I learnt an important life lesson recently, one that I think would be beneficial to pass on in a pay it forward kind of way.
Acid can be used for clearing drains. Acid (in a Cokey/Cilit Bang type fashion) can be used for cleaning old pennies so they look shiny and new. Acid is slang for LSD or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, a mild semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family. Acid is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style. Acid is used in an industrial strength drain cleaner. Industrial strength drain cleaner is not the best product to use in your enamelled bath tub. Acid can burn your face.
When I was at school oh so long ago (those were the days, yes kiddies it's true, all those annoying adults were right. Once you pass 30 and you realise that work is all there is forever more with never a 10 week summer holiday in sight, you do indeed start looking back on those days as the best times of your life. Admittedly I began thinking that pretty much as soon as I left college... ho hum), ahem... yes when I was at school, chemistry lessons were an excuse to carry on making mixtures of unknown ingredients like you did in the kitched when you were a kid, perhaps we were supposed to know better by now, but we didn't care. No we were far more interested in making some foul smelling concoction and heating it in a test tube over a bunson burner. Totally safe. Well maybe not when we were heating sulphuric acid and chatting away with no safety goggles on, at least that's what one poor unfortunate peer of mine discovered. Yes young Sean Witter had been heating sulphuric acid in a test tube and it suddenly and violently boiled over and sprayed poor Sean's face. He wore the scars for the next couple of years at school and probably still does, he was lucky it didn't blind him. This is not just a gruesome trip down memory lane however stick with me, there is purpose behind my tales of maiming.
More recently there was a case in the news of someone being forced to swallow sulphuric acid. How utterly horrible! A man is accused of somehow making his ex swallow the acid. I cant even begin to imagine how painful that must have been. Apparently the court heard that as she lay dying he telephoned a plumber and asked what he should do because his son had drunk cleaning fluid. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/978673.stm
Now the reason for this un-characteristically serious point of discussion is as follows... Wibbly lines ensue as we fade back to a week or so ago...
For months now possibly even a year, ever since we had the builders in to knock stuff down and put stuff back up in our bathroom, we have had terribly slow moving water in the bath. For instance, Nikala would have a shower and 10 minutes later when it was my turn the water would be up to my knees. I was convinced this was because the builders had just rinsed all the rubble down the bath plug all that time ago and have been trying all sorts of things to clear it out. I used a plunger until I had blisters covering my palms (difficult to explain those at work I can tell you!), I have used so called Mr Muscle style products that have magic expanding foam that is supposed to clear the pipes out, more plungering, I bought a "steel snake" which you push down the plug around the u-bend and down the pipe to clear it. It was even recommended to me that I fill the bath up to the brim and let the weight of the water push the blockage out of the pipe. But it was all in vane, sure sometimes it made it slightly more bearable for a while, but the problem (and the water) remained and it was driving us crazy. Finally upon learning that my sister was going to be staying with us for a while I decided I needed something stronger. After all, if it was up to my knees after just one of us had used the shower, after three of us it would be overflowing. Besides, you can call me weird but I dont really want to share bath water with my sister. I didnt like it when I was a child and at 35 it feels a bit incestuous...
So I found myself in the local sells anything store on Putney high street when I spied a modestly packaged drain cleaner "as supplied to the professionals" and I presumed they didn't mean Bodie and Doyle. 'Excellent!' Thought I. 'This is just the stuff I need and it's only a fiver.' I should point out that I had also recalled Nikala's dad using something similar in their bathroom and Clive knows way more than I do about DIY so this is obviously what I need. Reading the "instructions" on the way home it said it was fine in plastic piping though it did need to be handled with care as it contained sulphuric acid. Perfect, this will sort it out once and for all!
