How To Keep A Healthy Drain: And How Duracable Can Help

Keeping healthy, free-flowing drains is largely a matter of preventative maintenance and routine care. There are drains in your home, and they can clog, requiring the need for service to remove obstructions. That can be costly, time-consuming and annoying. However, a large portion of caring for drains is a matter of knowing what not to allow to go down the drain and a small measure of routine maintenance. Half of the battle is keeping stuff out of the drain that shouldn’t be there and the other half is a matter of remembering to show your drain a little bit of attention before anything becomes a problem. All of that can go a long way and will help to prevent more costly services. Yes, keeping your drain and lines in your home serviceable is more than just the purchase of a 50 ft drain snake. So first, what shouldn’t go down the drain?

Don’t Let That Down the Drain!
Keeping things out of the drain that shouldn’t go down the drain is a large portion of routine maintenance. If you don’t flush things or let them go down the drain when they shouldn’t be there in the first place, then you’ll prevent most problems before they happen. Let’s take a look at some commonly ‘drained’ things that probably shouldn’t be drained in the first place. Some of these things will be fairly specific to the bathroom or the kitchen, but let’s just start here - don’t let them down either drain.

Don’t let fibrous materials down the drain. We’ll start with that. In the bathroom that generally is going to mean hair. In the kitchen, it will probably mean food like corn silk and celery stalks, which are insidiously fibrous. It doesn’t matter, though, don’t go throwing your corn silk down the bathroom sink or make a habit of shaving in the kitchen. Hair and many plant fibers are fairly resistant to decomposition, which means they stick around for a long time. When they find their way down the drain, they usually end up forming a lattice-like net and trapping other materials. In essence, they become a web to trap clogs and make them stop up drains. Where you can help it, don’t let them down the drain.

Don’t let eggshells down the drain if you can help it. Eggshells, through a mechanical process eerily similar to hair and fibrous plant materials, help to bind clogs together. If hair forms a web, eggshells form a mortar, and other clogs love it. Let eggshells down the drain and you’ll be basically creating a drain cement, and when it clogs the drain, it won’t be fun to remove.

Here’s another thing you should keep out of the drain where you can help it. Starchy foods absorb water and become a paste. Rice, pasta and things like bread can become a drain clogging glue if you let too many of them down the drain. They’re sticky, starchy and they can and will make one serious clog if you let them. Their ability to absorb water is prodigious and will make a mess of any drain where they are left to work their will.

Here’s a popular one that seems to cause a lot of clogs and is mentioned around the web for its habit of clogging drains - coffee grounds. Many people unwittingly flush coffee grounds down the sink, but this is a bad habit and can cause serious blockages. Not only doesn’t water break them down, but the garbage disposal is also pointless since they’re already broken up. Once they enter a drain they absorb water and bind to each other. They can make serious blockages. Don’t let them down the drain, at least in large quantities.

You probably wouldn’t let paper towels go down your kitchen sink. Don’t flush them down the toilet either. They don’t break down the way toilet paper does and they’re darn strong even when full of water. They don’t need anything else to bind to them to make a serious clog like the other things listed here, so don’t flush them.

Here’s the beast of all beasts. Grease and fat. Keep them away from the drain. The safe thing to do is let grease cool and then throw it away. Pouring it down the drain is asking for trouble. Remember what grease was before it was grease? That’s right - solid fat. When you put it back in water, guess what it’s going to become again. Solid fat. Except this time, it will be way down the drain where you can’t reach it. Some serious drain obstructions are the result of letting grease down the drain when it could have been otherwise disposed of. The eggshells, coffee grounds, and hair mentioned previously sometimes team up with grease to make a truly formidable obstruction to most drains, trapping each other in a vicious cycle that spells doom for pipes and drains. When you mix these elements together, it’s time to call the plumber.

Yet this is not a comprehensive list. These are just a few of the things that commonly go down the drain and result in a call to the plumber. You’ll save time and money just not allowing them down the drain in the first place. Start by keeping these things out of the drain.

Routine Care
Yet keeping these noxious, drain clogging elements of out your drains is only half of the battle. You won’t be able to keep all of these things out of all of your drains, all of the time, which is why a little bit of routine attention to your drains will go a long way in preventing otherwise costly plumbing appointments.

Obviously, some grease and fibrous plant material are going to make their way down your kitchen drain if you ever use your kitchen for cooking. Sometimes some hair will find it’s way down your bathroom drains. The point is to minimize the amount that finds its way down the drain and perform a little routine drain care. We’ve told you what not to flush - now here are a few ways you can help keep your drain in good condition.

