Consulting the great expanse of STW members with another weirdly OT question!

Our sink and shower pipes are all pretty much semi-blocked – maybe the perils of a 90’s Barratt built house I guess.

Take ages to drain, poor ‘fall’ on the shower drain pipe doesn’t help I think.

What’s the best way to deal with this myself? We’ve had very limited sucess with the typical DIY drain blocker liquids and they cost silly money for a little squirt – is there some industrial grot clearer I can source in 5l tins or whatever?

Any other ideas – don’t really want to call in the ‘professional cowboys….

get some drain unblocking rods / a snake ( coiled spring steel wire thingy)

Tool station sell the daddy of plungers. It’s a corrugated plastic thing that gives more ooomf than the traditional plungers. It’s very cheap also.

I unblocked our pipes with an old inner tube and a track pump.

I was quite proud of myself.

This ‘professional cowboy’….would use sulphuric acid cleaner from a plumbers merchant. Free advice so you can call the experienced plumbers cowboy for knowing what works 🙂 you’re welcome!

City plumbing or Plumb centre sell a really good “chemical digester” drain cleaner (generally trade only though)

It’s pretty foul stuff in use though, stinks while it’s working, but it does work. Get some of that if you can.

(Or if they won’t sell you it, ask a “professional cowboy” to get you some 😉 )

I assume you’ve cleaned the trap/u-bends to remove any debris.

The best pipe openers are sulphuric acid based. Something like this here

Is the shower trap accessible from the top? You might find a big gob of hair slowing things down. I have to clean ours out every 6 months or so. Not my hair I’d add!

If your pipe runs don’t have a good fall and/or have tight bends then all sorts of stuff as noted above can jam up in there. In my house that includes silt and limescale. I can’t use aggressive cleaners since we’re on a septic tank. Ended up opening all the panels and replacing the pipes 🙂

Start with the big plastic Toolstation plunger; it sends quite a lot of water down the pipe under pressure. Good fun to use as well, especially when it sucks all kinds of disgusting smelly stuff out of the trap.

Thanks guys – it’s a bit beyond a plunger but will look at the suggestions.

And no offence intended to any plumbers – use them all the time – I was referring in a light-hearted way (which failed) to the drain cleaning specialist franchise big boys who have often had a pretty bad press which may be unjustified and I apologise etc etc sorry!

I’d just replace the pipework and U-bends if they are about 20 years old. It’s not a massive job, as long as they are accessible that is.

Be wary as a lot of shower traps are not suitable for the chemical cleaners.