What's the nastiest drain pipe you've seen?

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May 6, 2005
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San Francisco Bay Area
I know there are amateur plumbers here. I'm not thinking of toilets drains because I know they're nasty by definition.

I've recently gone through issues with a few drains, disassembled a few, and tried cleaning what I can disassemble. The one in my kitchen looked a bit nasty and somewhat smelly. Kind of a light brown, unevenly formed sludge along the vertical walls of a couple of joined pieces of polypropylene pipe. I could clean off most of it with a toothbrush, but needed scouring powder to get a somewhat harder layer cleaned off. Earlier I had taken out the polypropylene P-trap (I installed it years ago to replace a broken piece) and the submerged portion had a thin, uniform layer of brown sludge that cleaned off easily with a toothbrush and dishwashing detergent. Recently I have been using a few different bacterial/enzyme treatments, so maybe that helped a bit even if it didn't get as clean as the after photos on the label of a drain treatment. But they didn't seem to do that much for the vertical pipe above the trap.

But recently I visited my parents' house and they asked me to look at why their kitchen sink was leaking. The culprit was a corroded steel vertical pipe. Not sure why that was in there when everything else (except for the zinc nuts) was brass and plastic, but I guess that's what their plumber used.

But when I took apart the P-trap (just to clean it since I had the chance) it was kind of nasty. It had a thick, gooey black mess that seemed like old kitchen grease. It wasn't blocking anything (just kind of coating the insides), but this was nastier than anything else I'd ever seen. I think a periodic drain treatment might have helped.

Has anyone ever had anything like the before photos for these enzyme treatments? Not like a hair or food clog, but maybe something like before image here:

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I'm also somewhat skeptical that it could ever get that clean. I thought maybe closer to the before and after photos of a bottle of fuel system cleaner.
 
Grease should never go down the sink! Always keep old containers to dump your grease into and then throw it in the trash. Too many people don't know this.
 
Grease should never go down the sink! Always keep old containers to dump your grease into and then throw it in the trash. Too many people don't know this.
Neither they nor we deliberately dump grease down. However, it's kind of hard to avoid grease going down the drain from normal dish washing. I found that our secondary sewer line was plugged up (plumber said it was probably grease) and needed a professional snaking.

I have a sink without a disposal. I might let some little bits get through into the drain, like when I'm washing out coffee grounds after I've dumped as much as I could. And there are always little bits of all sorts of food that I can't just wipe up. I'm hoping monthly drain treatments help prevent the system getting plugged up again. I stopped doing that a few years ago.
 
I have always believed in doing PM by pouring the Enzyme Cleaner down my drains once a year.
It's slow acting and I let it sit over-night.

Never had a problem, but I'm always careful what goes down the drain.

Another thing to watch is your Washing Machine drain.
Make sure your filtering the waste water to catch any lint.
 
I buy the “Zep” brand of powdered enzymes from Home Depot and use it in sinks and shower drains as PM every few months.
 
I buy the “Zep” brand of powdered enzymes from Home Depot and use it in sinks and shower drains as PM every few months.
I've been using that in addition to their liquid. When I was initially having problems I got these dry bacteria/enzyme "strips" (really just sticks) that are dumped into the drain. I think they're supposed to dissolve slowly over a few days and theoretically don't need to be left alone for 6-8 hours like other treatments because they're putting out more until fully dissolved.

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The Zep powder (and similar ones from competitors) contains sawdust. It doesn't fully dissolve. My guess as to what it's supposed to do is that it holds the bacteria/enzymes and then when poured in will stick to drain sludge. Not sure how the liquid is supposed to adhere other than it just gets absorbed.

As for how clean it can get, I hear a variety of claims. The before and after photos always show an absolutely spotless drain after treatment, but I understand that's not generally what happens and it doesn't have to be devoid of any slime to function well.

If the bacteria die or get flushed away, the waste can start to build up on the pipe walls again. The bacteria never remove all of the waste from the pipe wall. There will always be a thin layer of waste left on the pipe walls. This also is true in a grease trap. If a bacterial product is injected in a grease trap to digest the wastes present, the bacteria will consume large amounts of waste, but will never completely clean a grease trap. The bacteria don’t last long enough to eat all of the waste, but they really don’t have to in order to keep the system operational.​

I've been experimenting with it to see how effective it is. I scraped up a little bit of leftover melted butter *which is typically washed down into the drain) into a small cup with warm water and I put in several drops of Zep Drain Defense liquid. It didn't seem to do that much, but maybe this isn't a real world condition. Even after it cooled, the butter was soft and solid, but that's typical at room temps anyways.

I'm thinking of maybe getting one recommended by plumbers called Bio-Clean. It's way more expensive (about $50 a can) than anything I can find at Home Depot or Lowe's, but some plumbers swear by it over anything else. Maybe Grease-X Biozyme? There are a lot of competing products out there.
 
Enzymes are slow. I would probably dump this down the drains before leaving on vacation, and let it simmer for 5 days. Can't imagine it would do much in a drain that gets used a lot.
 
Plumber next door always had me pour boiling water down the clogged drain, says it starts to breakup the soap and grease and helps the enzyme cleaner work faster. Now every time I see a drain slowing down I pour boiling water down and then boiling water over the enzymes. Usually within an hour it's draining normal.
 
I wish I had taken pictures of the one that I took out of my bathroom!

It was a 1.5'' line coming off of the vent stack. It served the tub, the bathroom sink and off of that the washing machine. The kicker?

It had to drain UP to get to the vent stack and drain. There was a 3' section that basically acted like a trap. Nasty! I have no idea how it never backed up.
 
Plumber next door always had me pour boiling water down the clogged drain, says it starts to breakup the soap and grease and helps the enzyme cleaner work faster. Now every time I see a drain slowing down I pour boiling water down and then boiling water over the enzymes. Usually within an hour it's draining normal.
Certainly boiling water helps to liquify solidified fats. When I was getting my sewer cleanout line snaked, the plumber wanted me to run hot water into the sink as he was doing it. However, he said he could only do so much and wanted upwards of $400 to hydrojet it later that week. I was OK since it was no longer backing up and I figured that bacteria/enzyme treatments would eventually help reduce the buildup and maintain the line without an expensive hydrojetting.

Heat is supposed to be what most chemical drain openers do. Most caustic drain cleaners do more than just chemically attack the clogged gunk. They're supposed to release a lot of heat. However, it might just push it out further where it cools down and solidifies elsewhere in the drain or perhaps the municipal sewer. Our sewer districts ends up cleaning a lot of sewer lines, although many seem to use assorted bacteria treatments these days.

However, I'm not sure about boiling water since most of these treatments are a combination of enzymes (for a head start) and bacteria that consume what the enzymes break down and produce more enzymes. Enzymes are proteins that are heat sensitive, and might break down in boiling water. Obviously most bacteria can't withstand boiling water. Even if you're pouring boiling water, it overall might not get that hot though. The bacteria and enzymes generally work faster when warm. Some of the recommendations I've seen are to run a good deal of warm water (to warm up the drain) before application, dissolve these solutions in warm water, and/or dump some warm water in after the application. Obviously there's going to be enough of the mixture submerged in the trap, but it also has to be exposed to the drain downstream from the trap.
 
Enzymes are slow. I would probably dump this down the drains before leaving on vacation, and let it simmer for 5 days. Can't imagine it would do much in a drain that gets used a lot.
Some claims are that the bacterial culture should be given enough time to establish itself in drain sludge so that it doesn't get washed away - at least until an eventual bacterial die off or where chunks are loosened and then flushed away.
 
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