Clogged Kitchen Sink? The Problem Could be From Soap in Your Pipes

Last week was a long week for me and my family as we had to deal with the dreaded clogged kitchen sink. We could not run the dishwasher and had to wash our dishes in the tub. Once the problem was diagnosed I was blown away.

Owning a house can come with a lot of headaches and unexpected expenses. Yes it is the American Dream for some, but a little preventative maintenance and household tips can save you lots of money. Living in an older house we have had our run ins with sewer issues and clogged drains, but never in our kitchen sink.

My first step before calling a plumber was to take the plastic pipes apart under the sink, hoping that would be a quick fix, but I did not find anything in them so I knew the problem was further down in the pipes somewhere. I ended up calling a plumber and he was able to diagnose the problem rather quickly after he got into the pipes and snaked under our basement floor.

The problem was soap build up which apparently over time can stick to your walls of the pipe in the same way that grease does.  Now this happened over quite a period of time since we have lived in the house almost 10 years and have never had this happen before.

The best way to avoid this from happening again is to run hot water through your kitchen sink through the pipes to warm them up before you wash dishes. This will prevent the soap from sticking to the pipes in the first place. Then when you are done run some hot water again. Also, the plumber told us once a week to plug up the sink fill it with super hot water and then pull the plug. This will keep your pipes cleaned out and is better than any over the counter chemical cleaners.

Hopefully this little tip will come in handy, but fortunately the plumber that I found was very reasonably priced and it was a very small issues with a quick solution, which is always a relief.