How to Unclog a Sink Using a Drain Snake

Video Transcript

"If your sink drain is clogged and you’ve already tried plunging it, which everybody knows how to do, you’re probably going to need to go a little further and snake out the drain line. I know this freaks out a lot of people, but it’s really nothing to be afraid of. It’s a little messy, but it’s not too bad if you have a bucket and take the proper precautions.

So what you want to do obviously is clear the area under the p-trap, that’s what we call this. By the way, this is what most often corrodes when you use drain cleaners over a period of time. If you have a chronically clogged drain and you use a lot of the drain cleaners, they’re very corrosive, and they will settle down in here and corrode the metal. A lot of these are metal- they’re using a lot of PVC now. But this is very easy to replace, and I’ll also be showing you how to do that in this.

So what you want to do is set a bucket under the p-trap and take your channel lock pliers and simply loosen the nuts that hold it in place. Once you loosen it they come apart with just your hand.

And this is a good place to check, first of all to make sure it’s clear because your clog may be here and maybe it wasn’t dislodged by the plunger. Once you determined that the problem is not in here, then you’ll want to take your snake which is a very useful device. You can either get the kind that attaches to a drill like mine, but you don’t have to. As long as it’s probably fifteen, twenty feet long.

Now, what you’ll do is snake it up into the sewer line and extend it out until you run into some resistance. And then once you find the clog, you’re going to tighten this nut and you’re going to turn this around until it loosens it. and you have to do a lot of back and forth action here. Something like that. But, eventually you’ll find the clog and you’ll loosen it. And everything in reverse to reassemble."