Which Drain Opener is the Best? Let's Find Out!

when it comes to clogged drains and toilets one thing for sure is the timing is usually pretty bad so the question is which one these products works the best now just because a product works in the short term is it causing long-term damage to your pipes well we're going to do some testing today and find out a lot more information about each of these products and if one product is actually better than the rest for the most part clogs fall into three categories the first category is hair these type of clogs typically happen in bathroom sinks tubs showers and laundry drains chunks of soaps sometimes go down the drain and mix with the hair to cause a clog as well so we'll see how effective these products are at dissolving hair and a chunk of soap the second type of clog is from food and grease these are often found in kitchen sinks we'll see how well these products work for dissolving vegetables and globs of bacon grease the third most common type of clog is from a foreign object since the list is nearly endless we'll see how well these products work on a piece of tape and a paper towel when it comes to chemical drain cleaners there are four main broad categories sodium hydroxide also known as lye seems to be the most common type of drain cleaner other ingredients are present and some of the retail drain cleaners as well sodium hypochlorite or bleach is the second category some products such as liquid plumr combine both sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite the third category includes acids will be testing both muriatic as well as sulfuric acid you won't want to use a product as acid in it for stainless steel aluminum chrome or galvanized steel pipes however it is safe to use with plastic piping the fourth and final category includes organic drain cleaners that use enzymes or bacteria these tiny organisms digest the wastes and reproduce spreading throughout the septic system well any of these drain cleaners cause damage to plumbing we'll be seeing what impact they have on a small metal pipe and a rusty nail as well as some PVC pro strength liquid plumr nothing is tougher it offers three times the action destroys clogs protects prevents and it's guaranteed according the back of the label it's designed for standing water slow drains clogged prevention and hair clogs in order to produce a fair test I'll be mixing warm water with each product and then pouring the products into test cups well first check back on each products after they've been exposed to the chemicals for 45 minutes since the instructions don't really provide a product to water ratio I decided to mix 10 parts of water with one part liquid [Music] Draino max tol Proust rank clears total blockages it's guaranteed or it's free court in the back of the bottle it clears hair clogs standing water slow drains and pipe build-up so what's the active ingredients includes sodium hydroxide sodium hypochlorite and sodium silicon just like liquid plumr I mixed one part of Drano to ten parts of water I didn't notice any sort of chemical reactions or noises when adding the liquid plumber or Drano to the test samples [Music] so why buy a liquid drain cleaner when you can just use pure lye which is designed to be a drain opener clears out drains grease traps and septic systems I added the live very slowly and mixed it thoroughly since light causes an exothermic reaction in other words it causes the water to boil very quickly this strategy worked very well well this product doesn't claim to clear drain clogs it does claim to break down food grease and more in any drain so we're gonna test that out to see just how well this works because I've had a lot of people request we test these drain sticks so instead of using chemicals these drain sticks use bacteria when adding the drain sticks to warm water the drain sticks began to dissolve fairly quickly turning the water blue so why use harsh chemicals when there's products like robic granular drain and trap cleaner it's a concentrate that's designed to prevent and in slow drains it uses a patent bacteria to digest waste build up the robic mixed fairly well but there were large particles that didn't seem to fully dissolve in sulfuric acid now kelabra claims to be for professional use only and not for household use it is designed though to use as an emergency drain line opener according to directions it disintegrates hair paper cloth food organic matter and scale melts grease and thaws frozen waste lines I only added fifty milliliters of sulfuric acid since it created a lot of heat when mixed with water and I didn't want to melt the plastic cups this is obviously a very powerful acid and it'll still be very effective diluted with water so if you've got a difficult clog to use and acids are used for clearing clogs why not use meriadoc acid now merry otic acid is 31.4 5% hydrochloric acid in this case I only added 50 milliliters of Meriadoc acid to the water you can see vapours from the mixing of water and acid together this is a very powerful acid it's been right about 45 minutes so let's take a look at each one of these products to see how good they've done as you can see it did not dissolve the soap or of the dog hair okay there's been no damage to the vegetables okay this is the grease the paper towel on the tape bow seems just fine inside the liquid plumr it doesn't look like it's removed any sort of rust the metal does not seem to have experienced any sort of damage okay no visible damage to the PVC okay we'll check out the Drano to see how it did on dog hair and soap okay it looks like the soap is still inside the container as well as a dog hair so everything seems to remain intact okay no damage to the vegetables okay this is the grease okay no apparent damage to the paper towel or the tape all right I don't see any sort of removal of rust or any damage to the steel so this seems to be very safe on plumbing hey the PVC looks just fine like it's starting to dissolve the dog here well it's not dissolving the vegetables the car the vegetables definitely looks a little bit different Drano and liquid plumr seem to have done a little bit better job with the bacon grease okay no damage to the paper towel of the tape the live didn't cause any damage to the metal or the PVC the drain stick is still dissolving and it has not dissolved any of the hair there's still a layer of grease in the cup other than coloring everything blue the drain sticks did not seem to have any impact on the paper towel metal or PVC the robic didn't seem to have