**The Importance of Maintaining Your Plumbing System**

Maintaining your plumbing system is crucial to prevent clogs and backups. One common issue that can cause problems is a buildup of debris, such as hair and soap scum, which can accumulate in the pipes and lead to clogs. When dealing with clogged drains, it's essential to understand how to clear them effectively.

**Understanding the Anatomy of Your Drain**

The first step in clearing a clog is to understand the anatomy of your drain system. The drain system consists of several components, including the P-trap, which is a curved pipe that traps water and prevents sewer gases from entering the home. The P-trap is typically located under the sink and can be accessed by removing the sink drain assembly.

**The Importance of the Cleanup**

A crucial part of clearing a clog is to find the cleanup, also known as the "cleanout" or "trap." This is usually located near the sink or toilet and is used to access the P-trap. The cleanout allows you to insert a plunger or plumbing snake into the pipe to clear blockages.

**Using Power Tools to Clear Clogs**

One of the most effective ways to clear clogs is by using power tools, such as plungers and plumbing snakes. When dealing with a clog, it's essential to locate the cleanout first, as this will determine where you insert the plunger or plumbing snake. It's also crucial to use the correct tool for the job, as some tools can push debris further into the pipe rather than clearing it.

**The Use of Hydraulic Force**

A specialized tool called a "hydraulic force" device is used to clear clogs by filling the pipe with water and creating pressure that forces the blockage down the drain. This device is specifically designed for clearing stubborn clogs and can be effective in accessing areas that are difficult to reach.

**The Dangers of Using Chemicals**

While chemicals may seem like an easy solution to clearing clogs, they can actually make the problem worse. Chemicals can damage pipes and cause harm to people who need to come after the clog has been cleared. It's always best to use mechanical solutions, such as plungers and plumbing snakes, rather than relying on chemicals.

**The Importance of Regular Maintenance**

Regular maintenance is key to preventing clogs from occurring in the first place. This includes running hot water through your drains regularly to help clear debris, using a drain screen or filter to catch hair and other particles before they go down the drain, and considering having your pipes professionally inspected and cleaned every few years.

**A Word of Caution**

When dealing with clogged drains, it's essential to be aware of the potential risks involved. Using the wrong tool or technique can push debris further into the pipe rather than clearing it, leading to more severe problems down the line. It's also crucial to follow safety guidelines when working with power tools and chemicals.

