A bathroom sink rarely blocks all at once. It gets a little slower each week until one morning the water is still sitting there while you brush your teeth. That gradual decline is the clue: you are not looking at a blockage deep in the pipework, you are looking at something growing slowly in one spot.

That spot is almost always the tailpiece — the short vertical pipe directly under the plughole — and the thing growing in it is a rope of hair bound together by soap scum. Every shampoo and every shave adds a few strands. Fatty acids from soap react with minerals in hard water to form a sticky grey film that glues them together. Within a year you have a felt plug wide enough to narrow the pipe to a straw.

Here is the whole fix, from stopper to test.

Clearing a hair plug from a bathroom tailpiece

Step 1 Look at what you are dealing with The water is standing because a plug of hair bound with soap scum is wedged in the tailpiece, usually within 15 cm of the plughole. Nothing further down is blocked.

Cross-section through a standard pop-up basin waste. The clog sits above the trap, which is why you never need to open the plumbing.

Why this works when plunging doesn’t

A plunger moves water. It is excellent against a soft, mobile blockage in a toilet, where a pressure wave can shift a mass along a wide pipe. A hair plug is neither soft nor mobile — it is anchored to the pipe wall and to the underside of the stopper, and it is porous, so pressure passes straight through it. You can plunge a slow basin for ten minutes and achieve nothing but a wet floor.

The barbed tool works on the opposite principle. Its teeth are angled backwards, so going down they fold flat and slide past the plug; coming up they open and catch. You are not clearing a path through the hair, you are removing the hair from the building.

Getting the stopper out

Most basins use one of three stoppers, and the one you have decides how the first minute goes.

  • Lift-and-turn. Lift, rotate 90°, lift again. It comes free in your hand.
  • Push-button (click-clack). Push to release, then unscrew the top anticlockwise. Some need a firm grip; a rubber glove gives you the friction.
  • Pop-up on a pivot rod. The stopper is captive. Look under the basin at the back of the tailpiece for a horizontal rod held by a small nut. Unscrew the nut by hand, slide the rod out, and the stopper lifts straight up.

Photograph the pivot linkage before you disturb it. Reassembly is obvious for about four minutes and then it isn’t.

The pull

Feed the strip down until you feel it stop, then keep going with gentle pressure until it slips past. Twenty to thirty centimetres is usually plenty; you are aiming to get below the plug, not to reach the drain in the street.

Then pull it up in one continuous movement. If you stop halfway and restart, the barbs let go. What comes out is unpleasant and slightly heavier than you expect. Wipe it straight onto a towel or into a bin bag — dropping it back in the basin just sends it down again.

Go back in two or three more times. It is normal for the first pull to be the dramatic one and for the third to come up nearly clean. That’s your signal to stop.

The flush matters more than people think

Once the hair is gone there is still a layer of soap scum coating the pipe wall. Run the hot tap hard for a full minute. Hot water softens the fatty film and carries it away while the pipe is still open. Skip this and the sink will drain fine today and start slowing again noticeably sooner.

If you want to go one better, do it with a squirt of washing-up liquid in the basin as it drains — a degreaser doing what a degreaser is for, at a concentration that does no harm to plastic or seals.

When to stop and call someone

  • The tool comes up clean and the sink is still slow → the trap or the branch waste is blocked, not the tailpiece.
  • More than one fixture is slow at the same time → shared line.
  • Another fixture gurgles when this one drains → a venting problem.
  • Water backs up rather than merely draining slowly → stop DIY-ing now.
  • There is a smell of sewage, or a damp patch appearing under the basin.

None of those are catastrophes, but they are all outside what a plastic strip can reach.

Keeping it clear

Two small habits keep a basin permanently fast:

  1. A hair catcher over the plughole if the basin’s design allows one. Catch it before it goes in and there is nothing to remove later.
  2. A ten-second pull every few months. Run the tool down once, pull once, done — before you ever notice a slowdown.

That’s it. No chemicals, no dismantled plumbing, and no call-out fee.

The steps, in writing

Same sequence as the animation — handy if you'd rather read it, or print it and take it with you.

  1. Look at what you are dealing with The water is standing because a plug of hair bound with soap scum is wedged in the tailpiece, usually within 15 cm of the plughole. Nothing further down is blocked.
  2. Pop the stopper out Lift the stopper and twist. If it will not lift free, reach under the basin and unclip the horizontal pivot rod behind the tailpiece, then lift the stopper straight out.
  3. Feed the barbed tool down past the clog Push the strip in slowly and keep it going until you feel it pass the resistance. Forcing it turns a loose plug into a packed one.
  4. Pull it back up slowly Draw the tool out in one steady movement so the barbs keep their grip. Wipe it onto an old towel, not back into the basin, and repeat until it comes up clean.
  5. Flush, refit and test Run the hot tap for a full minute to carry the loosened scum away, refit the stopper and pivot rod, then fill the basin and watch it empty in one smooth swirl.

Questions people actually ask

Why not just use a bottle of drain cleaner?

Because the blockage is mechanical, not chemical. Caustic cleaner has to sit in contact with a hair plug for a long time to do anything, which means it also sits against your trap and seals. It generates heat, it can craze plastic waste pipes and it is dangerous if you later plunge or auger a drain that still holds it. Pulling the plug out physically takes ten minutes and removes the problem completely.

The tool comes up clean but the sink is still slow.

Then the blockage is past the trap. Put a bucket under the P-trap, unscrew the two slip nuts by hand, tip the trap out and clean it. If the trap is clear too, the problem is in the branch waste and you want a drain auger or a plumber.

Both sinks in the bathroom drain slowly at the same time.

That points to a shared branch line rather than an individual trap, and it is a good reason to stop DIY-ing and call someone. The same is true if a slow drain is accompanied by gurgling from another fixture when you flush.

How often should I do this?

For a busy family bathroom, roughly every three to six months, before it slows down. Two minutes of maintenance beats ten minutes of unclogging, and a plug that never gets large never reaches the trap.

Can I use a wire coat hanger instead?

You can, but the hook tends to push the plug down rather than grip it, and bare wire can scratch a plastic tailpiece or damage the finish inside a pop-up assembly. The barbed plastic strips cost very little and are designed to grab hair on the way out.

Published 8 August 2026

Howloop guides are general advice for common problems. If something about your situation looks different from the animation — a smell of gas, water near electrics, an injury — stop and get a professional.