any impact on the dog hair vegetables grease paper towel steel or PVC the sulfuric acid was diluted quite a bit and it didn't have much of an impact on the hair vegetables grease paper towels or PVC but it did begin removing the rust from the nail later in the video I'll try a much stronger water acid mix in a Pyrex container that can handle the heat created by the acid while the muriatic acid didn't seem to dissolve the hair in vegetables it did a pretty good job on the grease it didn't have any impact on the paper towel or the PVC but it did begin removing some rust from the nail which indicates that it is fairly corrosive after 12 hours liquid plumr didn't seem to do very well at dissolving the hair however Drano seems to have done a little bit better job d'lai did by far the best of all the products we've tested totally dissolving all of the hair the drain sticks robic in water didn't seem to dissolve the hair the sulfuric acid did thin out the hair a little but the muriatic acid did a better job but not as good as lye none of the products seem to do very good at dissolving the vegetables however the sulfuric acid did show a very small amount of progress once the bacon grease cooled off it seemed to thicken some both liquid plumr and Drano did a good job with the grease while light is all the hair there's quite a bit of grease that's at the bottom of the cup the drain sticks just seemed to have died the grease blew the robic didn't seem to have done much either clobber definitely seems to have done a better job the muriatic acid at dissolving the grease none of the products seem to dissolve the tape or the paper towels both liquid plumr and drain will cause corrosion on the steel pipe however if these products are used as directed steel pipes should not experience any sort of corrosion why did not cause any corrosion to the steel pipe or the nail the drain sticks and the robic did not seem to have any impact either the kelabra and the muriatic acid removed the rust from the nail and seemed to remove the plating from the pipe so that both highly corrosive and can cause damage to metal pipes if not flushed out and diluted with water then the prize caused any sort of visible damage to the PVC we have a pretty good idea as to which products work really well liquid plumr and Drano seem to be about the same so we're gonna use a little bit higher dose of Drano and we're also going to use a higher dose of acid in these Pyrex containers in order to test their full capability so we're going to do is add the festivals and rusty nail and some dog hair to each of the containers and we're gonna see how much work they can do in 15 minute period I bet at approximately 2 cups of warm water in each container so what I'm gonna do now is add a 50% mix of Drano to water to this container to see just how effective it is in a 15 minute time span I'm gonna shake the container real well to make sure everything's thoroughly mixed I'm gonna set this aside temporarily since I don't want it near this facet in case we get some splash as you can see the temperature inside this container is extremely hot at sixty two point six degrees Celsius and climbing it's been right at fifteen minutes so let's go ahead and see how well these products did the job the dog here is definitely starting to disappear that dog hair is just about gone it's done a very good job actually as you can see it did nothing to dissolve the asparagus it doesn't appear to have done any damage to the nail and it does not look like it's dissolved the carrot at all it doesn't look like it's dissolved the asparagus very well it has done a little bit of work on it wow it's definitely eaten into that carrot another aratoon this carrot would probably be totally dissolved the drain will actually did a lot better job dissolving the dog hair as you can see that all the rust has been removed from this nail so the acid did a very good job of removing rust but it's also highly corrosive it's go right out three hours let's see how well this acid has done on the solid objects in the hair okay it looks like the asparagus is just about totally dissolved very impressive there's still hair inside but it looks like the acid has done a great job at dissolving most of the hair the carrots not as big as it used to be it actually looks sort of green now that it's been exposed to this passive it doesn't look like it's caused any sort of corrosion to the nail also it doesn't seem like it's had any effect on the solid objects the following assessment is subjective with the letter A indicating that the product did an effective job B indicates that the product showed some effect C indicates that the product didn't seem to have any effect Drano liquid plumr and lye earn a's and are definitely the most effective at dissolving air the acids earned a b since they didn't dissolve the hair but needed a very strong concentration of acid for several hours to be effective the biological products just didn't seem to work the only product that seemed to work on vegetables at all was the clobber or sulfuric acid I believe the hydrochloric acid would have done a little bit better job if a higher percentage of acid was used Drano liquid plumr clobber and hydrochloric acid were all affected with grease but lie drain sticks and robic seemed less effective no the product seemed effective at dissolving the paper towels or tape Drano and liquid plumr did show a very small amount of corrosion and the acid showed quite a bit of corrosion so you've got a stubborn claw declare which product should you select if you're dealing with the bathroom clog it probably involves hair and fur I would choose liquid plumr Drano or lye those products worked extremely well at dissolving hair I was really surprised at how well they work now for the kitchen you're probably dealing with a solid object or grease acid definitely works better on that type of a clog however acids also highly corrosive so if you have a garbage disposal unit or metal plumbing you might not want to do that because it could cause some damage you probably need to use a drain snake but we didn't see quick action out of the enzymes I think those products work very well for maintaining the plumbing now when it comes to these different chemicals I really discourage mixing them because you could experience a really nasty chemical reaction that can cause some health issues as usual just want to say thanks so much for watching the video I hope you'll provide me some video ideas for the future please take care and I look forward to next time

