Plastic hair clog remover broke off in bathtub drain

April 25, 2024 4:35 PM

The plastic hair clog removal tool I was using, similar to these, broke off in the bathtub drain. I believe the stopper is called a lift-and-turn type. How can I get the tool out?

I'm not worried about the clog. I can get rid of that with liquid drain cleaner. I am worried about leaving the tool in the pipe.

posted by La Gata to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

My first thought is a flexible grabber tool. I use one to get dropped bolts and such out of tight spaces. They can grip plenty tight but of course the hard part is getting it onto the thing you want to grab. link to a home Depot example

It will probably depend on how deep the piece is too.
posted by dbx at 4:58 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]

My second thought after posting the first is that a standard drain snake might do the trick. They have a loosely wound football shaped coil that could conceivably trap your broken piece along with the rest of the clog. If it's further down, this sort of thing might be your best bet - they come in every conceivable length.

home Depot again

They have a bit of a learning curve but they're more effective than plastic tools for clog removal too.
posted by dbx at 5:04 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]

I just pulled up a plastic piece in the drain using a vacuum drain pump. They're awesome to have around, anyway. Perfect for pulling up hair clogs and much safer, easier, and cheaper than liquid drain cleaner. I got mine for about 8$.
posted by toucan at 5:27 PM on April 25

Best answer: The lift and turn type stoppers I'm familiar with have a knurled grab knob which can be unscrewed (possibly requiring a tool if it's stuck ) to reveal a screw underneath which can also be removed (if it's not stuck.) Then you can pull the entire stopper out and have better access to use your grabber tool, hemostat, etc. etc. to try to extract the broken plastic tool.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 6:31 PM on April 25

Best answer: I had one of those break off and get stuck in a drain that had some other kind of stopper, or was missing part of the stopper such that the drain hole was not covered up, and I still needed to use needle-nose pliers and pull pretty hard to get it out. YMMV on that, but given my experience, I'd try to remove your lift-and-turn stopper before trying to get the clog-removal tool out with something that will allow you to grab firmly and pull pretty hard (like needle-nose pliers.) This guy on youtube suggests that that is possible without using complex tools.
posted by needs more cowbell at 2:43 AM on April 26

Response by poster: I unscrewed the stopper and pulled out the plastic with needle-nose pliers. Thank you both.
posted by La Gata at 10:14 AM on May 2 [2 favorites]