How to Dissolve Hair in Shower Drain

Why does Hair get stuck and Clogs the Drain?

Actually, the hair alone is not that big of a deal. There is other stuff that is clogging your shower drain.

Simply speaking, hair only "helps" by creating a suitable environment inside your drain for other particles to gather and to clog the drain.

So, what exactly clogs our drain then? Well, there’s lots of stuff, but, here are the particles that contribute the most:

• Dust and Dirt
• Old Particles of Skin
• Small Particles from our Clothes

Anyhow, all these particles are easily gathered around the hair that got stuck inside the drain and that’s how your drain is clogged.

But, you don’t need to worry, there’s a couple of ways to get rid of it easily.

In that light, we will discuss some of the easiest ways to dissolve hair in a shower drain. Let’s start.

How to Dissolve Hair in Shower Drain

Now, let’s talk about the core of the subject here: How to dissolve hair in a shower drain.

There’s a couple of ways that are 100 percent efficient and we are going to discuss them.

1. Dissolving Hair with Chemicals

First and possibly the most efficient way of getting rid of the hair inside our shower drain is to use chemicals.

Now, there are a lot of different commercial drain cleaners on the market, so you need to make sure to pick the right one.

So, here’s what you will need:

• Rubber Gloves
• Wet Vacuum
• Commercial Drain Cleaner

When you gather all this stuff, you can begin the process of cleaning. Here’s how to dissolve hair using this method.

Step 1 – Protection 

The first thing you will need to do is to put a set of rubber gloves on your hands.

This way, you will make sure that your hands are out of the reach of the chemicals. Preventing burns from chemicals is an important thing.

Step 2 – Preparation 

Next, you need to wet vacuum in order to suck the liquid from the drain.

With the drain being completely dried, the chemicals will do the job more efficiently and the dissolving process can start.

Step 3 – Pour the Cleaner 

When the drain is dried, it is time to use the commercial drain cleaner and pour it down the drain.

Now, make sure to use a proper amount of cleaner – you can find that on the label that is usually on the back of every cleaner.

Step 4 – Rinse with Water

The last thing to do is to wait for a couple of hours and then to let the water flow again.

Water will rinse everything inside the drain since the cleaner dissolved it easily.

2. Dissolving Hair with Home Remedies

If you don’t want to use expensive chemicals and other stuff like that, you can always use some useful stuff that sits inside your home.

Namely, there are a lot of things that you can use to dissolve hair from the shower drain.

Use Washing Soda

The first thing you can use to dissolve hair from a drain is washing soda.

Now, washing soda is something like baking soda but just stronger. That’s why washing soda can be used alone to dissolve hair from the drain.

Here’s what you need:

• Boiling water – 3 cups
• Washing soda – 1 cup

As you could suspect, you will first need to prepare approximately 3 cups of boiling water. Get to the clogged drain and pour one cup of washing soda inside it.

Next, you will need to wait a couple of minutes and then pour one cup of boiling water inside the drain.

That way, the water will push washing soda down the drain and dissolve every bit of nasty debris that sits inside that drain.

If the drain is still clogged, just repeat the process. But remember, 3 cups of boiling water go with 1 cup of washing soda – that’s the right proportion here.

Use Salt and Water

For this method, you will need to make a mixture out of the stuff you have in your home. So, here is what you exactly need to dissolve hair in shower drain.

• ½ Cup of Salt
• ½ Cup of Baking Soda
• 6 Cups of Water

Let’s start then. First, take a ½ cup of salt and mix it with a ½ cup of baking soda inside a plastic container.

After that, you will want to pour that mixture down the drain and let it sit for a bit, usually a couple of minutes.

Next, fill the pot with 6 cups of water and boil it on the stove. When the water starts boiling, lift the pot from the stove and pour it all down the clogged drain.

The hot water will push a mixture of salt and baking soda down the drain and clean everything in its path.

Later, you can always rinse with cold water to make sure that everything is cleaned.

