Pure Lye 400 lb Drain Opener 99% Sodium Hydroxide Beads, Soap Maker

My kitchen sink backs into my bathroom sink once a year. The plumber says its roots. I dont beleive him. This year, I wasnt spending $700 for them to come out and clear the lines. Since december I have tried zap stuff, twice and it didnt work. I borrowed a snake, snaked thru the entire line, didnt work. I almost gave up and called a plumber but decided to come on Amazon and look at reviews on drain cleaners. This product does NOT disappoint!!! It arrived about 2 hours ago. I heavily armed myself with protective gloves, eyewear and old heavy clothes. (My dad scared the life out of me about this stuff being very dangerous) I read the directions about 40 times before I was confident enough to use it. I really didnt want to burn an arm off or worse, cause my pipes to melt causing me more money that I dont have. Ok. I followed the direction for a slow drain. First I boiled water and sent that down the drain a few times as it says to "warm the pipes up" then I used one cup of this miracle stuff in each drain. It fizzed, hissed and reminded me of the science experiment in middle school of an exploding volcano that only half works... it erupted, slightly. Then all settled and I waited, and waited. I didnt want to jump the gun at just 15 minutes. This was some major clog we were working with. So while I waited, I started boiling water in ever big pot I had on all my burners. Alexa rang and my time was up! I started off pouring the boiling water SLOWLY down the first drain I dropped the product down. Nothing. No fizzing, no exploding. It just kept draining. Shocked. I ran to my kitchen and started dumping water down the drain... surely it would back up into my bathroom sink again... three gallons down the hatch... i run to the bathroom... it's clear! Holy moly! I put this stuff to the test. I run both the sinks hot water full blast down the kitchen sink and bathroom. Now I'm running back and forth like a crazy woman but guess what! Nooooo clog, no water pooling, nothing. I'm so amazed with this product. For weeks I have been stressing about not having the money to fix this, but after spending under 6 bucks on this stuff I am floored. I will NEVER buy any other drain cleaner again and neither should you! This stuff is a game changer!

I read through other Amazon reviews about this product, so decided to give it a try. I have to say, I'm totally impressed! I had a bathroom drain that was nearly completely clogged up, mostly with hair. Ordinarily, I'd have just pulled out the drain plug, dug the hair out with my hemostats, and been done with it. But this particular plug is unnecessarily difficult to get out, so I thought I'd try something else. My first attempt was with some sort of drain cleaner. Directions said to use half of the bottle, I think there was maybe 1/3 of the bottle left, so I used that. Poured it into the bathtub drain, left it overnight, took a shower the next day and saw no improvement whatsoever. It took 1 inch of water in the bathtub about 40 minutes to drain. Expecting the Lye to perform no better than my drain cleaner, poured it down the drain 4 times, rather than "just" following the directions. I reasoned that perhaps most of the solution would drain PAST the hair clog, and NOT dissolve the clog? So, on the first night, I estimated doing what the directions said, 1 cup of Lye dissolved into 1 to 1 1/2 cups of water. Poured it down the drain. Left it overnight. Next day, made up a small solution - maybe half of what the directions suggested, poured it slowly into the drain. Did that, again, that evening, and, again, the next day. Four days later, I took a shower in that particular shower, and it drained just fine, I couldn't believe it! So, now I'm wondering how much the lye actually worked after only ONE administration, rather than 4. But I'm glad and quite impressed that it really did work. In total, I used about 2/3 of the bottle, with plenty left over for other drains in the house. Of note: Lye is not the nicest stuff to use or have around in your house. I found out that when you mix it with water, it generates heat. I could easily feel the heat through the plastic bucket that I used to mix the solution. Lye will chemically burn your skin, to be careful. Don't let it touch your skin, and be especially careful not to get it into your eyes. Also, according to wikipedia, Lye can pull enough water out of the atmosphere to turn itself into a liquid solution (which generates heat) and can potentially ignite other flammable substances (paint? gasoline? paint thinner?) So I'll use ALL of the remaining Lye in my other household drains, and NOT store it in the house or in the hot garage. Knowing full well that the next time the drain even STARTS to drain SLOWLY, the solution is only one quick visit to Amazon and a couple of days away.

