Drain Cleaning Minneapolis & St. Paul
No one likes a drain clog. It is just a complete day ruiner. However, the good news is that a drain clog is easily fixed by a professional or even sometimes with your own DIY handiness. Drain clogs are hardly the most catastrophic thing to happen to your house. They aren’t even the most catastrophic things that can happen in a singular drain.
Unfortunately, the real bad news of a clogged drain is that once it has been clogged once, if no change is made, it is probably going to come back. For every clogged drain, there is a cause. You can remove the clog, but if you don’t address the root cause, you’re just going to have to remove another clog a few weeks or months down the line.
How to Prevent Clogs From Coming Back
The thing about clogged drains is that there is usually a single or small combination of causes per drain, but there is no single cause for all drains. You have to consider the action a particularly easy clogged drain is getting in order to address the problem. Common drain clogging action includes:
- Flushing Foreign Objects in Toilets – Clogged toilets are literally the worst drains to have clogged. If your toilet is frequently clogging, you may need to have a house meeting to ensure nothing except human waste and toilet paper is going down that drain. Sometimes using too much toilet paper can even be a cause.
- Clogged or Missing Drain Screens in the Shower – No one likes to pick the hair out of a shower screen after the whole family has had their showers for the day. However, it is necessary. It doesn’t mean we are balding, but humans shed a fair bit of hair and skin every day and a lot of that happens while bathing. The screen on your shower drain helps catch it to prevent clogs. Human hair, soap residue, and grease washed away from skin is the perfect storm for a drain clog. Without a shower drain to catch the hair, your shower drain can manifest serious clogs.
- Grease or Expanding Food Down the Kitchen Sink – Food particles should be minimized when put down your kitchen drain by a drain screen. Food like rice, pasta, or potatoes expand when exposed to water, and worse yet, become a sort of glue-like substance that can cause clogs. Grease should also be avoided down your drain as much as possible. You may think you can wash it all down with hot water, but grease that lingers becomes hardened and constricts drain flow, leading to clogs as well.
- Hair and Other Items Down the Bathroom Sink – Hair is just as bad for your bathroom sink as it is for your shower drain. Furthermore, the more items you lose down that drain, the more potential you have for clogs. It is best to have the sink stopper in to prevent this and make sure hair left after haircuts or shaving is wiped and thrown away instead of washed down the sink.
All of these preventative measures will limit the amount of clogs you have, but things tend to fall through the cracks and will eventually cause clogs. Furthermore, clogs can be caused deeper in your plumbing by exterior effects like a collapsed pipe or tree roots in the sewer line. If you have been diligent in your prevention, but are still having drain clogs, contact us today. SOS Drain & Sewer can inspect your lines and help you find the cause of clogs as well as, of course, clearing those clogs away to get things running smoothly again.
