How can I unclog a drain with cat litter?
Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at
9:32 am
My neighbor has been cleaning her cat’s litter box in the sink. She dumps the lot of it in a garbage bag and then rinses it in the sink. Now her sink is clogged up and liquid plummer won’t clear it out. Any suggestions? Thanks in advanced.
Filed under: Cat Litter
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Cat litter is nothing more than dried bentonite (clay) that is crushed up. They add some perfume to it so it smells nice, but it is only clay. When clay gets wet it clumps and is sticky. Dumping cat litter in the drain is no different than digging a shovel load of clay out of the ground from the back yard and dumping it in the drain.
Depending on how much she dumped in, she may be able to use a plunger to break it loose. If the plunger will not break it loose, she is going to have to use a plumber’s tape and run it down the drain until she hits the clog. Plumber’s tape is just a long roll of stiff wire that you feed down a drain to punch through a clog. It is limber enough to bend around the corners in a drain pipe, but stiff enough that it won’t fold up on you once you start punching the clog.
Those are the only two methods that are going to work. Liquid plumber won’t do a thing to that cat litter, because you essentially have a bunch of dirt piled up in your drain. Chemicals don’t effect dirt. Good luck.
either a plumbing snake, take the "j" pipe trap to clean, or use a plunger.