One of the best routine flushes you can perform for your drains to keep them in tip-top working condition is to flush them with hot water. Even small amounts of grease and trapped particles can build up over time into obstructions of ridiculous proportions. This is partly due to the fact that you can’t prevent all of the grease and oil in food from going down the drain. It disintegrates in hot water and then solidifies in cool water, way down the drain. Over time, these little obstructions can congeal into one monumental one. Heating up some water (but not quite boiling it) and pouring it down the drain can work wonders in preventative maintenance.

The hot water runs down the drains and by any accumulated grease scum and entrapments in the drain, remelting them and passing them further down the drain and out of your house. It will also help remove any deposits that have built up with the grease over time. Flushing your drains periodically with hot water will go a long way towards keeping them running free and preventing any would-be clogs from becoming too large to handle.

Another preventative trick is to flush your drains with baking soda and vinegar. The basic trick is to run baking soda and vinegar down the drain with hot water. Everyone has their own advice on how much to use - try a half cup of each in concert with hot water. The acidic vinegar and reactive baking soda help to remove some blockages from your pipes that hot water alone might be inadequate to remove. Not only will this treatment help the drains run freely, but it will also remove many odors and keep your drain fresh.

How We Can Help
Here at Duracable, we want your drains to be as healthy as they can be, but we also understand that there are times when blockages develop that need a little more muscle to remove. That’s why we offer a full line of machines, snakes and other tools for professionals to keep drains and lines running the way they should be. Here are some of the options we offer professionals to help commercial and residential drains running smoothly.

Drain Machines
You’ll need a drain machine to go along with that 50 ft drain snake - it’s not going to power itself. We offer hand help snake machines, sled machines and smaller sink machines to tackle quite a wide variety of drain bound obstructions. For large jobs, we offer drain machines like our Sled Drain Machine DM55 SPO with a 26” Jumbo Polyethylene Reel. The machine in question has a ¾ horsepower moto and an indestructible frame that’s capable of tackling some industrial obstructions like large grease clogs and root obstructions.

Of course, we also offer smaller machines like our Sink Drain Machine DM125A with a ⅙ horsepower, 230 RPM motor that’s ideal for less intense obstructions like those commonly encountered in homes. It can be relatively easily maneuvered through most domestic settings and effectively used against many domestic obstructions.

These are, however, two ends of a broad spectrum. Take a look at our machines to see what we can offer you. One more thing - our own drain machines come with one of the best warranties in the industry. Duracable manufactured machines come with either a 2 or 3-year warranty covering the frame and motor. Much like all of the equipment manufactured by Duracable, we hold our machines to the highest standards.

Drain Snakes and Accessories
You’ll need a 50 ft drain snake to go with that machine though, won’t you? Well, you might not need a 50 ft drain snake, necessarily, but you will need a drain cable to help you get through obstructions, and that’s for sure. We offer drain snakes in standard sizes from ¼ inch to ¾ inches and in standard lengths up to 150 feet, although we will create custom orders. Additionally, our drain cables come in hollow-core configurations for the extra rigidity required when working them against tough clogs, as well in more flexible inner core options for navigating the tighter recesses of finer pipes.

All of our Duracable drain cables manufactured in-house are made to the most exacting standards for exceptionally strong, flexible finished cables. Additionally, our cables come with a 30-day guarantee against defect. As for the blades you’ll need to power through obstructions, you can find them right here as well. We offer blades round, offset, elliptic, U-shaped blades and more to fit the pipe you’re clearing. Whatever the shape of the pipe, the nature of the obstruction, or the type of blade you need to get through it, you’ll find what you need right there on our page.

We also offer various drain care products to help prevent clogs and protect against grease and roots. When used properly, our drain care products will not only remove certain obstructions but contain biotic agents to help prevent the accumulation of obstructive influences such as grease. They not only help to treat drain obstructions but can help prevent them as well. Our drain care products can be leveraged effectively as another form of routine maintenance when administered properly.

Give Us A Call
So there you have it, a list of things that you should by no means allow down your drain, a few preventative measures you can take to help prevent clogs, and a short investigation into the equipment we offer the professionals who can help remove clogs when they get too unmanageable. This is, however, far from an exhaustive list. If you’re looking for a drain machine, cables or accessories, take a look through our offerings here on our site. If you have questions regarding our manufacturing or our products, give us a call at 800-247-4081 or email us at sales@duracable.com. We’d be glad to talk about drain maintenance with you.