45
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
45 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
52537 readers
766 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Careful. I used drano for a clog in my bathtub and it eroded the pipes and I had to replace them. I’ll add that the clog was complete so the drano stayed in the pipes longer than its intended use. It’s better to just use a snake if you can.
That does not make sense. PVC drains don't react to caustics, nor do metals.
Full disclosure, the last time I studied chemistry was 20 years ago, and I was not a particularly good student, so take this with a heaping helping of NaCl.
It isn't the direct reaction of Drano + PVC that causes the issue. Rather, it's the heat given off from the reaction of the clog and the lye. Apparently it's significant enough to be an issue. I tried looking up how much heat might be released by the reaction, but I went crosseyed reading the formula, so someone else will have to do the math on that one.
Also, I know you said caustic material doesn't react with metal, but Google doubts you on that front, for whatever that's worth. In fact, zinc is specifically called out as a metal with which sodium hydroxide reacts pretty strongly, which is important because many water lines are steel galvanized with, you guessed it, zinc.