Fighting a clogged drain can be anything from annoying to a nightmare, but it is never fun.

Consider you're taking a shower and when you turn the water off you notice the tub has filled up a bit. Leave it alone and a week later when you get out of the shower there is an inch of water slowly draining away. This has got to be the absolute best possible scenario for a clogged drain, but it's still something you have to go out of your way and deal with or else it will keep getting worse.

The ultimate clogged drain is when the trap becomes full. For those who may not know, the trap is basically the ultimate drain for your home. It's usually located at the lowest point in your basement and all waste water goes through it on the way out of your home. Think of it as the anti-water main. This is usually a fair sized pipe but eventually anything can get clogged. When this does, bad things are likely to happen.

First indication of a clogged trap is usually backup from the drain in your basement basin sink, whether any kind of single basin sinks, double or triple basin sinks.  The backup can go up into other parts of your home though, and eventually will. The worst case for trap backup is having a side effect of toilet backup. Not only does that tend to be incredibly unpleasant, but it will keep happening again and again no matter how many times you plunge because the problem is not with the toilet itself but rather the pipes going out of your home.

In general, there are two ways to deal with these problems and anything in between. Neither solution requires a plumber, which is a good thing. The first solution is to buy a liquid drain cleaner. Don't get the cheap one, get the more expensive one. I'll explain why: Look at the instructions on the side of the bottle. Usually you will see something like this: the expensive bottle says to use 2 or 3 capfuls per day, the cheap stuff says to use half a bottle. Or something close to that. In short, the cheap one isn't really cheap because it's diluted and you have to use more of it. They even tell you as much in the instructions.

So  buy the liquid drain cleaner and follow the instructions. They usually recommend a course of several days. Do that. If problems still persist it may be time to get your hands dirty. It's easy. Just buy a snake at the hardware store (it's a really long piece of coiled metal) and shove it down the drain or into the trap. You may want to wait a while or run the water a bit if you've been using drain cleaner. Wear rubber gloves and don't stick your hands in unless you have to. When in doubt, run the water to dilute any cleaner still in the pipes and wait a few days.
Here is a video that may help...

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