Clogged Pipes?

There is hair everywhere in my house. It's the women. Long beautiful haired that trails down to their waist, always kept pristine and in place on their heads. But when the hair comes out, and it does, clumps find their way into the old shower drain. For years, the tub would fill with unending bathwater as the open cap couldn't pull down the liquid past the mass of hair fast enough.

I've tried it all... Drain-o. Liquid Plumber. Plungers. Bleach. Those little zipper things with teeth you have to snake into the pipes 2 feet down. I've even taken the drain apart and used tools to snake in and grab out all the hair I could. All of which resulted in the most temporary relief and a pitiful improvement. Whatever hair went down the drain, it was determined to ball and clump into a cozy nest, never to be removed from the safe walls of the iron pipes.

The problem never severe, but always constant became a part of life I accepted. Week after week, new chemicals poured into the tub in an effort to release the wad of hair. I started seeing this little gadget on Instagram. Quick video of someone with a Thinvik Power Toilet Plunger acting with all the charisma of an infomercial. The hosts were so proud of themselves. The demonstration so simple. Quick snap on plungers to fit various plumbing attached to a gaudy blue pump gun. Whole sponges were shoved into pipes only to be shot out across the stage. Certainly this must be a rouse. There's no way it could be that simple... Could it?

Months, probably even a year passed and on occasions I'd see this tool, promising me a fast solution to my tub problems. Something urging me to get it and get it over with. If nothing else, the cost of the endless bottles of harsh chemicals I was buying to literally flush down the drain would equal out to the price of this gimmick in time. So I bought it for $25.

Three days after adding to my cart, the item showed up. There were so many attachments in the box. The instructions hardly helpful. But as I would soon discover, no instructions were really needed. It worked like a Super Soaker squirt gun. Give it as many pumps as it could hold in its little air tank, put the plunger nozzle that fits the hole, and shoot. The timing was perfect. My daughters had just finished their shower and the water accumulated over a 2 inches high. The pipes gurgled to be put out of their misery.

The first shot was powerful. Way more pressure than I expected. Hair and goo shot out of the overflow plate all over the shower tile. But with that one blast the water began funneling down unlike it ever had before. You could see the little whirlpool sucking the water from the tub with an unrivaled thirst. In seconds the tub was empty.

That was all it took. The years of wasting money on cleaners and chemicals, desperately trying to dissolve the beast within my pipes, now over. The monster has moved on and now the villagers can have peace.

It's been almost a month and the water has been flowing. I've only had to use the Power Plunger once. That first and only time. The only problem now is that I have this fantastic tool, created to solve a problem I no longer have. But it is sitting in a drawer, waiting for it's time to shine once again and I'm confident that years from now when I have to use it again, it will be there.