**Conclusion**

Clearing clogs from your plumbing system requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and caution. By understanding the anatomy of your drain system, using the correct tools and techniques, and following safety guidelines, you can effectively clear clogs and maintain a functioning plumbing system. Remember to always prioritize mechanical solutions over chemicals and regular maintenance to prevent clogs from occurring in the first place.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enon AIS old house our experts travel across the country to answer questions about your house today on tool lab we'll break down battery voltages then we'll repair a wood burning fireplace and show you how to replace its cover and from sinks to to drains to toilets how to handle some of the most common clogs around the house just go in right here down through the Trap and then you'll clear it all that on ask This Old House Battery Technology has really changed a lot over the past few years since we've used those first small cordless screwdrivers those started off as being nikad batteries then we changed technology to nickel metal hydride so finally mostly everything we use now is lithium ion so let's go ahead take a look under the hood and show you how these work so let's take a look and see what's inside some of these batteries so some of the old ones that we used to use simply had two pins positive and negative and they tie into a group of cells in the bottom arranging in order to get a specific voltage very very simple but outdated technology in today's world we have that same grouping of cells but we also have a circuit board on top and what this does is it gives us better use of the cells it's more efficient it helps the tool from overheating or causing an issue it also gives us something as simple as the display on the front to show us how much of a charge is left but all this can get a little confusing we see 18vt we see 12vt what does it all really mean if we look at this we can see we have five cells in here 3.6 volts each totaling 18 volts if you look inside this one we have three cells same thing 3.6 vol each even though it's a 12vt rated battery that only adds up to 10.8 how does that make sense well let's grab a meter we'll take a look at some of these batteries and give you an explanation so let's start by taking our meter and putting it on one of the 20 volt rated batteries we'll put one terminal on the negative one on the positive and we get 20.67% 20.27% the next big difference is amp hours amp hour is basically the amount of current that's available for this so we can see with this this is a 2 Amp Hour rated battery we have our five cells in this configuration it's giving us our 18 usable volts 2 Amp hours same manufacturer double the cells same voltage at 18 volts 4 amp hours twice the output can be run in a larger tool or run for a longer period of time so an example is using a cordless drill like this this current one has an 8 a hour battery in it will run for a really really long time give us plenty of power but they make a bigger version that's really meant for larger tools it does fit you can use it but I can't imagine holding this all day and trying to drill holes or use anything it's way too heavy it's just Overkill and not necessary batteries like this are really meant for bigger tools like the table saws circular saws other large cordless things so if we put a small battery in this yes it'll turn but it really won't be able to do anything it needs the power the amp hours behind this battery to actually let it operate so let's load these batteries in grab a piece of wood and show you what we mean so we can see these two batteries fully charged unused at all and if we turn them we can see they're both the same rating 18 volts but obviously you can tell one is significantly larger than the other this one's meant for heavier Duty tools like this this something more for a smaller drill but let's show you how this actually works so we'll install it into the drill and see just how far we can get as you can see on highp speed not very far same voltage will work in the tool but we just don't have the power we need to actually make this work we'll leave this right where it is we'll take this one out we'll put the battery that's really made for this tool in let's see what we get now what a difference so you can see the difference in using the smaller 18volt battery versus the larger 18volt battery even though it operates the same drill the amp hours are nowhere near the same you really need something like this to turn the drill like this uh I know this is a drastic comparison you normally wouldn't use this in this type of drill but I wanted to show the difference in why you have those ratings going from anywhere from two all the way up to 12 some larger so when you're picking something in the middle you know what you're picking and you hopefully know what you're going to really get out of it homeowners don't necessarily need to go crazy with some of these drills or some of these batteries a lot of the simple 12 to 24volt systems will work just fine but there are occasions where you're going to need something bigger and you may see something bigger out there especially if you have something like an electric lawnmower with that being said it's really amazing how far things have come since I used that first Corless screwdriver that could barely install a receptacle and now with technology evolving the way it is who knows what's to come in the future hey Mark Hey Kevin good to see you welcome you too thank you thanks for having me yeah so let's uh show you what we emailed you about all right that's the fireplace this is the fireplace all right great so we've been in the house for about 5 years and we love having wood burning fires but we're a little worried about how the doors function um they're kind of a pain the flu kind of sticks on us doesn't operate so great um and we're not sure about the safety of the whole thing we've never really gotten that checked out so we're hoping you could help us out all right to be honest with you the first thing I see is something that's good so I'm actually going to grab a drop cloth we'll spread it out and we'll check out what you have great all right all right so Kevin I've actually seen a couple good things you can see this back wall this burn pattern you see how it goes into a semicircle just like that yep that tells me is the fire is burning at its hottest down low which is what it's supposed to be okay it's about 800 to 1200° down here as you get up here it's about 600 and by the time this Smoke Gets Out of your chimney at the top it's just hot air so um Kevin do you have a flashlight handy maybe in your phone so I saw a couple other things another good thing is the fire brick in this Firebox is in great condition but unfortunately as I look up into the flu and a little bit onto the damper I see Creo which has to be removed so make a note to yourself call a chimney sweep when we're done and get that out of there all they do is they scrub it off and it comes right off sure um and what else I see is there are basically two type of dampers out there a poker damper which is just a a cast iron extension and