Replies

1. 
   calvin | Jan 08, 2011 03:52pm | #1

   Hair, soap, those lovely women-care hair and body products....

   Personally I stay away from draino or products of that type and stick with  baking soda and white vinegar volcano.  The steps are simple-let most water drain away (early morning b/4 first use-dump in a half a cup of baking soda-push it around so it gets in the drain.  Pour in a cup of white vinegar and let it do it's work.  Repeat.  After a half hour, pour in boiling (or close) water.)

   After the boiling water you can add more luke warm and plunge (don't squirt it up into your face) to blast the softened material on down the line.

   Do this semi regularly (every couple months depending on number of fancy product, hair thinning people). and you should have no worries.  You shouldn't have to use the plunger with regular volcano'ing.

   If it's been like this for quite a while, I'd remove the stopper and take a one foot length of solid copper wire (14 ga.) , bend a small hook in the end, stick that down there and clear as much latent hair as possible.  Now you at least have a fighting chance.  If you get it stuck, the 14 ga should straighten out and enable removal.  If it doesn't, sorry.

   Best of luck.

2. 
   fingers | Jan 08, 2011 05:03pm | #2

   I too have a slow draining tub.  I just found a new (to me) little gizmo at HD.  When I first saw it, I thought it was probably a gimmick but it was so cheap (like $2 or $3) I bought one and it works surprisingly well.

   It's called the Zip-it.  You can see a video of it at zipitclean.com

3. 
   Scott | Jan 08, 2011 05:42pm | #3

   Our tub does the same thing every few months. In our case it's a buildup of hair in the drain mechanism....not down in the drain pipe. I solve it with a few tablespoons of lye dumped into the drain.

4. 
   DanH | Jan 08, 2011 05:49pm | #4

   Pour a couple of bottles of drugstore hydrogen peroxide slowly down the drain (maybe 2 minutes per bottle), let sit ten minutes, then flush with hot water.

5. 
   DanH | Jan 08, 2011 05:52pm | #5

   Also, remove the overflow cover and snake it out or pour drain cleaner/peroxide down it.  There could be crud hiding in the overflow tube that drops down to block the drain, then gets pushed back up out of the way when you rod it.

6. 
   master carpenter | Jan 08, 2011 10:36pm | #6

   try plunging the drain with a plunger be sure to block of the overflow to get best results it might be a piece of plastic that is lodged in there and only plugs the drain sometimes.

   mc

7. 
   Clewless1 | Jan 10, 2011 08:46am | #7

   One thing I've discovered is that a lot of hair gets caught AT the drain. A trick I descovered with a standard drain is to take a Q tip and stick it down the drain. Twist and twirl it around. I've pulled up some considerable sized hair balls doing this technique. In a standard drain ... the 'crosshairs' seem to catch the hair and gradually it builds up. You really can't see it by looking at it, but just out of site can hide this hairball that is being held back from draining from the few hairs that hang onto the cross hairs in the drain.

   Not sure if this applies to your drain type or not. Might be worth a try.

8. 
   rdesigns | Jan 10, 2011 09:59am | #8

   This would be by guess, too. We have what sounds like exactly the type of drain that the OP describes, and it gets to draining very slowly every few months due to hair getting caught on the cross bars of the drain just below the stopper.

   I keep a 6" length of coat hanger with the last  1/2" bent to a hook to extract the hair.

9. 
   Scott | Jan 10, 2011 09:49pm | #9

   Cool.... glad it worked out.

   Now consider a few body waxing sessions.

   {kidding}