{"id":573,"date":"2016-01-18T12:23:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T18:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/?p=573"},"modified":"2016-01-19T21:28:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T03:28:52","slug":"diy-plumbing-drain-clog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/2016\/01\/18\/diy-plumbing-drain-clog\/","title":{"rendered":"DIY Plumbing: Drain Clog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you’ve ever called a plumber, you know how expensive they are.\u00a0 Not to mention that plumbing problems frequently occur at the most inopportune times – like 10 p.m. when you’re getting ready for bed.\u00a0 And if you’re like us and prefer to avoid using poisonous chemicals around the house, you’re\u00a0left with even fewer options when you have water backing up into your sink or bathtub.<\/p>\n

I had to unclog a drain recently when my husband was not available and realized that there may be\u00a0people who don’t know about this handy gadget to unclog drains.\u00a0 It’s called a drain cleaning bladder.\u00a0 It costs anywhere from around $10 to $25 and is reusable – unlike a container of toxic drain cleaning chemicals.\u00a0 It’s easy to use and fast, no waiting around for chemicals to try to eat the clog and then having to wait around until it’s time to pour hot water down your drain.\u00a0 While there is the possibility that it won’t work on your particular clog, there’s no guarantee that a bottle of drain cleaner will work either.\u00a0 So far we’ve never had a clog that the drain cleaning bladder did not fix, but we have had failed drain cleaning attempts using chemicals.<\/p>\n

The drain cleaning bladder is\u00a0a rubber balloon that you attach to a water hose and it blasts the clog through the pipe with a jet of water.\u00a0 There is a hole in the bottom of the thing and when the rubber balloon has expanded with water, filling the drain pipe\u00a0until it\u00a0can’t expand anymore, it then releases the water through the hole in a small, forceful stream.\u00a0\u00a0You can see a diagram of how it works in the photo of the particular drain cleaning\u00a0bladder package\u00a0that we have.<\/p>\n

If you don’t have\u00a0a long enough water hose to reach the problem drain, then you may need a few more parts to hook up the drain cleaning bladder to a faucet.\u00a0 There are adapters that will screw\u00a0onto your faucet, with the other end that screws onto the water hose.\u00a0 You’ll then\u00a0screw the hose onto your drain cleaning bladder.\u00a0\u00a0If you’re handy and have an old hose lying around, you can cut the old\u00a0hose to a smaller length, add the correct hardware to the cut end so it will screw onto\u00a0either your faucet or the drain bladder, and then\u00a0you’ll\u00a0be ready\u00a0when you have a drain clog.\u00a0 If you don’t have an old\u00a0hose or want to\u00a0make things easier, you can get small sections of water hose, usually called a\u00a0Leader Hose, \u00a0and use this to attach to your faucet and drain cleaning bladder.\u00a0 If you are a more advanced DIY-er, putting in strategically placed clean-out ports into your drains will make things even easier for you.<\/p>\n

You may need to go to a real hardware or plumbing supply store to find a drain cleaning bladder or order one online.\u00a0 Many of the large\u00a0home improvement stores have plenty of things to make your house pretty, but we’ve found they are often lacking in basic items for true DIY home repairs. I would recommend that you get your drain cleaning bladder and any hose\/faucet hookup system now, BEFORE you need it.\u00a0 Clogged drains rarely happen at convenient times and you’ll save a lot of time and headache if you’re prepared for them.\u00a0 \"drainclogbladder\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve ever called a plumber, you know how expensive they are.\u00a0 Not to mention that plumbing problems frequently occur at the most inopportune times – like 10 p.m. when you’re getting ready for bed.\u00a0 And if you’re like us and prefer to avoid using poisonous chemicals around the house,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[192,3],"tags":[193,36,194],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diy","category-farmlife","tag-clogged-drain","tag-diy","tag-plumbing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2wWew-9f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}