that'll poke the door up and open it that way what you have is what we call a rotary damper and that acts as a cork screw so when you twist this the cork screw inside will push the door open and that's how the Smoke Gets out there so other than that we have the door yes so the door as you can tell it tends to get stuck but we like the safety aspect of them because we do have a dog and we like the fact that it keeps all the fire where the fire supposed to be and then the damper itself really has two options either always open or always close okay because it kind of just Falls right off just falls off yeah this handle this knob if you will actually has to come off for us to take this door off and install a new one anyway so uh why don't we just take this door off and that way we can get into it and start working sounds good all right let's go I'll start on this side usually sometimes these rust or the soot builds up on them but we got lucky this is a wing nut and they're pretty loose yeah not too hard right I got one out let's get a little jiggle going yep there it is okay excellent there's the post we were expecting that that's intact so that's another good sign depending on how big our next door is we might have to do a little paint but that's no big deal so why don't we close these doors and what I like to do is just drop this door in the middle of this tarp okay roll it up and then we just walk her out perfect all right watch those doors Kev you don't want the open that's why we have the tape all right so here's our door what I want to do is commend you on the measuring that you did because this door actually fits perfectly um we are looking at a standard opening this is 36 in so most fireplaces in the country start at this size they can be bigger they can be smaller but a standard is 36 so uh great job picking the door out measurements are very critical and uh I'd say we start with that insulation that you have over there to your right sure let's do it all right so we're going to cut this insulation all around these openings right here this insulation is going to absorb some of the Heat which is going to allow this new cover to expand with the Heat this is also going to close up the gap between the brick and the new cover okay and again we want to get under the bracket this is going to give us what they call a thermal breake all right the next thing are these clamps this is just a te clamp it's going to go through our l we're going to back screw it and it'll keep the the door tight okay but all we do for install is we just put them in vertically and give it a Twist and that's it we just locked it in horizontally now we're going to take the bottom clamp slide it right into its bracket lay it flat and that's how that pressure point will clamp right into the brick great all right let's get this up watch that glass now we're just going to twist it in nice all right so Kevin if you want to dive in there I'll hold the door in place sure and you can start with the clips now this is the T bracket make sure it wraps around that lentil which is that piece of Steel that's right above you okay all right should be good great all right to get out of there Kevin we'll throw the Le on it okay doesn't get much better than that all right Kevin one more problem it's probably the biggest problem we had the knob and what I'm going to do for that is you can see that I have a little putty and this is epoxy putty but I want to mix this putty until I get a consistent color you can see I have the black and the gray yep well I want to mix that all together once I get one color I know I'm ready to go epoxy putty is an easy expensive way to fix a sticky or stripped rotary damper all right can you hand me the knob sure now we're not going to need too much epoxy and just for Aesthetics I'm going to start the knob pointing down perfect but what I'm going to do right now Kevin is I'm going to take a little bit of tape keep this tape on for 24 hours and that's just going to keep this knob in place while it sets up so we have one more item to show you that's a regulator pay attention to that once the Fire gets going before I leave though let's start a small fire all right let's do it all right let's go excellent all right nice mark this looks awesome uh I think we're definitely going to have way more fires now and the doors really make me feel really safe about having our dog around it so I think this is just perfect all right well I'm glad I could help and as long as you're going to use that more was definitely worth wor a trip awesome well thanks so much Mark I appreciate it you got it Kevin thanks all right look at this Richard literally everything but the kitchen sink actually just about so I thought we would just take a minute and go over all the ways that you can actually get a stoage and then clear them and the most common quite often is the toilet stoage it usually happens when people are over we're kids it's a big deal so I thought it would make sense to start with sort of seeing what happens side of a toilet bowl this is the water line right here right and you see water right here but people don't realize I don't think that there's a passageway that comes up here goes up this little short leg and then down through this really convoluted path you notice it gets slightly smaller as you go down here so if this had solid waste and paper jammed in right here and you tried to take a plunger and just push it you actually could work against yourself and you could compress it so the tip I want to give on a plunger is get it seated right here push down a little bit little bit little bit just to get a seal and then pull it back the other way so now you're going to actually draw that starage up a little bit just to break it up and then it you get clear not always though no they make an a tool expressly for clearing these things so if you took a regular wire and just tried to clear this you would scrape this chiner so This is called a closet augur so if you see right here there's a protective coating right here on this arm now what you do is you advance this gently up through it'll just pass through here clearing any stoppage so the action would be like this and somewhere inside the guts that's right just that wire going yeah push it push it okay it has a hook on it so it's sort of like fishing Kev not my kind of fishing Richard but oh I got one but you know you're a plumber I get it that's right all right so now on a laboratory we can start the attack with a on the lavatory with a plunger right but there's one important call out and that is if you look right here on any laboratory that's legal it's supposed to have a thing called an overflow right here it might be at the front it might be at the back like this uh but what happens is if we now put a plunger on it and there's a stoppage below it what's going to happen is every bit of the force you do here could come right out at you so it's really important to block this off so that all that hydraulic Force going down and not out at you and typically when we're getting these clogs they are in the Trap quite often here's the typical sort of cross-section underneath the sink you've got a popup assembly on a laboratory you got this linkage right here this is a