Drain De-Clogger A Must Have

5-18-02

By Rich Ecke
Great Falls Tribune staff writer

There's nothing like throwing money down the drain.

But spending money to clean up your drain is another matter.

That's where the Zip-It comes in.

This cagey device can unclog your drain without having to remove your sink's pop-up drain, a part that can take 10 minutes of messing around with to remove.

The company recently sent out some Zip-Its for me to try.

I decided to head for a perfect testing ground, a basement bathroom inhabited by our teen-age daughter. She has medium-length hair, and a sink where water was taking a long time to vanish.

So I took the Zip-It, a long plastic stick with teeth on it, and shoved the stick down the drain.

As instructed, I began to pull up on the Zip-It, unearthing some pretty grimy stuff. All went smoothly at first. Midway, however, not all of the hair and other attractive contents of the drain stayed hooked to the Zip-It.

Some of the gunk didn't come out, so I had to pull the pop-out anyway and pull some gink out by hand.

The pop-up also had lots of dark residue on it, which washed off with hot water. the Zip-It alone would not have cleaned the pop-up.

Company spokesman, Dan Stocke, pointed out the Zip-It works best in households where the person using the sink has long hair.

While not perfect for shorter-haired families, the Zip-It does remove clogs from drains.

As a shortcut that does the trick, Zip-It worked reasonably well.

And the price is certainly right. At a cost of about $2.50, Zip-It won't break the bank.

Zip-its are sold at stores including Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, True Value and Do It Best.