Plumber pro tips: Don’t try to flush away your secrets

The toilet should only be a receptacle for bodily waste and toilet paper. That’s it. Even less should go down a drain.

People’s refusal to follow these simple rules makes finding all manner of objects in people’s pipes routine for plumbers. “After so many years,” says David Mizrahi, owner of Capitol Handyman and Plumbing in Washington, D.C., “I don’t get surprised anymore.”

Here are some of the most common situations that keep plumbers busy all day.

Your secrets

Just because you flush something down the toilet or toss it down the drain doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. In fact, it could very easily come back to haunt your plumbing — and you.

“We know more about people than they know about their own spouses and kids,” says Shary Moxley, owner of Shary’s Plumbing in Monrovia, Md. “Believe me, we’ve pulled stuff out that other people were not aware was in that house. … If it could be found, we find it.”

Among the items people often try unsuccessfully to flush: cotton swabs, dental floss and tampons. Also: condoms, underwear and other contraband that those doing the flushing presumably hope will disappear into the deep blue forever.

Mitch Smedley, owner of Smedley Plumbing in Blue Springs, Mo., once got a call from a woman who returned home after a few days away and found the toilet in the primary bathroom clogged. Smedley went there to auger the pipes and found that flushed condoms and feminine products were to blame. When the customer asked what had caused the blockage, he told her. “And her husband starts backing out of the room very slowly,” says Smedley.

Hair

In the land of bathroom drains, the biggest villain is hair. Once the strands get tangled into the drain, they trap soaps, shampoos and gels, building up into a clog. Your best bet is to prevent the hair from going down there in the first place with a drain protector that you can empty into the trash after each shower or bath.

If your drain is already clogged with hair, there are easy ways to try to fix it. You can get a tool called a “hair snake” — a long plastic device with barbs coming out of it — at just about any hardware store. Wind it down the drain and, when you pull it back up, it should bring gunky clumps along with it.

When customers tell Smedley they’ve got a slow-draining tub, he advises them to take the stopper off the drain, then check to see if there’s a knot of hair just beneath it. If the hair is visible, he tells them to stick a cotton swab into it and start twisting (like a fork in spaghetti). It might take two or three swabs to get it all, but you’ll save yourself a visit from the plumber.

The bathroom sink is also vulnerable. When it comes to double vanities, says Smedley, “it’s usually the guy’s sink that gets plugged up with a whole bunch of sludge,” which he attributes to shaving cream and hair. The best way to avoid those clogs is to close the sink drain during a shave, then wipe up the refuse and throw it in the trash.

Excessive drain cleaner

Some DIY solutions, though, can be quite problematic. Chemical drain cleaners such as Drano can work as a short-term fix for getting rid of a clog, but, because they’re so corrosive, they might cause leaks in the joints of pipes, or other longterm damage. If you use one of these products and still need to call a plumber, be sure to warn them: The liquid could still be in the plumbing line and lead to chemical burns on a worker’s hands, arms or face.

Plumbers also advise against toilet tablets, with chlorine or bleach as their active ingredient. The in-tank cleaners can damage inner workings.

‘Flushable’ wipes aren’t

One concern has floated to the top of the tank for plumbers over the past few years: “flushable wipes.” Turns out, they’re not so flushable. “They don’t dissolve like toilet paper does,” says Doug Wyman, owner of Wyman Plumbing and Mechanical in Phoenix. “They get caught up in the drain going down to the main city sewer and they cause a lot of problems.

“We tell our customers not to use them,” he says. “And if you do enjoy using them, then I wouldn’t put them in the toilet.” Trash them instead.