Plumber warns a popular cleaning product is damaging your pipes and reveals the $0 alternative you should try instead

A plumber has urged households to stop using drain cleaners to remove blockages, warning they do more harm than good.

Kevin Yau, lead plumber at The Clean Plumber in Sydney, tells nine.com.au that products containing hydrochloric acid shouldn’t be poured down the sink because they deteriorate rubbers and seals in pipes, leading to “further issues” down the track.

Instead, Yau recommends good old boiling water to clean your drain with.

“It just helps to loosen up the stubborn, coagulated bits of hair and and and gunk, and just helps to loosen it a little bit,” he said.

Yau explained this cleaning process starts with a bucket of hot water as the first flush and if that doesn’t help to go in with boiling water straight down the drain. He said boiling water won’t melt anything in the pipes, but that you only need to do this every couple of months.

“A lot of the blockage in drains, especially in bathrooms, is soap scum, which over time coagulates, and it’s just like a bar of soap. Just imagine a soap bar mixed with hair and fluff and gunk and all that sort of stuff, and then just imagine it stuck like a soap bar within your drainpipes, that’s what causes [blockages].”

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Boiling water can also be used in the kitchen sink to clear grease build up, which is caused by oil and fat being poured down the drain. However, prevention is the best approach here and you can keep your drains clear by disposing of grease and oil in a bag, foil or jar and then throwing that in the bin.

Yau also weighed in on the popular cleaning hack of pouring baking soda and vinegar down the drain. While he said it doesn’t damage the pipes, it is limited in its effectiveness.

“If you mix them together in equal parts, it creates more of a neutral solution so that’s not too bad [for the pipes]. It really works more on the bubbling aspect when you mix the two together, which loosens the dirt and the debris, and then after that you flush it with hot water,” he said.

However, if hair is the main issue you might want to consider a drain snake or wire, according to Delah Gomasi, managing director at house cleaning service MaidForYou.

“We’ve found using just boiling water extremely ineffective for cleaning drains. The reason being that most drains, especially the shower drain, are filled with organic matter, and you’d be surprised at the amount of hairballs that come out of a drain that has not been cleaned in a long time, and we note that most drains are seldom cleaned by our clients,” he told nine.com.au.

Yau recommends calling a plumber any time you have a drain blockage as DIY attempts often result in a bigger problem or calling the plumber anyway.

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“Plumbers can use what is called a jetter, which is a high-pressure jet, as well as a camera just to look through your line to make sure everything’s fine,” he said.

To prevent blockages, keeping your drains as clear as possible is best.

Hair can be stopped from going down the drains with hair drain catchers and strainers, while food particles can be captured by sink strainers.

In addition to grease, fat and oil, milk, melted butter and ice cream, paint and pulpy juice also shouldn’t go down the sink.

To dispose of milk, Ben Armstrong, Sydney Water’s principal manager environment, recommends it as a nutrient booster for plants.

“You can put it on your garden, pot plants. It has phosphorus and nitrogen in it which plants use so we do recommend actually doing that,” he says.

The other option is to pour it into a container and put it in the bin.

These things don’t just block your own drains, they also cause problems throughout the wider sewerage system. It costs Sydney Water $27 million dollars a year to fix them so it’s worth disposing them properly.