How To Clean Out A Floor Drain

Continuous floor drains are prone to clogging and backups. Once a part of the pipe gets clogged with dirt, grime, grease, sticky substances or foreign objects, expect annoying and inconvenient situations. You might smell foul sewage odor from your drains or worse, discover sewage water backing up from the drain pipe. Fortunately, blockages aren’t that difficult to remove. You just have to make use of specially designed drain uncloggers made for floor drains; use a plunger, plumbing snake or when all else fail, rely on your trusted plumbing professional. However, let me just remind you about the famous line, “Prevention is better than cure.” As cliché as it may sound, there is indeed a lot of truth in this saying. Instead of wasting your time to alleviate the problem, why not just properly care for your floor drains? This way, you won’t have to suffer from the nasty smell or the icky sewage water. With regular cleaning, you’ll surely keep your floor drains at tip-top shape. Here’s a DIY guide you can follow.

1. Remove the floor drain’s cover. Loosen the screw that holds the drain cover in place. You can use a Phillips screwdriver to accomplish this task.

2. When you’re done, look for the clean-out plug and loosen its cap. You can use a wrench for this task. When you’ve loosened it, simply pull it out.

3. If that specific floor drain doesn’t flush water down rapidly anymore, pour a bucket of boiling hot water into the pipe. Doing so will soften the solidified grease or break the clogs that formed inside the pipe. Just be careful though when assessing your drain because if it’s totally clogged up, water may flow out and cause flooding.

4. If the hot water fails to do the trick, use good old baking soda and vinegar. Since you’ll be cleaning a relatively large drain, instead of using just a cup of these ingredients, you have to increase the amount to 3 cups. Pour 3 cups of baking soda into the drain pipe. Follow through with 3 cups of white vinegar. Plug the drain hole and let the two ingredients form a chemical reaction. Once the fizzing stops, remove the plug and pour a bucket of hot water to wash away the ingredients. Make sure that there’s no more clog. If there’s still a problem with the drain, proceed to the next step.

5. To finally get rid of the waste substances that accumulated inside the drain pipe, use a plumbing snake. If you don’t have one, there are shops where you can rent this reliable plumbing tool. Insert the end of the plumber’s snake into the drain until you feel some sort of resistance. Turn the crank clockwise to break through the clog. When the blockage has been dislodged, slowly pull the snake out and dispose of the waste materials that have been collected by the snake auger.

6. Test the drain and when it’s finally working as it’s supposed to, put the clean-out’s plug back. Screw the drain cover back as well.