda and boiling water, and not risked damaging my plumbing pipes… and my eyes.
When my son came home from school, he said, “Mom, there is no water in the drain now!” I said, “I know; I was there when it came out.”
However he was right - the drain was flowing nicely.
Afterwards I looked up about caustic soda. The part I hadn’t remembered before is that Acid + Alkali = Salt + Water + HEAT. What happened is that the caustic flakes dissolved in the now very acidic liquid and suddenly boiled.
I was thrilled that I had saved a couple of hundred bucks on the plumber’s bill.
And all I spent was:
Chemicals R84
Goggles, gloves and mask R27
Soap and perfume R250
Doctor’s bill R215
Learning how drains work..... PRICELESS
