It's Andy Fish!

Cleaning out the shower drain is one of life’s little pleasures isn’t it? You know how it goes; you’re taking your morning shower, look down and realize it’s been a hot minute since you’ve taken the efforts to clear the drain. If you’ve got people with long hair in your family it might be more often than you’d like.
My typical routine was to buy two bottles of Drano ™ and after using a snake to pull countless horrors from the drain I’d dump a bottle of the chemicals down the drain, wait about an hour, flush it all out and then have to repeat because it didn’t actually work the first time. The real magic about Drano is you have to put on a Hazmat suit or you’ll loose your sense of taste, smell and feeling in your fingers for a few days– and the idea of Drano going down into the public water ways– well, that can’t be good.

So the other day I was beckoned to perform this task and realized I had no Drano ™, but what I did have was pretty big bottle of vinegar and it occurred to me in the Spring I pour a mixture of baking soda and vinegar into my kitchen sink to clean out the garbage disposal– I don’t use Drano ™ anywhere near food and it works remarkably well, so I thought why not try this in the Shower?

So here’s what you need;

1- 1 Cup of Baking Soda (A funnel helps)

2- 4 Cups of Vinegar (lemon juice works too)

3- A kettle full of boiling (or very hot) water.

4- A little more patience than you need with chemicals.

On the plus side, you don’t need to hazmat it up and you don’t lose any of your senses.

STEP ONE: You have the option of using the snake if you like pulling gunk out– anything you can get out will speed the process.

STEP TWO: I imagine you’ve already removed whatever drain cover you have when you used the snake, if you didn’t take that off. Pour the kettle full of hot water down into the drain. Watch what you’re doing, if your drain is completely blocked pour it slowly so it actually gets down in there.

STEP THREE: Take the baking soda and the funnel and pour that into the drain– you also want to go slow because you want it to get down in there, don’t let it spill all over the place. In my case it took 5-6 times to refill the drain with baking soda.

STEP FOUR: Pour the vinegar right onto the baking soda and watch the chemical reaction– this is the fun part- don’t over pour the vinegar, you want the baking soda and the vinegar to stay in the drain.

STEP FIVE: Continue the process of refilling the drain with baking soda and then hitting it with the baking soda again, you’ll notice with each go that the baking soda is getting further down the drain– that’s a good thing.

It takes about 30 minutes to get the entire cup of baking soda into the drain, when you’ve hit the last of the baking soda, pour the vinegar back in and let it do it’s magic (you may have to cover the drain with a cloth to keep the mixture from pouring all over the place outside the drain, but if you do this slowly that won’t be an issue).

After about an hour refill that kettle with boiling or very hot water and pour it right into the drain, what you should see is water going down right away as your drain is now clear.

If it didn’t fully work, you’ll need to go back to Step One and try again, but trust me on this one, it does work.