5 Easy Ways to Unclog Bathtub Drain

what's up YouTubers Johnny DIY here today I'm going to be showing you guys five easy and proven methods on how to unclog your bathtub or your shower drain maybe it's completely stopped up or maybe it's just slowly draining we're going to fix it but if you guys are new to my Channel please do me a favor and click the Subscribe and notification Bell so you can get all my new upcoming videos and let's get to this one so this one is slowly draining I'll show you that in a minute with some water but if you don't have one of these I suggest getting one of these metal mesh screens for the drain this will catch a lot of hair and this will save you from getting a lot of clogs in the future if you have one of those little popup drain Stoppers you just have to remove that and then put the mesh strainer in I have a video on how to remove that usually you can just twist it and pull it out sometimes you have to take there's a cap right here on the top and sometimes you have to unscrew that first and there'll be one screw underneath it and then you have to to remove that screw and then if you want to take a bath or something you just get one of these rubber drain Stoppers to plug it up I also want to mention if you've tried and used any drain cleaners make sure you wear safety glasses and hand protection because some of that costic drain cleaner is really acidic and it'll be still stuck in your pipes and you don't want that flying back in your face in your eyes in your hands so be really careful if you've used any of that the first method I'm going to show you is we're going to remove any obstructions from the drain you always want to start with the easiest method first and then work yourself up from there sometimes things can actually get stuck down in these drains especially if you don't have a cover on them or anything I've found shampoo bottle caps wedged down inside the drain plugging them up before but we're going to first just start go ahead and pulling away any hair or anything you can go ahead and use some needlenose pliers to pull up any of that old hair or anything they make this a little plastic snake tool I'll go ahead and put a picture here for you guys and I'm going to go ahead and put links down in the description to all the other tools and supplies I'm using today they're only a few dollars you can get one of those I like to use a a piece of electrical wire I always have on hand and I just go ahead and put a little hook on the end like that you could use a piece of coat hanger too and I like to fish it out fish out all the hair and the gunk oh yeah there's a bunch in here so what happens is hair and uh soap scum builds up see even with that strainer still some hair getting through now some other people have recommended using some hemostat pliers I think they call them I think they're medical pliers but they have a long skinny kind of snout so you can fish it backwards that way too cuz that's the way your drain's going to go oh yeah look at that I might be able to get it all this method oh yeah that hook really helps on the end I'm going to show you guys all the other methods but like I said you always want to start with the easiest one first right wow look after just a short few minutes look at all this disgusting hair and Gunk we got I bet you this is it okay method number two is the plunger method I like these plungers that have this extra seal on the bottom I recommend these and what we're going to need to do is remove this little overflow cover here this is for if the water in the tub gets too high it'll drain back through there we need to remove this because if we don't and we just go ahead and plunge that let me put my strainer in so we don't lose the screw now if your overflow cover has has a lever on it up and down that controls the drain stopper you're going to need to carefully lift up the whole weight assembly that stops the drain and pull that out but if we were to just plunge this right here because the way the plumbing is let me show you a picture we would be plunging down on this and if you listen the air is shooting back up through here through the Overflow because they're connected so what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to take a wet Rag and jam it in this hole right here so you get a really tight seal let's put some water in here you may have gotten it already blowing pretty good I think we may have gotten it but if it's slowly draining you're going to want to fill up the tub with some water so that you can get some good pressure on pushing down the plunger and then you're going to want to try by plunging it and then just letting it out like that you just give it a few pumps then pull up and this method works a lot of the time to get minor clogs okay the next easy method is using the garden hose and a drain bladder I've got a video clip I'll show you in just a short second but I'm going to explain how it works you hook it up to the end of your regular garden hose if you don't have a garden hose you can hook it up to a sink as well and you're going to run that hose to the drain and the bladder goes in the drain and while the water is running the bladder expands and creates pressure right there and it's going to feed the water into the pipes until the pressure keeps building and building and then hopefully it's going to push that clog right down and out of the drain the same thing applies with that method you're going to have to cover up the Overflow so it can really build up that pressure got this um attachment you attach right here to the end of your hose this attachment goes on to the end end of this and what that'll allow us to do is stick it right on this sink fitting right here and get our garden hose through