I Fought the Clog

We've had our first major home repair fiasco, and here is how it went down:

Round 1- The Boiling Water:
Our kitchen sink was draining really slowly and when the dishwasher emptied it backed up into the sink with a disgusting cocktail of water and food. So, Bess poured boiling water down it and it seemed to improve.

Round 2- The P trap:

Since we were still having drainage problems we tried removing the P trap underneath the sink to see if that is what was clogged. It wasn't. It was completely clog-free.






Round 3- Drano Professional Strength Foamer Clog Remover:
Rather than reading the description on the official Drano site, let me offer this simple alternative:"Drano Professional Strength Foamer Clog Remover is as useful and cost effective as washing a five dollar bill down your already clogged drain." In short, we put the Drano in, waited the alotted time and then not only did it not help the problem, it actually made it worse. Now the sink wouldn't drain at all.

Round 4- The Snake:

We resorted to the big guns and bought a snake (a whirling 25 ft coiled spring) (which required disassembling the pipes again). The first time we used it we went maybe 10 feet into the pipe, which didn't do anything.





Round 5- The Plunger:

Then we plunged for 20 minutes which also yeilded nothing.





Round 6- More Snake:
We put the whole 25 feet in this time and bent the spring in a number of places and cracked part of the screw housing and I got sprayed in the face with pipe sludge (this was definately the low point of the evening). No luck clearing the clog.

Round 7- More Plunger:
Bess and I traded off for a while but nothing came of it.


Round 8- Even More Snake Action:

Despite my better judgement but because of the insistance of Bess we tried the snake again and when we had reassembled the pipes for this (the fourth time), it hesitated for a second and then drained completely.

We were victorious.

Bess and Micah = 1
House = 0