How to prevent a slow draining sink?

[Whenisitmysleepytime]

I've just fixed my bunged up sink with vinegar and. Bicarbonate of soda. :)

I'm not sure how it got blocked tho. So how do I stop it happening again?
Is it justa regular bleach job?

TIA! :)

The last time my sink blocked I unscrewed the S-bend. Amongst other things, I found two chopsticks.

do you know anyone who pours cooking fat down the sink?

I just use bicarbonate and vinegar regularly. In the kitchen I follow it with a kettle of boiling water.

It's in the bathroom. So no cooking fat there.
Thanks to the genius who fitted the bathroom there is no way to access the sink pipes without removing a tiled wall in front of it iyswim. we don't have any spare tiles so praying nothing goes wrong before we move/ redecorate bathroom!

might be hair then. I'd recognise a drain pump (works like a plunger but is IMO far better). Only a few pounds at a hardware shop. You need someone to press a wet sponge against the overflow while you do it.

Sometimes it is diced carrot causing the blockage...

The usual drain clearing chemicals are intended for kitchen blockages mostly. I think I have heard that hair removing cream down the plughole will attack hair but I would have thought the residual water would dilute it. IME the "bottle" traps with a sort of jar you can unscrew may be easier to empty, but are also far more prone to block than "U" bend traps.

Are you sure you can't get at the trap by lying on your back under the basin?

Mr Muscle does various chemical bathroom drain unblockers, which you can use in small quantities overnight regularly to get rid of any gunge.

Hair's the worst problem for us. Even if it seems we've cleared the plughole grid, some always gets into the U and gradually it slows.

It's the sink and no one washes their hair there so unless it's dh shaver bits I doubt it would be hair. it's a puzzle.

You can't access any of the sink pipes etc as it is recessed into a Worktop which they then built a tiled wall in front of. We could take it off in extreme cases but it'd mean breaking tiles.

Will look for a plunger thingy

something like this

What mixture of vinegar and bicarb of soda? Never seems to make a difference for me.

Nothing specific- I put a few spoons in the plug hole, poured vinegar and shoved the plug in so the bubbles would force the blockage to move iyswim.

Prob used half a bottle of vinegar and a few tbsp bicarb

I use chemical unblockers and/or regular kettle-fulls of boiling water. Does the sink share a waste pipe at any point with the shower - ours does, and it runs almost horizontally across the bathroom, so easily gets blocked with hair / general gunge.

Nope they don't share pipes.
I do know this because the bath pipe broke last year and gushed water down the side of the house.

Caustic soda

Bathroom drain cleaner. Anything else is just pratting about in my experience...