Hi everyone!
It's Jeff with Home Repair Tutor, and today I'm going to share with you how to unclog
a bathtub drain the right way so that you don't have to deal with soap scum building
up on the sides of the bathtub and water will actually drain down into the pipes.
So let's get to it.
Okay, you want to place some paper towel over the bathtub drain because you're going to
remove the screws from the overflow valve here, okay?
The last thing you need is for a screw to fall down the drain.
Once you remove the screws, you can pull out the lever and the plunger, okay?
Now sometimes the plunger has hair all over it.
In this case, it does not, which means that the clog is down in the drain.
Now you have to remove the screen.
If there isn't hair on your lever, what you can do is reach down in.
That means that the clog's a little bit higher up in the pipe.
Fish down in there with needle nose pliers.
As you can see, I'm just pulling out tons and tons of hair, okay?
All right.
So all this hair was down in where this tub shoe is.
And the tub shoe runs to the front of the bathtub and then down into a P Trap or a drum
trap.
Hopefully though, it doesn't make it that far.
You just yank it out.
Now you could also use a special tub removal tool to remove this drain so that you can
fish down in there a little bit better.
But I didn't have to do that today which is a good thing.
Obviously you want to discard all the old hair into a bag.
Get a few other paper towels to clean this up.
Before you put anything back all together, always test to see if water drains properly.
Run the water for about a minute or two.
If you really want to be safe, run it for 5 minutes and see if it drains.
Looks a lot better.
Totally draining.
And that's how you save $70 - $90 on a plumber's call.
But I'll show you how to put everything back together.
Again, so what you do is just put your screen back in place.
Put your screw back down in.
Tighten it.
I would never use a drill or an impact driver to tighten the screw.
You could break it, and you could break the tub show as well.
You want to take your overflow valve and the plunger on the end of it.
Make sure there's no hair, grime in there.
Just clean that off if you can, okay, with toilet paper—which I obviously did not—because
the grime that's in it, through it, and whatnot, sometimes that catches hair and all kinds
of muck and yucky stuff.
Stick the plunger down into the waste pipe, the overflow pipe, okay?
Oh, before I do that, I wanted to show you that there are two holes here, okay, where
these screws go that hold the trim kit in place.
And there's also a washer here that butts up against the back of your bathtub.
Just make sure that that washer's in halfway decent shape 'cause that's what prevents water.
If water would ever overflow into this overflow valve, you want it to go down that pipe and
not behind the bathtub, and the washer prevents that from happening.
So line up the screw by hand with the hole in the overflow pipe in the back.
Just tighten it a little bit.
Oops!
Take the other screw and do the same thing.
Don't over-tighten this too much.
Just enough to make sure that that seal is compressed.
And that's how you unclog a bathtub the right way.
So I hope that this video helped you out.
Let me know in the comments section.
And make sure you visit HomeRepairTutor.com.
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tips for your own home improvement projects.
So that's it.
Take care.
Have a great day!
[Outtakes] ...to save yourself $90!