This journey is very similar to one I wrote about previously, and the moral of the story is the same. Instead of buying the cheapest option to solve my problem, I should consider an option that will actually have a chance of succeeding the first time.
In our house there are quite a few members with lots of hair to shed, including me, with very long hair, two cats, a black lab, a bearded husband. So inevitably the sink drain started collecting water in the bottom and not draining as quickly. Previously I've been unhappy with the results of using chemicals to clean out the clogged drains, so this time I thought to try a drain snake. I found this snake at a good deal (half off) and liked the idea of it coiling up for neat and easy storage. I didn't need two of them, but at half price it was fine. I just donated the second one.
A few days later, with the drain emptying more slowly each day, the snakes arrived. I eagerly opened one up, unwound it, and jabbed it randomly down into the drain as the instructions told me to do. Unfortunately, though I found some interesting things inside my pipes (dirt), the snake was just not long enough. Frustrated, I decided to give it one more try the next day to see if I could make this tool work. The results were the same, and now the water no longer drained from the sink.
I decided the best choice was to give up on my idea of having a reusable tool instead of buying nasty chemicals all the time, and go back in surrender to draino. With our Costco membership we got a mega pack, because with all our hairy family members we were going to need it. I poured the 1/5 of the bottle required into the drain and waited......and waited.....and poured a bit more. Still the stuff was not doing its magic, only sitting in the drain and stinking. Giving up, I bailed all the water mixed with draino out of the sink into the bathtub, so now our bathtub drain should be extra clean. I poured half the bottle into the now empty sink. I waited three days. The magic never happened. It was time to call the plumber, but first I thought to check my favorite online shopping site one more time.
I saw something on Amazon that I thought just might do the trick. It was a different snake style. For four times the price of the first snake, it was out of my cheap attempt budget but still a great deal and not too much of an investment. I found a 25 foot, not inches but foot, metal snake. The others I had seen were not even 25 inches and were plastic. If anything could save us plumber bills, this could do it. Ordered, waited another few days, and eagerly tried it out. Either the instructions are a bit complicated or it's just my pregnancy brain, but after reading the one paragraph of instructions about three times through I was ready. I pushed the snake through the draino that was by this point evaporating from the sink. Several patient pushing and turning rounds later the metal snake wound its way through the clog and the sink works again! So again I have been taught that the cheapest option available is not always the one that will get the job done.
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| A picture of the full journey. |
