Best Plumbing Tools for Persistent Clogs

When a toilet clogs somewhere in your house, you first instinct is to grab a plunger to fix the problem. In normal circumstances, this would work, but some clogs are more persistent than others. After a while, you’re right back to square one. 

A plunger might not be able to do you good in such situations. What you need is help from professional contractors and their special tools. For persistent clogs, plumbers will normally use a tool called an auger. Here are the two types:

Closet Auger

A closet auger is a tool you’ll normally find in a plumber’s service truck. It’s a snaking tool that’s specifically designed to reach deeper into the toilet to dislodge clogs. The flexible cable gets through the tight bends while the plumber winds the hand crank to retrieve items that might have been flushed down or break up accumulated matter. It’s usually the first option for when the plunger fails. 

Telescoping Auger 

Sometimes, clogs are so much more troublesome that your toilet bowl would have to be removed—the clogs are so far down that even the trusty closet auger can’t reach it. Before your plumber would go to such extreme measures though, he will reach for another type of auger – the telescoping auger. A slightly longer version of the closet auger, it has an extra 3 feet of cable hidden in the handle. The extra length slides out at a single push of a button.