If drain cleaners are not working in a shower or bathtub drain, the problem might be higher up.
The shower drain in my long-haired teenage daughter's bathroom was plugged so badly she ended up standing in water up to her ankles when she took a shower. I tried all kinds of drain cleaners, to no avail. Then one day, I took the grate off the top of the drain so that I could look down with a flashlight and possibly see something. What a surprise: I could only see a couple of inches down! The crossbars in the pipe, like a plus sign about two inches down, were completely covered with hair!
I used needle-nose pliers to pull out a wad of long hairs as thick as my thumb, that was draped over the crossbars, hanging down like a fringe, almost completely blocking the pipe where drain cleaners had no effect.
I bought a gadget that works like a charm to get hair clogs out of drains. It is a long plastic thing with little teeth along the sides. The teeth are like little v's that point downward. The whole thing is about 2 or 3 feet long. You stick it down the drain, till it stops and then pull back up. The teeth grab the hair and all the slimy gunk attached to the hair. Clean off the stick and repeat a couple of times. You have a really clean drain.
In a household with 3 females with long hair, we continually have problems. I have found that a long crochet hook works best for me. It's easiest to fit down the drain, we just take off the grill and use the hook and hook the hair.
my hubby has to retrieve my hair from the shower drain about once a month. He uses a long screwdriver to scoop it out. He said "I must love you if I am doing this" and laughs! He has an aversion to loose wet hair!
They make a neat little gadget designed to stop hair from entering the drain. One is a "cup" like thingy, it sits in the drain, and one is a "dome" type thingy, it sits outside the drain. I have never had to purchase drain cleaner thanks to this device. They make a drain basket for kitchens too, for those of us without garbage disposals.
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