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Hi, friends! It's Jeff with HomeRepairTutor. And today I'm going to help you fix a slow
draining bathroom sink and get it unclogged. Unfortunately, this is a super common problem
for many homes. But it's not that hard to fix. So let's get started.
In order to do this fix the right way, you just need to understand a few things about
the plumbing underneath your sink. So this is the drain coming from your sink. This is
the P Trap. You could also argue that it should be called a U Trap. So anyhow, this is the
P Trap. It comes down and then up and then into your wall. The reason why this is shaped
the way that it is is you need to have some water standing right here so that sewer gas
doesn't come back in from your plumbing line and into your bathroom. So the water prevents
the sewer gas from coming back into the house. And that's why there's water in this P Trap
right here. So you need a Tupperware container like this
and it's probably a good idea to put a towel underneath where you're going to be working.
So anyhow, put the Tupperware container so that it's directly underneath the P Trap and
you want to loosen the slip knots like this. Now if you can't do it by hand, you can use
channel locks like this. And simply adjust them so that you can both fit the nut and
then just unscrew the nut like so. So unscrew the top one and then unscrew the
bottom one. And water will come out. That's why you need the Tupperware container or a
bucket. And just let that drain off. And when it slows down, you can take the whole P Trap
out, okay? Now, I guarantee you that this is full of
some mucking guck. Watch this. So there's definitely an obstruction in there. What you
can do is tap it up against that container or you can fish it out.
Now chances are you're also going to have some obstruction that goes up to the stopper
because there's a rod—and I'll show you—at the back of this drain line that controls
the stopper. As you can see here, there's this rod and it sticks in the pipe here. And
a lot of times, hair and mucking guck get caught on this rod that sticks in your pipe,
okay? The other place, and you can even see it here—there's
a piece of, I don't know, "gookily glook"—sticking up in this goose neck portion of the pipe.
Now you can remove this pipe and look in there, too. There's also a slip nut in the back here
you can take off. You can pull the goose neck portion of the pipe out. Again, look how much
crud is in there. In order to clean out the strain, you're going
to have to remove this pivot arm right here. Now it's held in place by this nut that I'm
loosening, all right? So loosen it with a pair of channel locks or a crescent wrench.
Take that nut off. Pull the arm out. Inspect the arm. Look, there's *** all over it. There's
like goopity goop all over it, all right? And that's an indicator that there's a lot
of mucking guck in here. And I can already feel it with my finger.
With the pivot arm pulled out, you can pull up on the pop up stopper. Check this out.
Look at all this goop on here. Yuck! Yucky stuff! So you know there's a clog right down
in that drain. All right. So I bought this Zip-it Tool at
the local hardware store. It costs about $3. And this is what I'm going to use to stick
down into the drain. With the Tupperware container directly underneath
the strain, what I'm going to do is stick the Zip-it Tool down in there, okay? So stick
it down in there like so. Just get all of this guck out of there. (My goodness! Look
at this!) Just work it around and try to clear out that drain the best that you
can. Now if you have one, you can also use a drain
auger like this one, all right? And it's very simple to use. It has a sharp spring on the
end of it, like this, okay? So what you do is you unlock that, feed it down into your
drain pipe, all right? Just clean out that drain the best that you can.
Now if you want to , you can also stick a paper towel down through this drain because
it's just going to come out in the other end and into your Tupperware container. And you
can use the snake to push that paper towel down through the drain to clean off the sides
of the pipe. All right, guys. Check this out. Look
at all the gunk that was in there. All right? And that's that paper towel that I shoved
through... This is the stopper. It still has guck in it. You want to clean that off with
a paper towel again. But check this out. This is not for the faint of heart. This is the
paper towel that I shoved down through the pipe. Look how clogged it is—just caked
full of muck and guck! All right? And look at all this. All right.
So anyhow, that worked out very well. With the Tupperware container in place and underneath
the pipe that's in your wall right there, what you want to do—you might as well do
this because you have all the pipes out—is stick your Zip-it into this wall pipe like
so, okay? And see if you catch any kind of obstruction. Pull it out.
Now admittedly, I like using the snake or an auger a little bit better. Push the auger
in as far as it'll go until you meet up with the obstruction if you even have one, okay?
Once it stops, that's when you want to spin it around. Once you find an obstruction, lock
you auger in place, okay, and then spin it around either by hand or, if you have an attachment
on it, you can put your drill on there and spin it around with a drill. Then pull the
auger out of the wall with your hand. Another big tip that I have is to fold up
a paper towel like this and stick it down through the pipes that you removed. So this
is the goose neck, all right? It's called a goose neck because it has this shape. So
stick this towel on through here like that. And you can kind of floss out the inside.
Get rid of any residual yuckiness. Then finally, you have your pop up stopper.
And this is what looks really bad so take a paper towel; clean that off. And this is
also a good opportunity to clean off that pivot arm that is sticking in the back of
your drain. All right. Now it's time to put everything
back together. So stick your goose neck back into the wall. Make sure that this washer
is flush with the pipe going into the wall, and then tighten that nut up just a little
bit because you may have to adjust this goose neck in or out of the wall. Take your P Trap.
Position it like so, all right? Stick it up onto the drain. What I like to do is make
sure that that goose neck arm is sitting down in the P Trap. I'm going to hand tighten this
nut like so. Then, again make sure that this washer right here is sitting flush with the
top portion of the goose neck—excuse me, the P Trap. Again hand tighten like so. With
that in place, now you can—with the P Trap in place—you can tighten this back nut.
You can give ¼ turn by each of these plastic nuts with your channel locks just to make
sure that they're tight enough. All right, with the pop up stopper in place,
you can put this arm in through the hole that's in the pop up stopper and then ratchet down
on this nut here with your hand and then tighten it ½ to ¼ turn with this set of channel
locks. Nice and tight. With the water on, check for leaks at this
slip nut, this slip nut, and the slip nut back here in the wall. Also, check for leaks
where you inserted the pop up stopper arm into the drain here on the back of the drain.
Let the water run for a good minute or two and then check around to see if there are
any drips. All right. Check this out! The water's draining
like a champ! All right, my friends. That's it. That's how
you fix a slow draining bathroom sink and get it unclogged. So I hope this video helped
you out. If it did, give me a thumbs up on YouTube. If you got a question, add that to
the comments section because I'll help you out with any of the similar problems that
you have with your own sink. And visit HomeRepairTutor.com. Sign up for my email newsletter because you're
going to get a lot of great tips on home improvement and home repairs that'll save you time and
money. So take care, and I'll see you soon!
Eeew. Pretty disgusting, right? This would've been a great back scratcher before I ran it
through that drain. Oh my gosh. The Zip-it. The back scratcher for men with
back hair.