I bought this is 2018 and never used it. Why? I have no clue, maybe I didnt believe the hype? who knows. Fast Forward 7 years, I just moved into a new house (on septic), of which the master bathroom shower is clogged, pretty much have to stand in an inch of water when you shower, which is not nice. I tried this stuff call Drain CLR or something like that. You pour 2-3 ounces down the drain for 5 days. Well this did absolutely nothing. Then I was going through moving boxes in my garage when I stumbled upon this and I figured, what the heck, I remember people raving about this, let me try it. I used it exactly as the directions on the bottle told me too, Ran steaming hot water down the drain, waited for all the water to clear and then poured 3 ounces down the drain. I had a glove on one hand and I did have to move it around for it to all go down the drain, but then I left it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, I came back, turned on the steaming hot water and my shower no longer was clogging up.....WHAT? Wow! No idea why I waited so long to try this, but i am a true believer of it now. This stuff works QUICKLY and is septic safe! Love it!

Let me first state that you need to follow all safety precautions when using this product. Gloves, Eye protection etc. I had an issue that has been ongoing for years - the washing machine would drain and water would back-fill into the kitchen sink then slowly drain out ok. Over the years I had plumbers come and snake the line from the kitchen and this would either solve the problem for a while or just not even work very well. Snaking does not get rid of anything, it just moves the gunk around. My house is 50 years old and I assume the pipes were filled with grease and lint combo that had gotten to a point where the pipes should have been replaced. I tried everything over the last few months. All the liquid plumbers, worthless enzymes etc etc. Literally wasted a few hundred dollars on all that. Nothing worked. The problem got so bad that water was now backing up into the washer drain pipe as well. I had to stand next to the washer during the drain cycle and stop the draining then start it again. I was almost ready to give up. I kept searching on Amazon and this Lye stuff showed up in the search result. I never heard of it before. I bought two of these and will now explain what my procedure was: Put on gloves and eye protection. Put about half of one container into a bucket. Added about 6 cups of cold water. Used old wooden chop sticks to slowly mix it. It will get really warm. Poured it slowly into the KITCHEN sink. Did the same thing again with the rest of container one and poured it into the WASHER drain pipe. I did not allow any water after that to get into the pipes for the whole night. I pre-poured water into buckets for washing hands and even late night pee runs were done in a bucket pre filled with water. I did this process for two nights in a row using both containers of this lye I bought. The next day I filled the kitchen sink with VERY hot water and dish soap. Let it drain. This was done each day so a total of twice. The problem stated has been completely solved. I can run the washing on full load and run the kitchen faucet at the same time as the washer drain cycle and there was no back-up of water. UNBELIEVABLE!! This was my last chance, if this didn't work then I would probably spend thousands to just have those outgoing pipes replaced. Thanks to the people who make this product.

