How to Clean or Repair a Drain Stopper

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Clean or Repair a Drain Stopper

The drain stoppers in your bathtub and lavatory sinks make use of some mechanical parts that can cause a lot of trouble. The drain stops catch hair and other debris, creating clogs that will eventually block your drain. The drain stopper sometimes gets bend or dislocated and then it won’t close properly anymore. Drain stoppers can become separated from the connecting parts and refuse to open or close.

Luckily most of these common problems are easily avoided by taking some preventive measures and are otherwise easy to solve by taking the sink stopper apart, cleaning the drain stopper’s part and resetting the handle adjustment. Most pop-up problems can be fixed with a wrench and a little lubrication.

Avoiding Problems With a Drain Stopper

Clogged sinks and drains are a nuisance that can be easily avoided if you take care not to rinse too much hair or other small debris down the sink stopper. You should also try to avoid pouring greasy substances and other liquids that might go solid inside your drainage system down the drain.

Regular cleaning of the drain stopper will also help you to ensure that your drain stopper keeps functioning as it should avoiding some of the problems with the drain stop where it can get stuck.

Drain Stopper Cleaning & Repairs

First of all you will need to find the location of your drain stopper assembly, it usualy located right underneath the sink or bathtub. When you found the assembly ou should look for a vertical metal bar or rod that extends down from the bottom end of the drainstop handle on your faucet, this metal bar often has several small holes in it . The drain rod should be connected to a pivot rod that runs through the sink drain tube.

To disconnect the drain stopper you should loosen the nut that is holding the pivot rod secured onto the drain tube and then pull the nut and pivot rod out while at the same time lifting up on the sink stopper to free tube. After that you should be able to lift up the stopper and out of the drain opening. Clean the stopper in another sink or a large bucket using an old toothbrush.

CAREFUL!  Do not run water through the drain without replacing the horizontal arm, water will pour out of the open hole!

When you are done cleaning the drain stopper, put the stopper back into the drain opening while keeping the loop or eye on the bottom end of the stopper aligned with your pivot rod. Then pull out the pivot a bit to get the drain stop to fall back into the closed position. Push the rod into place, making sure that the end of the rod captures the eye of the stopper.

All that is left now is to secure the retaining nut onto the pivot rod.

When you are done you dhould always check the stopper and stopper handle. If your drain stopper still does not function properly when you try to open and close it, then you should adjust the position of the pivot rod

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