place where hair will often clog sure often times you can take apart the Trap and dump it out and see what's going on but many times you've got to come down you pull this out and you got to come down with a wire like so similar to your clock it augur over there this is going to just push it drive it down and you just Advance it gently there's a there's an advance right here so you do a little then you lock it you just keep on advancing driving it down through but you're not done yet just imagine this trap is right here so you get down through the pop-up assembly down through the Trap and you come to here now in a lavatory it might be just a short line right here and the wire has a choice to go you hope down where the stoage might be cuz that's where the liquid's going correct but if it's plum prop there's a a line that goes up and ultimately out through the roof so that's the vent you hope that by gravity the tip of the wire would go this way it doesn't you just keep doing it and doing it or you bend the wire and you so and sometimes you have to cut it and put a clean out in okay similar on a disposer and so now with this you have to take this apart and find a way to get the wire down in here gotcha I do want to call out one thing on a laboratory though you think it was hard to get the wire to go this way I showed you this because this is how what is this well you know this bathrooms that have two Laboratories and this might be this might be the way that the plumber roughed it in okay so you you come down through here with the wire where does it go over here over here and it comes comes waving to you out the other sink when it really wants to go here okay so if the original plumber cared at all about us they would have done this so that the wire do you see this the wire would have no no choice but to go here and this is actually not legal in many many jurisic got so it's it's literally just a highway for the wire now it actually will put it going in the right direction that's right so it won't go up the vent okay very cool all right so that's Laboratories and this is also the drain now in a bathtub bathtub you can use a plunger but the same rules apply that was over here at the laboratory because this is an overflow right here right so if you did this you'd have to pull this plate off block this off let me hold it up yet so so right now this is the bottom of the tub right here this is the and this is the part you'd see in the tub right here valves up here here's here's that mechanism to do it you take that off you do this and so if you do this you got to block this off and then the force of that plunger would push this way right okay but what people make the mistake is they take the wire and they go in here yep it's no different so it's G it can come back waving at again I I don't understand how you even made it through a career puming it must have driven you absolutely crazy so really want to do this you want to come down this way oh so don't go through the train no you don't go through that you come down through here and then just gently Advance gently Advance tighten this up and just come down and you come right down through the Trap and then you'll clear it cuz again I think it's important for people to realize that the clog is not typically here no the Trap it's going to be in the Trap often times which is always down here now there can be hair in the in the mechanism so I mean that could be here and so is that from the Personal Collection I just brought it from home is actually I don't have any more here to lose all right so that's an important tip to come down this way okay and this is all the stuff that's going to be up at the fixture where the Trap is yeah but sooner or later it goes down to the basement or down below into a larger pipe and so at this point you may have to step up from a little wire like this to get a more a bigger power wire and so at every change of Direction every time water comes down here and turns this way by code it's supposed to have a cleanup okay okay so this clean out now becomes a place that a wire could go in here and I want to make this point you if you run a wire in there you really want to find a way to run that wire and run it in there and also run water down the drain because if you looked inside of a a long kitchen sink drain and if you looked you'd probably see the bottom quarter or bottom third just filled with with solid waste and so if you just ran a wire in there a little bit it wouldn't necessarily flush it or clean it you really have to find a way to run the wire bang it around inside disturb it loosen it and let the water run throughout the whole thing okay so that's that's really important and then I want to call out something that's pretty interesting isn't this a for a water hammer well no it looks like it you've been paying attention what is this thing so this is going to use the power of hydraulic Force so with this coming through our cleanup right you take this off you you connect this to a hose and you would put it down inside here as far as you want it to go go say you want to get down to this point so we're driving it Downstream this is specifically made for clearing clouds absolutely so now what it's going to do is it's going to fill up right the water's going to pressurize this and make it fill not you can't fit that one it's going to fill up that void yeah but look what's at the end little hole oh so now that would pressurize and seal off right here no water's coming out no it would it wouldn't come this way and now this small hole would now pressurize and force water down to where the clog is okay so this actually has some advantage to get into places I will caution you if you've got ancient galvanized piping you're now putting pressure where there hasn't been any pressure for a long time so you could expose a leak but it's it would be a way to sort of easily push that clog down the down street that's unbelievable so there are a lot of places where you can go wrong but there are a lot of solutions to making it go right that's right so what most people want to do is do this they want to put some chemic down there I just want to put a caution out to you if you have a real stoppage this chemical is not going to make a difference it's only going to add to danger for the people that do have to come along afterwards right there so what do you think never use it's if you have maybe on an ongoing basis to sort of get organic matter that might be there but nothing beats the mechanical solution to clean the wire flush it and keep that pipe clean and and you know and this also if left in there I've seen it where it sits in that long horizontal old pipe and it eats away at the bottom of that pipe and most importantly you can't go fishing with this you can't okay all right is that cover it that's it thank you very much thank you next time on ask this old house we'll look back at 20 years of Tom Silva on ask this old house I grew up in this stuff 3 4 years old following dad around with a hammer then we'll tell you everything you need to know about smart electrical panels and Nathan and Jen will team up to build and fill new window boxes to help bring some natural beauty to an urban landscape on ask This Old House oh\n"