I noticed water backing up into my sink when my dishwasher drains. Oh no, I thought. A partial blockage. I used some Liquid Plumr.
Side note, you go to the store, and there’s big jugs and small jugs and three brands and liquid and “gel” and one part and two part…I don’t know if you’ve seen that youtube short of a tiktok of a Tumblr post talking about how there’s no such thing as “glue”? Well this reminds me of that because who the fuck knows what these substances are?
Anyway I bought one and followed the directions and it didn’t work so I’m probably going to have to take my sink drain apart which isn’t going to be fun.
You can get various types of flexible devices that you push down a drain. There are relatively-simple ones that are just basically a barbed plastic strip or flexible metal thing.
There’s a plumber’s snake, which can have a manual crank (or more-elaborate motorized ones).
In general, I’ve found that those are more-effective than liquid drain cleaners. A hardware store will carry them.
Be careful, if you’ve already poured drain cleaner down the thing, not to burn yourself with the substance.
EDIT: Oh, right. The WP article on the plumber’s snake makes a point that I’d forgotten about — one thing that you can do is use a toilet plunger on a sink, though I think most of us don’t normally think of doing so. I’ve successfully done that in the past too.
Any recommendations for a slow draining bathtub? The plastic barbed strip I got doesn’t do anything - probably not long enough is my guess. If I plunger it with my hand it makes it a little better but it doesn’t last. It’s a 100yr old house so I’m worried I’m going to break something if I use chemicals or a snake
Last couple times this happened I called a plumber I trusted. The first time they used a “snake”, the second time they used a sink plunger. At the time I had a bit of money and could afford it, and I didn’t want to break a pipe or put the wrong chemical down there or something.
You want this kind of thing, it easily removes the hair that is clogging the drain.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/FlexiSnake-Plastic-Drain-Stick/50257883
The difficult part can be the drain cover. You need to remove it because the hair plug will be sizeable and can’t just be pulled through the holes that the thing fits into.
Same thing with sinks in the bathroom btw, it is always hair and it will stink horribly, so be prepared for that.
I wouldn’t be the best resource for more-elaborate stuff, like if you think that the thing is at serious risk of falling apart, sorry. I don’t do that much plumbing stuff myself; I’ve had to unclog drains.