Many people who have problems with their plumbing reach for a bottle of drain cleaner before doing anything else. On the one hand, this is perfectly understandable; pouring some Drano down a stopped-up sink is about as simple as drain cleaning gets. On the other hand, these products contain harsh chemicals that can damage your plumbing and lead to severe problems down the road if they are overused. Here are just a few reasons why it’s better to contact Tony's Plumbing the Drain Expert instead of resorting to pouring chemicals down your drain.
Chemical Drain Cleaners Are Highly Toxic
Many of the chemicals in commercial drain cleaners — especially off-brand cleaners — give off toxic fumes that linger after the cleaner itself has gone down the drain. These fumes irritate your nose and eyes, and at their worst, they can even sting when they are inhaled. The cleaners themselves can be harmful or fatal if swallowed, so they should always be kept out of reach of children when you have them in your home.
When a clog is severe, it is more than likely that water will remain stagnant in a sink, toilet, or shower. If chemical drain cleaners are added to the water, they will not reach the clog, yet they will pose a serious risk to you and your family’s health. Fumes and the threat of being splashed with hydrochloric acid — a key ingredient in many drain cleaners — pose an imminent danger to anyone in the vicinity.
Chemical Drain Cleaners Can Erode Your Pipes
Chemical drain cleaners are incredibly caustic; they have to be able to break up stubborn clogs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for your pipes if you rely on chemicals to fix every plumbing problem you have. The main active ingredient in many cleaners is hydrochloric acid, an incredibly harsh substance that can erode the pipes in your home, especially older pipes or PVC plumbing systems. You won’t notice this damage immediately, but over time you may notice that your metal pipes develop leaks, while PVC pipes will become soft.
Chemical Drain Cleaners Are Bad for the Environment
After you use a drain cleaner from a plastic bottle, said bottle will always have some chemical residue left inside. When these bottles end up in a landfill, that residue can cause damage to the environment. The one bottle of drain cleaner that you use may not make much of a difference, but try to imagine millions of people using a harsh chemical drain cleaner and throwing out their bottles. That kind of pollution will add up over time.
In addition to the plastic container and residue contamination caused by pouring chemicals down the drain, once the sewer drain cleaning chemicals have run through your home’s plumbing system, they end up going into either a municipal sewer system or private sewer tank. Over time, the chemicals, even in the most negligible amounts, can have a significant impact on the environment if sewer water is not properly treated before disposal. Countless flora and fauna species can suffer substantial damage on a microscopic level when sewer drain cleaning chemicals have been introduced into a particular ecosystem. This is another reason not to pour chemicals down the drain of your home.
Future Chemical Reactions Can Be Caused by Chemical Drain Cleaners
Just as the chemicals from drain cleaners leave a residue in their plastic bottles, they also leave a residue on the sides of your pipes. Professional drain cleaning products each have their own ingredients, and using a variety of cleaners will expose your plumbing to several different chemicals. These chemicals can react with each other, sometimes violently, and in a way that will damage your plumbing.
One of the most common effects of chemical reactions due to pouring chemicals down the drain is the generation of heat. Heat is a result of the energy released when two chemicals interact with one another. Heat can be a significant threat to both new PVC plumbing systems, as well as older systems that utilize metal pipes to carry wastewater. Both polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and older metal that has lost density due to age are susceptible to the effects of heat, which produces expansion within the pipes. This is another primary reason not to pour chemicals down the drain in an attempt to clear a clog.
Chemical Drain Cleaners Don’t Always Work
Not all drain problems can be solved by pouring chemicals down the drain. If your problem has to do with your sewer line or a broken pipe, no chemical drain cleaner will fix your plumbing. All you’re doing is pouring a toxic and corrosive substance down your drains that are health and environmental hazards.
Contact Us for Environmentally-Safe Drain Cleaning Solutions
Instead of reaching for a bottle of Drain cleaner every time your drains are running too slowly, contact Tony's Plumbing first. Our professionals can suggest a safer solution to your plumbing problem rather than pouring chemicals down the drain — BioOne. This patented, economical solution eliminates waste build-up in drain lines and septic systems. Don’t waste your money pouring damaging chemical cleaners down the drain, and contact us instead for all your home drain pipe repairs.
Kommentit