I got home from work a couple of hours earlier than Nikala and got straight to work in the bathroom. Slightly wary of the stuff I pulled on some rubber gloves, put my Elvis sunglasses on and poured 100ml - 200ml of the stuff into the plughole of the bath. It instantly started fizzing like mad and brimming over on to the enamel, bubbles were coming up in what I can only describe as belches. Seriously they were coming forth like the burps of a man with a chronic stomach ulcer. Fantastic! I was a little bit nervous but it looked like it was working, the air must be bubbling up through the blockage as it gets cleared. Great stuff! 10 minutes later it was still doing it and I was a little bit more nervous. 'I know!' I thought, ' I will see if it has dislodged the blockage enough that water can flush it away now.' So I turned on the shower. Sadly it appeared as though the blockage as still there and the bath just filled up as usual. Hmm that's disappointing, I'll wait until it drains and try it again. Knowing it would take a while I went off to do something else for a bit. About 45 minutes later I noticed a foul smell throughout the flat and went to check on the bath situation. Not good. The water was still there and hadn't drained at all. The plughole was still belching it ulcer burps and there was a white scum on the surface of the water. That scum is obviously all the dissolved soapy hair mank that was down the plug. The stuff is doing its job, but why is the water not going down? I know Ill get my Steel Snake and give it a prod, the acid must be fairly dilute now with all this water so it should be fine. So I poke and twist it down as far as it will go, jiggle it about a bit and then took it out. It was blackened, pitted and scarred. Crap. Not good, not good at all and whats more I think that white scum on the surface of the water is actually the enamel coming off my bath. Crap, crap,crap!
Right, the nearest place to get any plumbing stuff was Homebase five minutes up the road. I had to go and get some varnish for another job anyway so I dashed off and went to see what I could get my hands on. I knew what I needed now, I needed something that would push water down the pipe rather than suck it out. I found this product that was either a total gimmick or it would be brilliant. It was a small canister of compressed air that you fit over the plughole and give it a one second burst. Apparently it was able to clear pipes up to 30 meters away. I had no way of knowing if it would work but I had to try. £8.99 and 5 minutes later I am back in the bathroom, but I don't want to plunge my hand into acid water. Hmmm what to do. I ended up scooping out the water with a washing up bowl and dumping it down the toilet. OK, here we go. And with that I placed the canister over the plughole and pushed... Totally forgetting the first rule of plunging is to cover the overflow otherwise there is no pressure to go down the pipe. What instead happened is that the blast of air shot down the plughole, round the u-bend (collecting it's contents on the way) then proceed to go up and out of the overflow which was conveniently located at face level. All I saw was a jet of brown liquid, hair and gritty scum out of the corner of my eye before one side of my face, and the opposite wall was coated in this acidic muck.
Oh my God! I have just Dr Crippin'ed myself! I've Phantom of the Opera'd my face! I am the grown up Sean Witter! What the hell am I going to do? In a bit of a panic I leaped up off my knees and dashed into the hallway, then realising I needed to clean it off I ran back into the bathroom to rinse my face in the sink, but arrrrgh I had acidy rubber gloves on! Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger! I was like the proverbial headless chicken, running in every which way. I was convinced I would be hideously scarred, all the times I had heard about incidents with acid were running through my head.
I managed to calm down, rinsed my face a lot with water though I was trying to remember what household product was an alkaline that could be used to negate the acidic effects. I felt a lot better and my face was no longer feeling like it had been instantly sun burnt in the Sahara.
Nikala got home and she was understandably quite worried, she remembered that baking soda was an alkaline and mixing up a paste she applied it to my face and the rest into the bath to try and halt the disolving enamel. Of course, seeing as my face was no longer burning from the acid, putting an equally strong mixture of an alkaline substance on my face was probably not a good idea. In fact I can confirm that it also burns quite badly. Nevertheless I rinsed it all off straight away and I'm all fine and unscarred. Sadly the same cannot be said for the bath, you will be pleased to hear that with a couple more (correctly applied) blasts of the air canister the pipes were fully cleared and the water drains fantastically now. The enamel now has what I like to call a non-slip surface to stand on, it actually feels like the surface of a pumice stone but hopefuly any prospective house buyers will decide against stripping off for a bath during a showing of the flat...it is lovely and white though!
Astute readers may have noticed the earlier reference to the Pay it Forward movie. To elaborate for those that didn't, one of the main characters (not annoyingly good child actor Haley Joel Osmet, but the teacher played by Kevin Spacey) has suffered from nasty facial burns, though if memory serves (and it is getting increasingly worse these days) they were from a fire and not acid in the face.
