As professional plumbers, our experience with the ‘quick-fix drain cleaning solution’ is the acid base. Which means, yes, your clog may be cleared but at the expense of the pipes in your home. You see, the solution that unclogs the drain can also eat away at the pipes.
What if you don’t have metal pipes? Good question! Let’s say you have hardened plastic also known as Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC). If you have PVC pipes the glue will come undone. Of course you know that we do not solder PVC, we measure, thread it and sometimes just glue it together. Which actually lasts quite sometime. When the acid based solutions get into the plastic pipes, not only will it eat away at the plastic, it will cause the glue to come undone. Then the mess ends up below the pipe and you have a mess to deal with.
If you have galvanized steel pipes in your home, the pipes are already old. Which makes pouring the solution down there to sit, then add extremely hot water makes it worse. In fact, using these types of solutions could be the very reason you’d have more of a mess on your hands than you ever thought.
How bad is the clog? The truth is, no one really knows. We can usually tell, but it’s through years of experience. If it’s not able to eat through your blockage because the clog is bad, the acid can attach and harden and create a worse situation than it was originally.
We’ve seen instances where the solution causes a break in the trap, the acid will be all over your home- thereby creating a toxic environment which means you’ll need to take steps in order to reduce the amount of acid in your home. Your plumber will probably increase their rates as now they (or you) have to clean up the acid.
Have a slow drain or clogged drain? Call us, we can usually be in and out within 1 hour. If you mention this post, we’ll give you 10% off of your first slow/clogged drain service!
