Ultimate plumbing - boiling water

Being the record holder of pouring eight bottles of Lowe's sulphur acid down my kitchen drain, I know what I'm doing.

Hot water is a common recommendation but it doesn't make any sense at first. The devil is in the details.

I got the motivation to try watching youtube. That was the trick to use on toilet bowl. Sulphur acid won't even work on toilet bowl because it doesn't go down unless you pour in a huge volume, in that case, it becomes extremely dangerous.

The method is to pour pans of boiling water and a generous amount of liquid detergent into the toilet until it unclogs totally. I didn't believe it but I was looking for a method to better clear the blocked toilet without using the pump. It's not a good sight and smell to pump in a pool of mess.

To my surprise, it worked as shown on TV. It takes two to three big pans of boiling water. The worst is several pans. I stopped to go to sleep, and then a few more pans the next day.

The science is that something got dissolved or destroyed in hot water. That should be fat/oil/grease common in kitchen drains. Not surprisingly, the human gut should be a lot worse than the kitchen drains. But then humans deal with it by evolution and pass down those things they can't handle down the toilet drain.

The detergent helps to prevent the fog from clinging together and carries them away. So I use dishwasher powder instead. They are not only surfactants that work on surfaces. They actually attack grease, protein, and starch - anything that gets into the dishwasher. You can watch the action by sprinkling some powder into greasy food residues. But check that there are no solid residues due to the dishwasher powder. Small amounts accumulate and can block the toilet by itself.

So as long as there are slow flows of water in the toilet, so slow that you don't see, boiling water will work. But since it's so easy, I clear the toilet as soon as the water flow slows down. No more mess ever again.

So I applied the concept to the kitchen drain. I have to admit I added gadgets to the drain system that allow grease to accumulate, slowing down the flow to a trickle, but still allow the sink to be used with little interruption. That's why I had to pour eight bottles of acid to unblock it once it becomes blocked.

Doing it the first time, or clearing a severely blocked drain, you have to prepare that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. When thick grease layers falling off the pipes, you can get a total blockage. You need to prepare other ways to open the drain, like a pressure bladder or snake.

The method is the same, keep pouring boiling water and dishwasher powder down the drain until the flow is restored. And start doing it when the drain is slow. It's much harder when the flow is almost zero or just standing water. In that case, you have a lot of accumulated FOG and they will completely clog the pipe when they start to soften. However, these melting FOG aren't difficult to clear using pressure bladder or snake. If you don't want to get your hands dirty, do it early before the water flow slows down significantly - it's so easy.

From reviews, the other thing that works is the one on hardware stores that shows before and after pictures of pipes. But imagine if you have 25 ft of pipe down under, how many bottles do you need to clear all that? Someone reminded me that if I snaked the full 25 ft into the drain, the head is already on the other side of the house on the common big drains.

Hot water is much much cheaper and more effective. Boiling water may have a little effect on PVC pipes, and lesser on ABS. So you may just use hot water before it boils or let the boiling water sit for a little time before pouring. But acid is a lot worse.

It's so nice to see vortexes in all drains without getting your hands dirty.