Use Vinegar 

Vinegar is the number one home remedy for many things, usually cleaning. So, here is how you can use it to dissolve hair in your shower drain.

You will need this stuff for this method:

• ½ Cup of Baking Soda
• ½ Cup of Apple Cider Vinegar

So, the first thing you want to do here is to pour a ½ cup of baking soda down the clogged drain.

After that, you need to follow up with a ½ cup of vinegar. Now, let it sit there for a while.

You will hear a bubbling noise as the baking soda and vinegar slowly dissolve everything in the drain.

If the drain clog is persistent, you can always repeat the process, or just use washing soda.

3. Removing Hair with Different Tools

Now, we have discussed how to dissolve hair from the drain, but, we didn’t say anything yet about how to remove hair from the shower drain.

So, let’s talk about that for a while now.

There’s a lot of different ways to remove hair from a shower drain. But, in every scenario, you will need some kind of tool. So, let’s go with these ones:

• Drain claw – This tool is great for removing hair from the drain, but the reach is limited.
• Hanger – With hanger, you can easily create a hook that can remove most of the hair from the drain.
• Plumber’s snake – This is a professional tool that some of us don’t have at home, but, it’s very efficient to use if you have one.

Use Drain Claw

As we already mentioned, a drain claw is a pretty convenient tool to use in this kind of situation.

Since the drain claw is basically a flexible wire that has an auger on the end, it can’t be that hard to use it.

• Step 1 – First, you need to insert the drain claw inside the shower drain and push until you reach the end of the claw.
• Step 2 – Next, use twist movements with the claw and start pulling it slowly out. The drain claw will gather all sorts of debris and hair that sits inside the drain and creates a clog.
• Step 3 – It is always a good idea to repeat the process a couple of times just in case something is left down there.

Use Hanger 

The hanger, as you could suspect, is a good tool to use for removing hair from the shower drain. However, the hanger also doesn’t have a big range.

So, let’s see how you can remove hair from the shower drain with hanger.

• Step 1 – The first thing you will need to do is to take the hanger and make it into a straight wire with a hook at the end. That’s fairly easy to do since the hangers are not that hard to reshape.
• Step 2 – Now, here comes the fun part. Insert the hanger inside the shower drain slowly. When inserting, make sure to twist it a bit.
• Step 3 – After that, you need to pull the hanger out of the drain, but use the same twisting movement you did when you inserted it into the drain.
• Step 4 – If you can’t pull the hanger out easily, don’t panic. You will need to slowly pull back and forward until every piece of hair gets attached to the hanger. Then, just pull it out and you will be fine.

Use Plumber’s Snake

Sometimes it’s good to bring in the heavy guns. Simply put, the plumber’s snake is a specially designed tool for this kind of scenarios.

So, if you have one at home, you will easily remove hair from the shower drain.

Here’s how:

• Step 1 – First things first, you will need to push the snake down the drain. Don’t stop until you reach the clog.
• Step 2 – Now, when you reached the clog, you should push a bit more and then turn the snake’s handle. This way, the plumber’s snake will easily gather all the hair inside the drain around it.
• Step 3 – After that, you should start pulling the snake up until it’s fully out of the drain.
• Step 4 – Last thing you need to do is to pour some water down the drain and see if there’s any hair left. If there is, just repeat the process.

Tips for Maintaining a Clean Shower Drain

Here are some tips that are quite useful when it comes to maintaining your shower drain.

• Pour a ½ cup of baking soda down the drain every week – This will ensure that no debris or hair gets clogged down that drain.
• Clean the lid occasionally – The lid of the shower drain can be the reason why the drain gets clogged. Clean it and prevent any hair from getting inside the drain.
• Rinse the drain after every shower – When you rinse the drain after every shower, you will actually push the hair down the drain until it gets out.

Conclusion

Getting rid of the hair from your shower drain surely is not easy job do to, or a pleasant one.

However, we showed you a couple of ways to do so and they all work perfectly fine.

Now, it is up to you to decide which method to use. But remember, you need to follow the instructions correctly.