Clogged (update)

Our bathroom drain has always been a bit slow to drain, but lately it has been almost completely clogged. We have tried practically every drain cleaner out there and nothing seemed to help. Well I decided to give good old fashioned baking soda and vinegar a try. While it definitely loosened up some of the gunk, the drain was still slow.

And then I began seeing something weird. Little worm like things. Gross. Worms in my sink drain? I don't know how they got there but I want them gone. It seemed like every time I flushed the drain with vinegar another worm or two would show up.

see it crawling up the sink?

zoomed-in as far as I could on this tiny little creeper

 I told Adam and he did some googling and found out they are actually the larva of 'drain flies' (which explains the random little flies I had seen before). Yes there is an actual name to these things in my sink, and they are apparently common.

The info we found said that vinegar won't actually stop the problem because it drains to quickly to kill all the larva. What we needed was a cleaner with enzymes that would eat away at the organic material stuck in the drain where the flies breed.

I had to go to one of the organic markets, but I picked up Biokleen.

It is thick like a normal drain cleaner, but is safe for pipes and the environment. I just poured some around the drain, will wait a few hours before using the water, and repeat in a couple days. Hopefully this not only gets rid of the flies/'worms' but also opens up the drain.

I had never seen or heard of drain flies before, have you?

**Update**5/30/12**

After telling my mom and dad (who had never heard of these flies) about the issue, my mom bluntly said "Just get some Draino and pour it down there." Having explained that we tried and the info we found said that we needed to use something that would actually break down the matter. Oh no, she explained. I just needed to pull out the stopper, pour some drain cleaner, and flush it with hot water.

Well, I can't remove the stopper, I said. I've tried. I've gotten as far as disconnecting the stopper from the lever that pulls it up and down in the sink, but I couldn't pull it out of the drain. Then she explained how:

Remove the small metal pole from the lever, then unscrew the pole from the drain. Pull out the stopper, and screw the pole back in (this is important, b/c if you don't, anything going down the drain will spill out under the sink; go ahead, ask me how I know...).

So with the stopper out, I could see that the biokleen had worked for the most part. There was plenty of gunk still in the sink but it wasn't attached the the stopper (I will spare you the image of the nasty build up, but if you're not sure how bad it can get- and how I imagine my sink was- look here). I used the stopper itself to scrape out as much as I could, poured some Draino down, waited the 15 minutes, and flushed the sink with hot water.

Success!

I will continue to use the biokleen regularly to keep the build up in check so we don't have any more issues with flies and worms (especially because Adam has asked to shave upstairs again).

I hope someone out there finds this helpful, I know I would have when this issue first started.