Worked great on sink, but a bit unclear how to do toilet. Do you reduce the amt of water in the bowl (by not letting it refill from the tank) or just pour gaily away?

That must have been awful, but it made me laugh, i’m sorry =p

I just tried this and now there’s a gallon of hot water sitting in my sink that won’t drain. :( Any suggestions?

Oh no! At that point it may be plumber time. DIY can only do so much – sorry!

Thank you!!!!!!!!!! Saved me the trouble of calling a plumber. More power to your site.

This totally worked! Kinda like when we made volcanos in science class. We had to do it all twice, but our drain now works fantastic.

THIS WORKS!! We just tried it for the 1st time yesterday on a stubbornly stopped up bathroom sink. Now the drain works like new!

Thanks for the homemade drano recipe! It worked like a charm, and NO chemicals! You go girl!

you’re

my bathroom bathtub is clogged and tried the home remedies, plunger, and coat hanger and wire and still plugged. unscrewing the main pipes is the last thing i haven’t done. too many pipes to tackle and don’t know which one to start with.

I haven’t tried that so I can’t speak from experience. I don’t think I would try it in my garbage disposal . . . but that’s just my 2 cents!

Washing machine pipe would probably work. That I would try. Again, I’m not a professional, but that’s what my gut says!

I just want inform you this is, in fact, a chemical reaction using a base and an acid. Both sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and vinegar (acetic acid) happen to be chemicals. Mind you, I’m not dissing the original poster about the use of vinegar and baking soda- I stumbled on here for the reason of finding a home-made solution to stubborn drains- but I wanted to clarify to you, Lisa, about your false statement you made.

I’m sure it’s going to work well for me, and no HARSH chemicals. Thanks for the blog.

Baking soda is the very best for unstopping a sink. My sink was stopped up so badly that water was running on the floor. I had to use about 6 boxes of baking soda and over a liter of vinegar, but praise the Lord it really worked. I also poured about three tea pots full of hot water down the sink after letting the baking soda and vinegar set for about an hour. I would recommend that to anyone before calling a plumber in. You can really save yourself some money. Please try this.

Thank you sooo much for this warning. I just tried this and it didn’t work and I was going to pour drano down the sink next. Thank you so much for the warning!

I found a long flexible plastic tool with fish hook type protrusions coming off the sides- (about $4.00 at Lowes or Home Depot). Insert it down a shower or sink drain and give it a little twist. Pull up & you’d be amazed how much stuff comes out. No need to dissolve anything. It’s a breeze!!!

thank you…it worked….no plumber needed

Though I appreciate the effort on providing a method such as this, others should know it may not work as it did not for me. Instead it appears my drain clog is worse. Cannot use drano because it will create chlorine gas and finding a product without ammonia, bleach, hydrochloric acid, hydrochlorite, or the brand the works is difficult (all would not be safe combined with the baking soda and vinegar according to a chemis friend of mine). My chemist friend told me the only things that will work that will not be toxic to [you] are sulfuric acid (hard to find pure in my town), sodium hydroxide, or the brand liquid lightning. Liquid lightning doesn’t seem to be working now because the base of baking soda is neutralizing it. plumber it is.

I mean, technically you’re right Cam, but you have to realize that Lisa was using the word “chemicals” in a very common, universally understood sense that nearly all laypeople use. When people say “chemical,” they mean “harsh, potentially dangerous concoctions produced by chemical companies.” It’s for this reason we don’t say, “I poured some chemicals into a pan, mixed them up, heated them and put them into my stomach so more chemicals could react with them.” We just say, “I put some ingredients together to make soup and ate it.” If we had to use your overly technical definition all the time, we’d waste a lot of time describing the level of harshness of chemicals to say what we mean. As it is, there’s no native-English speaker on the planet who wouldn’t understand the distinction Lisa was trying to make.

Im going to be trying this tomorrow but not with a sink. im trying it with a drain in my floor that the washer drains into down in the basement. Im hopeful it will help…

This actually worked! I had to go through the process 5 times, but it worked!

UGH I just wasted an hour of my time on this. Most of it was spent shoving the baking soda down the sink because it was so extremely clogged. I tried this recipe out on my shower and sink. it went down on my shower, and i thought it was the end to the clogging, but lo and behold when i went to shower, the water was up to my ankles once again. the sink is just ridiculous, as a gallon is just sitting in there, refusing to go anywhere. READY TO PULL MY HAIR OUT!!!

My kitchen sink was clogged for over two months….and I knew that the clog was beyond the trap. I could not cook or wash my dishes. Today, enough was enough. I dropped the trap, filled it with baking soda, replaced it and poured vinegar down the sink. The demons therein frothed and I let it set for 15 minutes. Hot water from the tap and everything went down the drain. Two hours to wash dishes. yuk

hmm If it was hydrochloric acid your drain should most definitely be unclogged then. :D

I’ve read some article about unclogging in natural remedy, where ingredients are just inside the kitchen just like this. But I haven’t tried those.