Clogged Drain II

Here's where I can extol the benefits of both Twitter and blogging. I may not be writing a lot of blog posts at the moment, but I'm still tweeting regularly. On the other hand, it's possible to string together 3 tweets into one long thought, but blogging works so much better for that.

Last Sunday night, I put my idea to the test about unclogging my master bathroom sink drain. The first thing I did was remove the pop-up drain plug. It's pretty simple to do because the nut holding the pop-up lever in place is nylon. I can undo it with finger pressure. Pull the lever out, remove the pop-up drain plug, then re-secure the lever (otherwise water would leak out from the open nut!). Removing the plug allows the plunger to move unimpeded. (I can't claim credit for knowing this. I read it when I was googling the topic of clogged drains before my last effort.)

With the drain out, I applied myself to plunging. Hold one hand over the overflow hole (don't want the valuable pressure to come out there) and shoofa, shoofa, shoofa. I tried a good 5 or 6 times with slight improvements in flow, but not enough.

When the drain is completely open, you should be able to open both faucet valves full blast and have all the water drain out without accumulation. In this case, the water kept filling the sink after each plunging effort.

The theory I had was that enough pressure moving back and forth across the septic accretion would eventually work it loose. The concern I had was that the clog was too far away from the drain opening for the pressure from a simple plunger to work it free. I already knew the clog was nowhere in the drain from the plug back into the wall where the drain flow dropped. This meant it had to been in the wall, a good 2 feet away from the drain opening where I was plunging.

It can't be a good practice, I know, equating septic accretions in drains to food particles in teeth, but I'm not Miss Manners. When you have a piece of food stuck in your teeth with nary a toothpick in sight, you can use your fingernail, but sometimes that doesn't work. So you can suck air through your teeth to try freeing up the renegade ort. This can go on for a while, but eventually you usually sense the particle freeing up. Keep sucking enough and that bit of roast beef will eventually succumb. Burp.

It's the movement of the particle back and forth that allows it slowly to work free from the dental crevasse detaining it. My logic was that enough plunging would accomplish the same thing with my clog.

After a couple more tries with the plunger, the drain abruptly cleared. My mental efforts were vindicated. My clog problem was over. And I never paid a plumber.

I concluded last blog asserting that a success could mean I have a piece of i-candy to share with you. I've changed my mind and decided that the term "i-candy" only works well when the product is intellectual in nature--an illustration or a concept. So, no i-candy for you in this effort. Similarly the mental effort I might apply when the outcome is not physical ought not be termed "i-rumination." So I'm working on the idea of applying the term "mental mechanics" to the thinking effort. I don't have a term for the product yet. I'll let you know when I conceive one.

Next post: A return to i-candy. I think.