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How to clean a sewer pipe: 5 simple solutions

In this article I am going to talk about ways to clean the sewer, the causes of its blockages and their prevention. Some of the methods will seem unusual to the reader, however, all the solutions described have been personally tested by me many times and have earned high marks for their effectiveness.

We localize the problem

To understand the better to clean the sewer pipes, you first need to determine the place and identify its cause.

Causes

What can clog the sewer?

• Paper. The largest number of incidents with toilets and risers are associated with the use of rigid newsprint or magazine pages as pipifax. In a sufficiently large number, they are able to create a cork that completely blocks the path of water;

Dense cellulose, once in water, swells and slightly increases in volume.
As a result, events develop from bad to worse: if immediately after blockage with paper, the water leaves slowly, but after half an hour, the sewer is clogged tightly.

• Food waste. If the sour borsch toilet swallows meekly, then stale porridge or boiled potatoes are quite capable of causing indigestion;
• Rags. As a rule, they end up in pipes when water used to clean the floor or windows is poured into the toilet. The rag clings to any protrusion or burr inside the sewer pipes and creates a barrier that collects all large contaminants (for example, the same paper);
• Hair and fur of pets. They are also assembled by any irregularities on the inner surface of the pipes, as well as gratings of outlets from sinks and bathtubs;

Hair is the main cause of tub drain clogs.

• Construction garbage. It accumulates in areas with a minimum slope and gradually reduces the pipe clearance to zero;

The worst thing you can think of is to use the sewer to dispose of the remains of building mixtures.
Cement sets perfectly in the toilet bowl or pipes.
The blockage is eliminated only by replacing the toilet bowl or by completely disassembling the horizontal section of the sewer (lezhnevka) in the basement.

• Variety of cat litter. If the sewer still digests pressed sawdust in a small amount, then sand or clumping clay-based fillers will clog the pipes tightly;
• Finally, last in order, but not least, the culprit of blockages is ordinary fat from plates.. When washing dishes, it is carried away by the flow of water and partially settles on the walls of the pipes. As a result, the clearance inside the comb (internal sewerage) can decrease from 50 mm to zero in one or two years.

The cause of a blockage can almost always be identified by asking family members what actions preceded the problem.
Exceptions are fat and wool: the plugs formed by them grow gradually, more and more restricting the flow of water.

Place

If the water has stopped leaving through the sink, bath or toilet, we need to determine not only the cause, but also the location of the blockage.

Local blockage is cleared by plumbers of a housing organization or a management company only on a paid basis and only during the day shift.
Clearing the blockage of the riser or bed is free of charge and around the clock, with the involvement of emergency teams at night.

Cleaning methods

So, we have found the place and cause of the blockage. How can sewer pipes be cleaned in each case?

Paper

Method one: water hammer

The easiest way to destroy a paper stopper that clogs a toilet is with water hammer. A sudden increase in pressure on one side of the blockage will push the paperball through the narrowest section.

We do not eliminate the cause of the blockage, but only push the paper lump into the riser.
As a rule, there it collapses and does not create problems; however, in rare cases, blockage of the bed or outlet to the well is possible.
This happens if the pipe is already partially clogged with debris or grease.

What can create a water hammer?

1. Plunger. He covers the mirror of water, followed by a few clicks on the handle;

1. Instead of a plunger, you can use a plastic bottle of 1.5 - 2.5 liters with a cut off bottom and a twisted cap;
2. Water hammer can be created with a rag and any stick. A rag folded several times covers a mirror of water, followed by a sharp pressure on it with a stick. Do not overdo it: a strong blow can crack the toilet bowl.

Note that this instruction only applies if the toilet itself is clogged. If the paper cork clogs the pipe, the pressure surge will be useless: when you press the plunger, water will be forced out into the siphons of sinks and bathtubs.

Food waste

How to clean the sewer pipes inside the apartment, completely or partially clogged with food waste?

Method two: cable

Here we will be helped by a simple and cheap tool - a plumbing cable.

In the photo - the simplest homemade cable.

It is an ordinary steel or a kind of spring wound around a flexible steel core. One end of the cable is equipped with a handle that allows you to rotate it, the other with a hook that destroys the blockage.

How to clean the blockage of the comb with your own hands with a cable?

Perhaps I should mention a number of subtleties of the cleaning process:

• The cable is supplied taut. The slack will cause it to fold into a loop;

The blockage is easier to clean with two people. Have an assistant tighten the cable and turn the crank while you feed it into the pipe.

