Leaky Pipes & Dripping Taps

Posted on: 12 July 2017

Clogging problems in residential drains are quite common. As a matter of fact, several homeowners will face these problems at some point. As a home owner, how will you respond when your residential drains clog up? Will you immediately call for expensive plumbing services, or try to fix the problem yourself?

Save time and money while fixing clogged kitchen sinks and toilets with these simple DIY fixes.

Clogged kitchen sinks

A kitchen sink is the place where dirty utensils are cleaned. These utensils are used to prepare and serve meals. Therefore, it's very essential that the sink be kept as clean as possible. If the food that remains on the utensils is not scraped out before cleaning, they will end up being flushed down the kitchen sink drains, leading to clogging that causes stagnation of dirty water in the sink. This makes it unhygienic and practically impossible to clean utensils in the sink.

A mechanical way of solving this problem it to use a plunger. Hold your plunger up straight above the sink drain hole while ensuring the sink hole is completely sealed. With a vigorous stroke, push it up and down with a lot effort so as to increase the pressure on the downward stroke. Do this repeatedly until the clogging clears.

Alternatively, you can use home-based kitchen ingredients like hot water, baking powder, and vinegar. Make baking powder solution and pour it into your sink. Afterwards, pour some vinegar into your sink. Leave it for some time then pour a lot of hot water into the sink. Repeat this procedure until the water stagnating in your sink starts draining normally.

Clogged toilets

A blocked toilet can cause a foul smell in the house. It's also very unhygienic and this can prevent you from using it when you need to answer the call of nature. Flushing down heavy paper products is a major cause of blockage in toilet drains.  

You can carry out these simple steps to fix the problem: pour some bleach, liquid detergent, or shampoo into the toilet. After some time, pour a lot of hot water into the toilet. The hot water will help break the toilet paper and the soap should help ensure it smoothly slides down the drains.

You can also use a plunger specifically made for unclogging toilets. Toilet plungers usually have a cone-head protruding from the inside of the rubber cup. Plunge and flush sequentially until your clog is gone.

DIY plumbing is easy and cheap. But if the above steps don't work, be sure to contact a local residential plumber for professional assistance.