Channel: Project Farm

Views: 2,333,710

Rating: 4.9071083 out of 5

Keywords: Project Farm, drain opener, drain cleaner, draino, liquid plumr, liquid plumber, liquid plumr clog destroyer, drain sticks, drainstix, clobber, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, muriatic acid, seafoam, marvel mystery oil, drano max gel clog remover, drano, hair, grease, solids, unclog, clog remover, drain clogged sink, drain clog, drain clog remover

Id: fm2CE2e_3To

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Lunchable]

Whoever invented a product you immediately pour down the drain is a god damn genius.

[u/[deleted]]

So nothing works basically

[u/cookeee]

Was he testing the draino and liquid plumber properly though? Dont you put it directly down the drain, let it set for X amount of time to do its thing and then flush it with water??? He already diluted it prior, so it makes sense that it wouldnt have the same effect? Am I crazy/misremembering/have been using drano wrong my whole life? Not that I am debating these products are the best solution but it seems like the testing strategy for these products isnt giving them a fair shot

Edit: looked up the instructions and you are supposed to directly pour it on the clog and wait 15-30 min then flush so this dude's testing strategy wasnt effective for these products.

[u/SteamyShovel]

If you've used any drain cleaning products, then broke down and called a plumber.. make sure to inform them. I wish this video mentioned this.

No one wants to take apart a ptrap to be surprised with a face full of chemicals..

[u/brappbrap]

I read the title as 'brain opener'

[u/TooMuchGrapeSalad]

I knew exactly from the title who this video was from lol

[u/arcangeltx]

A snake on a drill

[u/zeusmeister]

I mean, I KNOW draino works. I will occassionally get sink clogs from facial hair clippings and a little bit of the draino, applied per instructions, clears it right up.

I know he says it did nothing to the hair in the video, but SOMETHING is clearing the clog when I use it lol

[u/ricardo_feynman]

None, none is the answer. If you have a clog, mechanical intervention is necessary and the only real solution. Every other "solution" is only going to potentially damage your drain, waste, and vent system.

Go to /r/plumbing and read the sidebar.