And yet more obnoxious news

[eveglass]

To continue the annals of "what doesn't help makes things worse":

All summer, the sink was getting slowly more clogged, taking longer and longer to drain. Finally, Saturday night, I bought some Draino and used it, and it seemed to work moderately well. The sink still wasn't draining great, but it was draining better than before.

Then Marc came home. He wasn't satisfied with how the sink was draining, so he used Draino again last night.

Suddenly, this morning, we've got a TON of standing water in the sink when I want to do the dishes. Draino says not to repeat the process more than twice (though it doesn't actually say whether that's twice in a row or twice overall), so I found my trusty plunger, filled the sink with some water, and plunged the bejesus out of it.

The end result is that things are now worse than ever before, just as clogged if not worse, and now I've got a ton of gunk from the pipes in and around the sink. (And on my bathrobe, but let's just ignore that for the moment.)

Clearly I'm not cut out to be a handywoman.

Edited to add: I have reached the end of my own resourcefulness. My concierge is taking care of another apartment right now, but he's going to come here after. Hopefully he'll be able to fix things, because I totally can't right now.

Updated to add: My concierge's solution involved pouring about a gallon of liquid bleach down the drain, waiting an hour and a half, and then running hot water down the drain. Seems to have worked, too. Yay!

Comments

Likely not your fault

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

If you are in an apartment building. We had the same problem (clog, slow drain, then pipe gunk) and the maintenance guy pulled a foot-long hair clog out of the drain past ours, like from where other units joined ours.

If you own, it's worth it to buy a professional pipe snake.

[sinvraal.livejournal.com]

There's that 1-second plumber stuff they advertise, which basically seems to be a compressed air shot designed to force clogs out. Never used it myself.

Otherwise, sounds like drain snake time.

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

Right now, a compressed-air thing would be a bad plan, given that I've got all sorts of standing water that would shoot out the other side of the sink. (Not that I know this from experience... sigh.) Hopefully my concierge has a drain snake.

[audreybmorin.livejournal.com]

Drain snake, what we insist on calling a fishwire in French... Your concierge MUST have one of those, it's *the* solution to clogged drains :-) Good luck!

[swestrup]

Drain snakes are great, but the one sink in my house that clogs the most often has a drain grill that's part of the sink, so I can't use my snake on it. :-/

[audreybmorin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why you should never install a permanent drain grill ;-)

[swestrup]

Drano (at least the original formula) can damage plastic pipes, which is why they don't recommend too many attempts. It also gives off some hydrogen as it works, but that quickly dissipates.

If you've got good metal pipes, reusing Drano every hour or so isn't an issue. On the other hand, if two or three uses doesn't help, then its likely that the clog is far enough down that it simply isn't reaching where it needs to get to, to work.

[freya46.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest exactly what your super did. *grin*