- Service
- Bathroom Drain Cleaning
- Category
- Drains and sewers
- Where
- Newmarket and nearby York Region
- Booking
- By telephone
Clues that point to bathroom drain cleaning
Bathroom drains talk before they quit. The basin takes a little longer each week. The tub develops a ring of standing water while you shower. A whiff of something unpleasant rises from the overflow. If the toilet also bubbles when the tub drains, the trouble is further down the shared branch.
- Standing water during a shower
- Basin slow even with the stopper fully raised
- Gurgling from a nearby fixture
- Black slime visible under the pop-up stopper
Our method, in order
Most basin clogs live within a hand's length of the drain opening, wrapped around the pop-up rod. We pull the stopper, clean the rod and the tailpiece, and often that alone solves it. Tub drains with a trip-lever overflow get the same treatment: the linkage comes out, the hair comes with it, and then a small cable checks the trap.
Showers with a tile base are different. Their drain usually sits under a screwed grate and leads straight into a trap below the floor. We clear it with a cable through the grate and confirm the flow with a full bucket test.
When the bathroom group drains poorly together, we work from a cleanout or remove the toilet to cable the branch. The toilet goes back on a new wax ring and fresh closet bolts, never on the old seal.
Newmarket houses and this job
A lot of homes in Bristol-London, Huron Heights and the other 1980s neighbourhoods are on their original bathrooms. Their tubs have the old trip-lever drains, and the pop-ups in the basins have corroded to the point that they no longer lift properly. Sometimes the right answer is to clean the drain and replace the worn stopper assembly in the same visit, since one is part of the other's problem.
Basement bathrooms add their own wrinkle. Showers below grade often drain into a pipe that also serves the floor drain and laundry, so lint from the washer can be part of a shower clog. If the basement shower is slow and the laundry discharges nearby, mention it when you call.
Bench note
A simple mesh hair catcher in the tub and shower costs a few dollars and prevents most of the calls we receive for bathroom drains.
When to ring
If clearing the stopper has not helped, or more than one fixture is slow, call us. For a toilet that is the main culprit, see toilet repair, and for a general overview of household clogs our circular on first steps with a clogged drain is a good start.
Phoned-in questions
Why does my bathroom sink smell?
Soap and hair collect on the pop-up rod and in the overflow channel, where bacteria break them down. Cleaning the rod and flushing the overflow usually ends the smell.
Can I use a wire hanger?
Carefully, on a basin stopper. Avoid pushing it into a tub drain, where it can scratch the finish or catch in the trip-lever linkage.