There are so many interesting reviews of this product. It's not the first thing that you'd reach for to clear a clogged drain, so many of the reviews here tell of battles against serious blockages, where many attempts have failed until the lye finally won the day, concluding with weird sounds coming from the drain, and that moment of release as the water funnels down. Then there are the few scary stories where the lye solidified like cement, leading to professional plumbers knocking holes in the drywall. Our story is a bit different. Our kitchen drain clog hit about the same time it was realized that the Coid-19 was spreading in the Seattle area in early March 2020. After two or three years of the dishwasher occasionally backing up into the kitchen sink, one night the kitchen sink itself took hours to drain. What with the stay at home order, and us being at higher risk because of age, this is clearly going to be a do-it-yourself project, so I order a drain auger from Amazon. Little do we realize that this is going be a 10-week struggle. Ten weeks of disappointment and failure punctuated by occasional pandemic-slowed shipments of plumbing supplies. Well, a 3/8-inch auger won’t get around bends in the pipe. A ¼ inch one will, and after I learn how to use it without getting it all twisted inside the pipe, I realized that there is an immovable clog about 5 feet down. It cann’t be budged. On a zoom call, the brothers-in-law say, “use Draino.” So I pull out the dishwasher and disconnected it—I don’t want anything caustic backing up into that—and dump half of a large bottle down the drain. Up comes soapsuds, and a lot of sand. Not really sand, but fine light brown grit, fibrous food matter, ground up by the garbage disposal and deposited on the inside of the pipes over 35 years. As most of this settles to the bottom, the drain is now 100%, fully obstructed. A couple more half bottles of drain cleaner gel do nothing. Enter the lye, discovered through Google and described by hundreds of Amazon reviewers as a magic clog-buster. I couldn’t resist. Reading all of these reviews two things became clear. First, this stuff, pure NaOH, is dangerous, as it can burn holes and even dissolve flesh—it’s the stuff that Walter White should have used in Breaking Bad instead of sulfuric acid. It also dissolves aluminum, making explosive hydrogen gas in the process. Fortunately, like most houses, our pipes are lye-safe PVC. Secondly, one of the two ways to use this stuff, to dump the crystals directly into the drain, is just crazy—if the drain is damp but empty, the NaOH can hydrate and turn into a hard clumps that could further obstruct the pipes. So, I put on a long sleeve shirt, old pants, rubber gloves, a surgical mask, and a stocking cap, so that with my glasses, I am covered. I mix a half bottle of lye with about a liter of water in a glass jar, stir with a plastic spoon and chopstick until it’s thoroughly dissolved. It’s about 3 to 4 molar NaOH, and it gets hot. I use a steel funnel to carefully pour it through a bypass directly down into the pipe. Twelve hours later, near boiling water goes down the drain. No effect! None! By now we are looking through lists of plumbers, hoping to avoid someone who won’t wear masks and coughs a lot. By now, it’s Memorial Day weekend, so we don’t call yet. Then there is a small glimmer of hope. After 3 days the water starts to slowly drain, about a quart per 24 hours. No plumber, I’m going to work with this stuff. Another treatment, no difference. So, we send for another pound of lye from east coast Amazon warehouses. While waiting, more snaking. After hours of labor, suddenly the auger advances a couple of inches, but then the clog doesn’t yield further. Still, it is a small encouraging step. Then the third lye treatment again achieved nothing. I have no ideas other than more of the same. Then on another zoom call my son-in-law says to use a plunger and block the air vent. The plunger hadn’t worked before. But he’s a chemist, and he’s telling me to use physics. Newton! Gravity! Fluid dynamics…err, actually fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest. I fill up our large kitchen sink with water. That’s got to be 30 or 40 pounds of force, pressing down on the clog, pushing it down towards the main sewer line. Duct tape over the air vent. I plunge several times a day. After a couple of days, the water level in the sink only goes down about a half inch. Then I try the garbage disposal, which should pack a bigger punch that the plunger. As I start a second disposal blast, the water level starts to visibly drop. Then it’s rapidly spinning down the drain! “Freude, schöner Götterfunken!” In the words of Friedrich Schiller with music by Ludwig von Beethoven, “Watch that f***er flow!” So, my concluding thoughts are that lye should work wonders if your sink is seriously plugged by grease or hair. Our case was different. It didn’t directly fix the problem, but it contributed to the solution. But it is too dangerous and laborious for everyday use. I’ll keep a bottle of that drain cleaner gel around for occasional maintenance to ward off a future drain Armageddon.