the big end right onto the end of that this adapter goes right over the whole bladder place it right in the bottom of our drain and it fits right in that hole okay now he's going to turn it on don't be afraid of the noise it makes that's normal plug this up with your plug all right I think I got it go ahead and turn it off all right as I was holding it I could feel the pressure coming back up and then all of a sudden I felt it let loose so it's just going to drain out now I really like that method and the tool is fairly inexpensive the next method is by using a shop vacuum maybe you guys have one of these laying around already so you don't have to buy a tool go ahead and remove if you have a filter bag and if you have a filter remove both of those and you're going to put it on the suck function and you're going to take your hose and you're going to make a good seal hopefully your hose fits a nice tight seal if it doesn't you can do the rag trick again to make a nice tighter seal you could cut a piece of rubber out and put that on there you just want to get a good seal so that you can try and suck that clog out if you have standing water you're going to go ahead and suck all that out first just be sure not to overflow your vacuum and empty it out periodically as it'll get really heavy if the sucking method doesn't work with your vacuum you're going to take your hose you're going to switch it around to the exhaust side of your shop vacuum and by reversing it now it's going to blow air through here and you're going to try the same thing and you're going to try and push that clog out I recommend trying to suck the clog with the shop back first and remove all the standing water before you try and blow it so you don't make a big mess with all the dirty water blowing back up I really like this method because most people already have shop vacuums on hand and it does work really well especially if you have a larger shop vacuum that has a lot of power now sometimes you can try all these methods and it just doesn't work maybe the clog is just too big or it's too far down the line the tried and true method I've used is using a drain snake now they sell these in a lot of different ways they sell them this is a augur style one this one is powered but I have used just a regular old auger snake by hand let me show you a clip of me using that real quick go ahead and just turn this set screw to lock the snake in place go ahead and turn it to get you past that stuck and then just keep pushing all right there we go about 5 minutes of snaking down here the plug just undid now all the water's going down you also make those with a little attachment that you can hook up your regular drill to and make it powered I like this one which is really cool it's got like the drill built into the augur and it's battery operated so it's all cordless and everything this one's made by vivor I'll go ahead and put a link down in the description one of these for you guys to check out not very expensive all right so let me show you how to use it so this is the end of your snake the wire right here this is going to go down the Overflow right here it's not going to go down the drain you're going to have an easier time running it through down this overflow so you just feed it in by hand even though this one's powered just feed it in by hand just keep feeding it in by [Music] hand once you hit an [Music] obstruction you're going to set it to go forward the [Music] trigger until it moves past that obstruction you can feel it you can keep feeding it in I like to feed it in my hand as much as I can when you hit another obstruction feed it in a little more this also has a power feed right here if I hold the trigger while it's spinning and do the power [Music] feed I can feed it in I like to hand feed it as much as I can that helps to prevent it from getting uh snagged as much now the cool thing with using the snake is if it's just slowly draining go ahead and fill the tub up you want that standing water because as soon as you hit that clog with the snake it's all going to come rushing down all the water is going to start draining you're going to hear it too so then you know you don't have to keep feeding it down the line they make these in different lengths this is a 25 footer then you're just going to pull it back out take the battery out or unplug it don't want to get your hand snagged on one of these power augers but almost all the time you're going to get a bunch of hair and Gunk on the end of holy cow and as always the culprit is almost always hair look at all that hair that's gross so let's go ahead and run this thing full blast to make sure we got it run it really hot hot water all right looks like it's draining great now a bonus little method you can do is you can you can go ahead and boil some water and pour that down the drain after you've get it kind of loosened up that hot water is going to help dissolve any soap scum buildup or any Gunk built up on the side of the pipes loosen that up and flush it down all right awesome now I just need to clean the tub so hopefully you guys found this video helpful if you did please give it a thumbs up if you have any questions or comments go ahead and leave those down below and I'll get back to you and if you're new to the channel go ahead and subscribe and click that Bell notification that way you can get all my new upcoming videos that really helps me out but I just want to thank you guys for watching Johnny DIY keep on doing it yourself and take care

Channel: Jonny DIY

Views: 163,037

Keywords: how to unclog tub drain, how to unclog bathtub, how to unclog shower drain, unclogging bathtub drain, fix clogged drain

Id: qOjZKtT4FBg

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023