Top Causes
Hair and dirt
Just like in our sink drain, hair and dirt are the top causes of a floor drain clog. When you’re not in the habit of cleaning your bathroom and laundry area, especially the drain, you can expect a choked bathroom drain soon enough.
Needless to say, hair strands are some of the top causes of clogging inside the bathroom. With the amount of hair passing through and getting caught in the floor drain every day, it’s not hard to imagine how they cause bathroom clogging in Singaporean households.
Hair fall is not abnormal in any human being. In fact, it normally happens every day to even a completely healthy person. Every time hair fall happens when you take a shower, it will fall on the floor trap and can potentially cause a clog. The same holds true with bodily dirt that goes into the drain when you take a shower.
All these accumulated hair and dirt over time will build up and damage the floor drain, so it’s important to regularly clean the floor drain at least once a week to remove hair and dirt and prevent them from causing a clog. Should the choking elevate to a much worse level, you may not have a choice but to call floor drain Singapore pros who remove high-level clogs in households.
Corrosion
When our drainage pipes get all rusty and old, there’s a high risk of corrosion. The composition of the pipe itself including the body and the fittings connected to it will deteriorate and crack, leaving the inside of the pipe corroded. When this happens, the bits and pieces can clog the pipe network and a floor drain choke.
If your home plumbing pipes are mainly made out of copper, expect corrosion to happen more often than in households with pipes that are not made out of copper. These days, some households and buildings choose to install PVC pipes rather than copper pipes for some parts of their plumbing system because these plastic-based pipes are non-corrosive and are less prone to pipe choke.
Copper pipes, on the other hand, although much durable and long-lasting, are corrosive. Corrosion happens when the water temperature is too high, when there is presence of oxygen and when there are water temperature spikes. Since copper pipes come in contact with water (H2o) all the time as carriers of water supply in households, there will always be corrosion to expect sooner or later. The residue from corrosion can then accumulate and cause pipe choke that rises up to the floor trap.
Broken pipes
Surprisingly, we encounter cases where the floor drain gets clogged because of foreign materials entering the holes and cracks of broken pipes. This can happen to any old plumbing pipes that have never been inspected or repaired ever.
In landed properties here in Singapore, broken pipes has a higher risk of causing clogs in the floor trap or in any part of the plumbing network for that matter. The reason is that broken pipes underneath the floors or buried somewhere on the ground usually come in contact with soil, plant or tree roots and other foreign materials that can enter the breakage or holes of the pipes and cause clogging.
But even when the pipes are not in contact with soil and are installed in HDBs and apartment units, there’s still a risk of clogging due to broken pipes because wood and internal wall components can be the foreign materials that enter the pipe breakages.
Sewer line clogs
Sometimes, the problem is neither with the pipes nor with any waste clogging the floor drain. A floor trap choke can be a result of a deeper problem, like a clogged sewer line. This trouble is kind of advanced and may require the help of floor trap plumbing or expert sewer contractor Singapore.
When your sewer line is clogged by some foreign material or due to internal corrosion inside the pipes that lead to sewers, this problem can be serious. It can even be considered a plumbing emergency. Why? Because when pipes or plumbing lines that lead to the sewers are clogged, there is no way for waste water to get drained. The only thing that can happen is for the waste water to go back up to your water supply line.
This plumbing emergency can be revealed a clogged floor trap where the waste water is not being drained, but instead goes back up into the bathroom. When serious problems such as a clogged sewer line is the issue, you better ask for help from a sewer contractor Singapore.
DIY Solution
It’s hard to ignore a floor trap choke because it will soon cause a bigger problem if left unresolved. Bandaid solutions simply won’t do to eliminate clogs in bathroom water drain. So here are some safe and effective tips that you can apply at the first sign of slow water drainage of your floor trap.
No to chemicals
Let us tell you first that it would be best to avoid using commercial cleaners with harsh chemicals when trying to solve a choked bathroom drain. These harsh cleaning products can cause pipe breakage because of their very strong composition.
We’ve earlier talked about corrosion of copper pipe. The common cause of this is the use of harsh chemicals with heavy acids when cleaning the bathroom. Every time you use these harsh chemicals, some components of the bathroom water drain and the pipes underneath are getting damaged. Better use natural ingredients in cleaning and disinfecting the bathroom to avoid risking the integrity and strength of your plumbing system.
Plunger
Every household should keep a plunger in the basement. This is the first and only solution needed for a floor trap that is beginning to clog. Just use the plunger with a 10-15 second interval until the gunk causing the clog finally comes out.
In the early stages of floor trap choke, you don’t need to resort to complicated solutions. Simple use your good old plunger and let it handle the job. Remember the magic done by our moms and dads on how to clear choked sink? Have they not always used our home’s good old plunger to eliminate any sink or bathroom water drain clogs? Even floor drain Singapore contractors use a plunger when they perform plumbing jobs. A plunger is always useful to eliminate small particles that clog the sink or cause a floor trap choke or an HDB kitchen floor trap choke.
Snake
If you didn’t get any luck using the plunger, the cause of the clog may have hardened enough that a simple plunger cannot get it out.
Your next resort would be a plumber’s snake that can get into the deeper part of the drain pipes to carry the hardened gunk up to the surface.
The simple way to use the plumber’s snake is to try to reach the bottom of the drain until you feel the hardened gunk attaching to the apparatus. Once you feel an indication that the hardened dirt is finally held by the snake, try to firmly pull it out. The deeper that the snake went inside the drain, the more challenging it is to pull out the dirt firmly upwards.
Baking soda-vinegar
Some stubborn gunk just wouldn’t go out using the plumber’s snake, so try softening the pile of waste that clogs your drain and causes a choked bathroom drain using a natural, yet powerful combination.
This combination has been used for many years and has been passed down from generation to generation. This is the good old mix of baking soda and vinegar that are both powerful agents in eliminating bathroom water drain clogs. Just pour out this mix of natural ingredients down the drain. Leave it for 10 seconds so that mixture can finally reach the accumulated dirt or gunk at the bottom of the pipe or on the side of the pipe. After 10 to 15 seconds, you can pour out the hot water next.
This method of clearing the floor trap plumbing clog can melt the accumulated dirt and solve your floor trap choke issue. Of course, not all causes of pipe choke can be eliminated by this natural mixture. There are certain heightened bathroom water drain problems that can only be solved by floor drain Singapore contractors.
Our Experience
For over two decades, Kiasuplumber has been solving heightened and worsened floor trap choke for households in Singapore. This has always been a constant problem in different parts of Singapore and some cases have escalated to a water back flow and a toilet flood. When this confronts our hdb plumbers, we know just what to bring and what to do to get the main cause of the choke and remove it completely.
