From time to time, the water just stops flowing down your drain. You know the situation: you are suddenly standing in an inch of water every time you take a shower, and it takes half an hour after you’re done before the tub is dry again. When you have a clogged tub drain, all you want is for it to flow again.

Make sure that your drain is free of hair. This might seem simple, but don’t just use your eyes to do this. Put your finger or a pair of tweezers (careful not to drop them) into the drain, and feel around for globs of hair. Sometimes these get stuck just inside the mouth of the drain, where they aren’t visible. A big gross wad of hair means you are in luck, though you might not feel like it while you’re holding it.

If there’s no visible or reachable wad of hair in the drain, it’s time to deal with clogs further down the line. The first thing to try is lots of hot water. Use the tap first, and if this shows no improvement, graduate to boiling water from your stove-top, microwave or teakettle. Sometimes this will sufficiently loosen the clog to allow it to wash away.

A natural method that’s worth trying is pouring baking soda and vinegar down the drain. The mixture reacts and bubbles fiercely, and this agitation might be enough to loosen clogs stuck in the pipe. To do this, pour the baking soda down the drain first, then pour in lots of vinegar. Let it bubble itself out, then wash it down with hot water. Repeat if necessary.

After trying natural methods of drain cleaning, people are faced with a choice that many do not even know about. Most people go straight to the caustic cleaners. But caustic cleaners are harsh on the environment, and potentially hazardous to pets and children living in the household. So you might want to consider purchasing a drain snake.

Drain snakes are long pieces of flexible metal coiled tubing that can be threaded down into a pipe. They have bulbous heads on the ends, also made of wire coils, which either clear the clog or grab it and pull it out. They are worked into a pipe by turning a handle. Snakes can be purchased at almost any home supply store.

Some tubs have permanent hair traps built into the drain. If that’s the case in your tub, you won’t be able to thread the drain snake down the pipe. Some of the hair traps that look permanent actually aren’t, so make sure that yours is truly permanent. If it is, you might need to unscrew the plate covering the overflow drain, and thread the pipe down that way.

After you’ve tried everything, the last option is a plumber. Don’t feel bad that you couldn’t do it yourself– some clogs just need equipment or expertise that the average person doesn’t have. Plumbers have expertise in the subject of a clogged tub drain, and also have tools that you or I don’t own and wouldn’t know how to use if we did.

Sometimes you just need to fix a clogged tub drain for expert drain cleaning in San Francisco

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