A service that we often recommend to homeowners is routine drain cleaning. Our plumbers will come to your house and use the best in current technology, like hydro-jetters, to thoroughly clean out the drainpipes around your home. This removes the build-up that leads to frequent slow drains and clogs, and it also helps prevent pipes from suffering other damage as well. With your drains just having gone through an arduous holiday season, why not start off 2018 with professional drain cleaning?
The Drain Clog Dangers Drain Cleaning Takes Care Of
There are many different reasons for clogs to start up in drain pipes. Some are simple accidents, such as a bottle lid falling down into a sink drain. (We recommend you have drain covers on all drains to help prevent these mistakes.) Drains that were poorly installed in the first place will also create regular clogging trouble.
But most drain clogs occur because of build-up within the drainpipes, which professional drain cleaning is designed to remove. Here are the most common causes of drain clogs:
- Hair: This is a serious problem for bathroom drains, such as the drains in showers and sinks. Hair can catch easily in the curved pipe section right below the drain (called the p-trap), and once it does it will start to catch other hair follicles. Eventually, a tangle clot will close off water flow, and it can be tough enough to resist plungers. Drain covers can help stop hair going down the drain, but professional cleaning is the best way to prevent clogs.
- Soap scum: The residue from soap—something you’ve likely seen encrusted along soap dishes—sticks to surfaces and is often hard to scrub away. Just think off all this soap residue forming in drainpipes around your house! Not only does soap scum heighten the chance of slow drains and clogs, but it can inflict damage to the pipe walls because of chemical reactions.
- FOG and other organic waste: Kitchen drains are at the highest risk of clogging because food waste often goes down them. Any organic waste can start building up inside the drains, but the worst is FOG, which stands for “fats, oils, and grease.” FOG is liquid when hot, but it cools down inside the drains and changes into an obstinate, waxy solid. After the holiday feasting is a good time to have kitchen drains scoured to remove this organic build up.
- Hard water minerals: Hard water is a huge problem for homes in major cities. The high concentration of calcium and magnesium minerals in hard water can leave a limescale residue along pipes, reducing water volume to levels where leaks and clogs will become routine. Not only does this need to be cleaned out of the drains, but the house should have a water softener installed to get to the root of the trouble.
If you have clogs you can’t get rid of with a plunger, or if you want to schedule routine drain cleaning to prevent clogs, we’re the Hamilton, OH plumbing service to contact.
Ken Neyer Plumbing, Inc. has served Greater Cincinnati and the surrounding Tri State area since 1972.