• The hook at the end of the cable must go through the cork several times, destroying it as much as possible;
• The remaining blockage is washed off with plenty of water.

Method Three: Chemistry

Organics can be destroyed not only mechanically, but also using household chemicals. The main condition is the ability to remove water in front of the plug in the pipe: the higher the concentration of the drug, the higher its effectiveness.

A specialized tool for cleaning blockages - Mole - is an aqueous solution of sodium hypochlorite. It is poured into a pipe or outlet of a plumbing fixture and destroys an organic blockage in 2 to 8 hours, after which the remnants of the plug are washed off with water.

Mole - a means for chemical cleaning of organic blockages.

How to clean sewer plastic pipes in the absence of Mole?

Any acid or alkali. Personally, I used Whiteness bleach close to Mole in composition. However, there are a lot of other things too:

• electrolyte for batteries;
• Dry oxalic acid;
• Cleaning products (for example, Domestos or Sillit);
• Lemon acid;
• vinegar essence;
• Caustic soda.

Bleach White. The price of a liter bottle is from 18 rubles.

Rags

A pipe clogged with a rag can always be cleaned with a plumbing cable or sewer wire. A cable, as a rule, is used inside an apartment, a stiffer wire is used when cleaning a riser or a bed, that is, where a long cable simply folds into loops.

Method four: wire

The sewer wire has a cross section of 5-6 mm and is supplied with a hook and a handle already familiar to us. Its use is almost identical to the use of a plumbing cable - with three amendments:

1. Rigid wire hardly passes pipe bends. First of all - made at an angle of 90 degrees. If the turn of the bed is not equipped with a revision or a tee, it is better to undock the connection or punch a hole in the pipe for cleaning.
   After cleaning the blockage, the hole can be wrapped with a rubber bandage or a bicycle tube cut along. A tie-wire clamp is applied over the bandage;
2. It is possible to clear a blockage of a riser or a bed only from top to bottom, along the slope of the pipe. Otherwise, a column of sewage up to several meters high will pour out on you immediately after the destruction of the cork;
3. When removing the wire, it continues to rotate in the same direction as when it was fed. Rotation will not allow the hooked rag to jump off it.

Wool, hair

They are removed from the pipes with the help of tools already familiar to us - a cable and wire. If the comb is clogged, the hair plug can be destroyed with chemicals. Finally, there are a couple more ways to remove hair from under the outlet grate:

• Hooking them with a knitting needle or a hook bent from a hard wire;
• By disassembling the outlet and cleaning the grate by hand.

Construction debris, cat litter

For the highest quality cleaning of a horizontal pipe from the remnants of blockage, you can use a cable or wire with a brush instead of a hook.

Fat

Method Five: Flushing

How to clean sewer pipes if they are overgrown with fatty deposits?

I was able to remove them completely in only one way - by washing with hot water.

1. If the gap in the body fat is completely absent, the cork is first pierced with a cable or wire;
2. A fitting with a flushing hose is connected to the nearest outlet of the DHW system or heating supply (of course, during the heating season);
3. The hose is inserted into the revision or socket of the tee above the blockage as close to it as possible. At a large distance, the water will noticeably cool down, which will negate the effectiveness of the flush;
4. Hot water is supplied to the pipes with a gradual increase in pressure.

If the sewer comb inside the apartment is clogged with grease, it is enough to open the hot water tap and gradually increase the pressure as the fat plug is destroyed. At a water temperature of about 80C, flushing takes from 30 minutes to an hour.

Prevention

How to avoid sewer blockages?

Alas, instead of blurting out professional secrets, I will have to repeat a few common truths.

• Use the toilet only for its intended purpose. A trash can should be used to dispose of garbage and food waste;
• When draining water from a bucket or basin after washing floors or windows, check if there is a rag in it;
• Install nets on the outlets of sinks and bathtubs;

• Use hot water to wash dishes. My personal statistics confirm that the peak in the number of local blockages occurs in the summer, when the DHW temperature drops to 40-45 degrees. In winter, the warmer water is great at washing away grease.

Conclusion

I hope that the solutions I have described will help the dear reader in solving everyday everyday problems. As always, you can learn more useful information by watching the video in this article. Please feel free to share your own experiences in the comments. Good luck, comrades!