I have had a stubborn bathroom sink for what seems like forever. A few months back it finally gave up and clogged 100%. I had zero drainage. I tried going the super cheap method and using what I already had in the house, baking soda and vinegar, to no avail. I did a little research on Amazon and ended up buying a "snake", or plumbers auger, for the drain. That did have an effect on the drain in that it allowed it to drain the water that had been sitting in the sink for a few days by this point. It did not, however, solve my problem. I still couldn't use the sink beyond any type of trickle lest it back up again. I then tried one more thing before I declared defeat and called a plumber; this product. I followed the directions exactly as written and it didn't seem like anything happened. The hot water I poured down the drain after the prerequisite wait time clogged back up! And what's worse is that it was spewing a sort of chemical "smoke" in the air! So that didn't work; I was left with about a half a bottle. I give up! I'm calling a plumber. Fast forward a few months and I never called the plumber. My excellent procrastination skills combined with a work schedule that didn't match up with any plumbers, and there I was brushing my teeth in the shower ever day! On this most recent Presidents Day I decided that I'd finally make the call, but before I did I'd go ahead and use the rest of this Pure Lye stuff; I did pay for the whole thing and still had half a bottle after all. So again, followed the directions to a tee, except I just dumped the rest of the bottle down the drain. Whoa nelly!!!!!! Stand back baby! I have no clue if the additional amount this time around made the difference or if it was the fact that I had used this stuff months back and the drain sat bone dry for all that time? Or maybe it was a combination of those things. No matter what it was, it worked this time! As soon as the hot water went down the drain that chemical "smoke" came back up but I had a plastic bowl ready this time and covered the drain and also had the bathroom window open as well. There was quite a bit of noise coming from the drain below the sink! It sounded like a gurgling rumbling noise and I shut the doors below sink in case it exploded! It was THAT loud! After a few seconds a foam started to appear from underneath the bowl and I added more water to the sink. Out of nowhere came this "whoosh!" sucking sound and then it happened - my sink drained!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot what it was like to brush my teeth in the sink it has been so long!! I have since ordered another bottle of this stuff to keep on hand for future clogs as this was the only thing that worked for me!!!!

I have four bathroom vanities, one kitchen sink (open drian and garbage disposal sides) as well as a utility sink. In addition to multiple shower drains, a soaker tub drain and a jetted garden tub drain. It's easy to see that with all of these drains, something will eventually need your attention. Sink drains provide relatively easy access to the trap and with a modest amount of effort they can be cleaned out manually. If however the clogg goes far beyond the trap the repair gets a little more intense. Of course shower and tub drains typically don't have easy access to their drain plumbing. This is the answer for these scenarios. Not only will it open up the drains, it will do so quickly and as an added benefit it will help to keep things downstream from clogging in the first place. I have also found that it works well in laundry drains where soap scum and fabric softener buildup can become problematic. It can be used preventatively in utility drains such as HVAC A Coil condensate drains. Who wants to find their AC system shutting down because the condensate tray is backing up? Or worse yet, find out that the system didn't shut down but instead overflowed onto your carpet, hardwood or even worse, into your ceiling if the unit is upstairs or attic located. This stuff works well for opening clogged drains quickly and preventing clogs when used as a maintenance aid. I typically by this in either the large container or in two packs as I want to have it on hand when needed. I also restock quickly when low.

Hmmmm. After seeing the ratings and reviews of this product, and having periodic visits from thr plumber over the years, I thought there might be a chance for a normal draining sink. Like many others have stated, a large sticker was on each bottle that partially covered the directions on a very caustic product. Why not just place it elsewhere? While the directions are specific that you wear goggles and gloves when handling this product, after reading some reviews here, before pouring the lye down the drain, I wear glasses anyway, and stood away from the sink as I poured the lye down the drain. Before pouring the lye down the drain, directions say to specifically let hot water warm the pipes. I simply ran very hot water from the tap. Some reviwers here boiled water on the stove prior to pouring it down the drain. Directions on the bottle simply read to run hot water down the drain until the lye is dissolved. I'm lazy, and didn't boil the water, and anal enough to follow the directions on the bottle to the letter. My results are mixed, mainly because I had a huge mess after pouring lye down the kitchen sink on the disposal side. There is a very pronounced leak now, and as of this writing, I'm still not certain where it's coming from. My pipes seem fine, so I suspect its from the disposal. I will edit this review when I have this repaired. While I never was injured while using this product, do have gloves handy in case of a leak, as was my case. I was very careful and cautious when cleaning up my sizable mess, and escaped unharmed. I ordered 3 bottles. I used all of the lye on two bathroom sinks and the kitchen sink. After I warmed the pipes by running hot water down the drain, I simply began pouring the lye down the drain, standing at arms length. It will bubble and spew water to a degree, so do stand back. The lye did some good, but I'm not "wowed" by spectacular results. Mine were simply okay. Of course your situation may, or may not be the same. I followed directions to the letter, but I only had some noticeable success with one bathroom sink. The other drains remain somewhat sluggish. I knew it was working, especially in the kitchen drain, but in the end, my problem remains. Not a bad product, but not the miracle cure many have had here. With my experience, I would simply say "try it" It might work for you.

Buen producto