How often do you unclog drains?

I spent my morning attending to a couple of clogged drains in my house. The worst was the shower in my master bath, where my wife's hair likes to collect. But the second was my sink in the bathroom where I shave, and I guess the water doesn't do a good enough job getting the tiny hair and soap scum through the trap. I probably have had to unclog that sink twice in the last 3 years. Do you guys find your shaving to be a nuisance to your plumbing? How bad does it get?

At the sink where I shave daily with few exceptions, in the 5 years we’ve been at our current place…I believe we’ve never had to clean it out. The only drain that has to be cleaned out once in a while is the shower, due to head hair reasons, then kitchen once in a while for food/grease reasons.

GearNoir said:

At the sink where I shave daily with few exceptions, in the 5 years we’ve been at our current place…I believe we’ve never had to clean it out. The only drain that has to be cleaned out once in a while is the shower, due to head hair reasons, then kitchen once in a while for food/grease reasons.

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Yeah, I'm really surprised that I've had trouble with that sink clogging. I don't wash down any substantial amounts of hair, if I trim my beard there, I'll do it dry and wipe it all up and throw it in the trash before I shave or anything. Not sure what it's deal is. The water pressure in our house is kind of low, due primarily to the builder installing a lot of low-flow fixtures I think, but our well is also old and probably needs to be overhauled. Just chalk it up to the joys of home ownership I guess.

In my shaving sink the junk tends to accumulate in the drain itself. So a few times a year I just unscrew the plug thing and take some needle nose pliers to it and that seems to keep everything in shape.

NurseDave said:

In my shaving sink the junk tends to accumulate in the drain itself. So a few times a year I just unscrew the plug thing and take some needle nose pliers to it and that seems to keep everything in shape.

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My sink has one of those plungers that raises and lowers the stopper, it's a pain to remove it. I stopped at the hardware store and picked up one of those long, flat plastic drain snakes. Ran it up and down a few times and it did the trick pretty well.

FakeMountainMan said:

My sink has one of those plungers that raises and lowers the stopper, it's a pain to remove it. I stopped at the hardware store and picked up one of those long, flat plastic drain snakes. Ran it up and down a few times and it did the trick pretty well.

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But the actual flat stopped at the top of the plastic rod doesn’t unscrew?

NurseDave said:

But the actual flat stopped at the top of the plastic rod doesn’t unscrew?

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That would be too easy. I tried just now to make sure I wasn't crazy, and I managed to twist it enough to pop the whole thing out, lol. It's just a one-piece plastic plug. But I gave the drain a good cleaning while I had it out. We went with a manufactured home during Covid in order to get on our land quickly, and while it's mostly nice, they definitely skimp on some things. I think that the primary source of the clog was actually my long beard hairs, probably that fell out while brushing my teeth or something. So maybe the clog is a direct result of my not shaving enough.

Somewhere along the line I replaced the old pop up drain plug with one that is easily removed. While it can be opened and closed with a simple push I like to remove it entirely to let everything drain quickly. Because I can remove the plug and its attached screen I rarely have clogging issues at the sink. The bathtub drain is a different story. My daughter’s long hair eventually clogs everything up so I end up doing some sort of maintenance once every 6-9 months. I have ready access to sodium hydroxide so I will dump a little into the drain after I wash my dog and that seems to have extended the time between serious cleanings quite a bit.
I do find that non-tallow soaps have more “scum” to stick to the sink and pipes but I don’t have any serious clogs as a result. Adding a sprinkle of citric acid (look in the canning section at the store) to the sink water not only helps build quicker lather it can reduce the scum a bit too.

Every now and then my sink gets slow to drain. I shave the sides of my head every month so I do get a sink full of tiny hairs. I pull out the bulk of it for the trash , but some still goes down the drain. That combined with all the soap lather I guess builds up over time. I just clear out the drain with a plunger and it's good to go.

I use a drain snake on the shower drain once a week or so. My hair is long and, despite our best efforts to prevent it, some of it gets into the drain. Once a month we use an enzyme-based product to reduce the accumulation of gunk (soap residue, body oils, etc.) on all of the drains. That's the shower, 2 bathroom sinks and the kitchen sink.

I've always poured a bit of bleach down the drain every few weeks. Seems to work fine as I've never had a backup in the bathroom sink in the past 30 years. For the shower I bought a tool called a drain weasel. They sell them at Home Depot. Grabs all the hair in the shower drain and pulls in right back out. Only need to do that once a month.

@heysi once you pull the hair out with that thing, how do you get the hair off it?

Sara-s said:

@heysi once you pull the hair out with that thing, how do you get the hair off it?

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I guess you could pull it off. I just toss it. One and done.