Had to have the plumbers out this AM to unclog my kitchen sink drain line. Accumulation of crud over the years. He said the best thing you can do to prevent this is once a month pour one-half gallon of bleach down the drain.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 04, 2001

Answers

We moved into a house that looked as though the former owners never cleaned out the drains. I coated the top of the drains with baking soda, poured in some white vinegar, let it sit then I poured down a kettle of boiling water. I repeated this a few times until the water went down quickly and the black crud was gone, this worked really well and I do it every couple of months or so to keep it all moving.

-- Lisa (weezil102@hotmail.com), December 04, 2001.

What effect would that much bleach have on the good bacteria in the septic system?

-- Cathy in NC (planet10@gloryroad.net), December 04, 2001.

My mother is a real stickler for making sure that NO grease goes down the drains, makes sure that grease/oil from the cooking pans is mopped up with paper towels. This is a habit she's passed on to me. We set aside the used paper table napkins in a plastic container, give them one more job before they're disposed of.

As someone mentioned above, a bit of vinegar is helpfull. When we were in the farmhouse with the woodstove, Mom used to put a big pot of water on, and poured the boiling hot water down the sink about once a week, that helped dissolve any grunge.

If you have very hard water, especially with iron, the vinegar will help take some of the hardness minerals that coat the inside of the pipes. You wouldn't believe how some of those hardness minerals will accumulate on the inside of your pipes. This causes a rough surface that any grease just loves to grab onto.

-Chelsea

-- Chelsea (rmbehr@istar.ca), December 04, 2001.

Cathy has a very good point. All that bleach might do a good job of cleaning out the pipes, but it'll clean out all the bacteria that make a septic field work. And it will eventually seep into the watertable and downstream into any wells, rivers or lakes. Dumping chemicals like that down the drain has been discouraged up here because it kills the fish in our already sensitive environment.

-- Rebekah in Canada (rebekah_swinden@hotmail.com), December 04, 2001.

One-half gallon would be the equivalent of eight washer loads if you use one cup per load. For a 500-gallon tank, it would be diluted 1/1,000. For a 1,000-gallon tank, it would be diluted 1/2,000.

I've know two guys who had septic tank clean-out businesses. Both said it's not the bleach which causes problems, but rather the soap and dirt which is flushed into the tank. In fact, the bleach would help the drain field by further breaking down the grease, etc. deposited in the leach fields.

Say you have one billion bacteria in the tank and the bleach killed off one million. That's one in one thousand.

We're not talking about a huge amount here.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), December 04, 2001.

With clogged drains there is a last resort available= dump a gallon of muratic acid in the roof vent, never in the sink, the fumes are too harsh to unleash indoors.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), December 04, 2001.

Ken, we have a 120+ year old farmhouse with ancient plumbing, and the best stuff I have found to keep the drains clear is good old Red Devil Lye (drain cleaner, it's cheap, effective, and used as directed on the label, completely safe for septic systems. Use it once a month.

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), December 04, 2001.

We, too, just had problems with a blockage in our drain from the house out to the septic. When the plumber pulled out the blockage it turned out that the biggest problem was my waist length hair. You could see it all through the clog. So, now I have a little plastic doodad that covers the tub drain and catches everything before it goes down the tub drain. Since that is the only place I wash my hair (in the shower) I figure that is where the biggest problem is. I then just wipe off the doodad after each use and all of the hair goes in my trash instead of my drain. It even stops lint from the towel from going down the drain. It really worked well and I think it costs me a couple of bucks. I also am careful now to shake out my clothes and my bed linen before I put them in the washer so that I am not putting my hair in the washing machine either. Just a thought for those of you who have long hair in the family.

-- Colleen (pyramidgreatdanes@erols.com), December 10, 2001.