How to Remove a Bathtub Clog – Hive and Nest

If there is someone living in your house who has long hair (you, perhaps?) it’s just a matter of time until you get a clogged drain in your shower or tub. It’s the kind of problem that develops slowly until one day you rinse out your shampoo and realize the water is covering your ankles. Not good. Your first reaction might be to bug your husband to fix it or to grab a bottle of Drano. Stop!  This is a really easy problem to fix that you can do all by yourself with no nasty chemicals. Since it’s How-To Tuesday I’ll show you how! This whole job takes less than ten minutes.

There is really only one tool you need to fix this: an auger. It’s sometimes called a plumber’s snake. Basically it’s a long, flexible metal tube with a corkscrew-type thing on the end. It attaches to a plastic handle. The idea behind an auger is that you feed the metal hose into a pipe and twist it around a whole bunch. It will screw into the hair/lint/banana peel that is clogging your pipe and it can be pulled right out. Most of the time it works flawlessly. Anybody who has indoor plumbing needs an auger. They can unplug showers, toilets and even dryer ducts inside the wall (remind me to tell you sometime about the glob of lint as big as my head that we got out of the dryer vent!) Augers are cheap and I’d recommend buying one that’s at least 15′.

Any time you’re dealing with bthroom stuff you should wear rubber gloves. The stuff that comes out of the pipes is nasty! (I wasn’t wearing gloves to feed the auger down the drain but I was absolutely wearing them when I pulled it out!)

There are several different types of stoppers at the bottom of your tub. I’m not going to go into how they’re removed because it’s usually not necessary.  Just lift the stopper high enough to feed the auger down the drain. It might need a little help getting in. I had to jiggle and force mine past the stopper.

Feed the auger down until it stops. It usually won’t be too far. Then you’ll tighten the screw that holds the auger in place.

Hold on to the auger and twirl the handle so it screws the end into the glob of yuck down in the drain.

Now you’ll pull the auger out. It may take some tugging, especially if the clog is big. But if you got the auger in, you can get it out. And when it comes out it should be pulling something incredibly disgusting with it. Ewwww!

Put the clog in an old plastic grocery bag after you dry heave a few times. Then throw it away. Far away. Turn on the faucet and see how the water is draining. Does it go down a lot better? If it still seems slow, you can repeat the process again.

Pat yourself on the back. Wasn’t that easy?