4 Steps To Fix A Clogged Bathtub Drain

What To Do If a Slow-Moving Drain Is Turning Your Shower into a Bath

Do you find yourself standing in an inch or two of water after you’ve been in the shower for two or three minutes? A slow-moving drain can turn your shower into a bath. Water backing up like this in the shower is caused by a clogged drain. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is usually easy to fix and it’s something you could do yourself. We’ll give you the steps you need to follow to clear the shower drain.

Some homeowners will try using a plunger on the shower drain—that’s great if it works, but usually, it won’t resolve a slow-moving shower drain. Other homeowners try pouring chemicals down the drain—we don’t recommend this as it probably won’t resolve the problem and it can cause other problems to your pipes. The following process to clear your shower drain will work much better.

Remove the shower drain cover

Carefully remove the shower drain cover, taking care not to lose the screws down the drain. Take a look down the drain with a flashlight. You may be able to see the clog. Quite often it’s an accumulation of soap and hair right there at the top of the drain.

Use a shop vac to clear the drain

The best solution, especially if you still have standing water on the shower floor or in the drain, is to get a shop vac (in wet vac mode) and use it to suck up the standing water and vacuum away all the debris clogging the drain. This works 95% of the time! The shop vac is the best solution, but if you don’t have one, you may be able to use needle-nose pliers and a rubber glove to remove all the debris at the top of the drain.

Clear badly clogged drains with a plumber’s snake

After using the shop vac to clear the drain, run water down the drain to see if vacuuming was successful. If the water is still slow-moving, you can put a plumber’s snake (hand auger) down the open drain pipe and clear the clog. The drain pipe goes down into a p-trap and that is usually where the clog will form. Again, you can test to see if this has cleared the clog by running water down the drain.

Replace the cover

Put the cover back on. You may want to upgrade to a better drain cover that will prevent so much hair from going down the drain or you can also get a strainer that goes over the top of the drain cover.