The Case of the Stuck Bathtub Drain

I had an interesting problem at home. I have a bathtub on our second floor – the drain was extremely slow. The first problem I had was I initially had never pulled a drain out before. There is a tool they make to remove it. My recommendation – don’t waste your time. I had nothing but trouble trying to use it. I would use the a pair of needle nose pliers and a pair of channel locks or a wrench. The basic concept is you put the pair of pliers in the drain between the cross hairs of the drain, each leg of the pliers across from each other. You then use the channel locks to twist the pliers to loosen the drain. There are a few videos on YouTube that show it. Here is one I found.

I found after I had removed it that I probably didn’t need to. Oh well, live and learn. I then spent a few days using some stuff from Home Depot that unclogs drains. It seemed after a couple tries of using that it was working good, so I put the new drain on. A few days later my son came down to me and said it still was not as good as it should be. I looked again and decided that though it was better, it still was not optimal. So I kept hitting the drain with the cleaner. After that and some snaking, whatever was holding things up finally gave way and the drain was good to go. The problem was that the drain I put in was a push-toe drain and I ruined it trying to get the thing back out to get the cleaner in the drain as it was calling for. So, round two of removing the drain. Bigger problem this time is that when I went to remove the drain with the method I mentioned before, the cross hairs were weak and snapped off. Ugh. I finally found a product to remove the drain when there are no cross hairs. Unless handyman work is your thing, I would just get the tool – it’s called Expando. It is available on Amazon here. It is stupid easy to use. I didn’t take a video of me removing the drain, but I did make a video after the fact showing how it works.

Another mini project that took way longer than expected, but yielded an interesting result and tool I had never heard of or dreamed I would need. Hopefully, everyone who reads this will never have to be use it, but for those who do end up in the same situation I hope this comes in helpful.