Solid soaps like the classic, old-fashioned bar soap tend to cause clogs faster than liquid soaps. All soap can accumulate on the walls of pipes over time (especially if you don't have a water softener).
Bar soap can resolidify in the drain, causing clumps of soap to form a large, sticky mass that will eventually lead to a blockage. While bar soap may leave you clean and smelling fresh, it leaves behind a layer of film in your pipes and on your shower walls.
Other Ways to Keep Your Drains Clean
Here are two simple, cheap, and effective ways to keep your pipes cleaner: Use a mesh trap: If you're not using a mesh trap, purchase one for each bath or shower drain. Mesh is the best type of trap for catching soap scum, hair, dead skin, and other things that contribute to clogs.
Pour boiling hot water down the drain. This can dissolve mildew, slime, soap scum, and other similar clogs. Put half a cup of baking soda in the drain, then pour half a cup of vinegar down after it. Let this mixture sit for an hour, and then check the drain.
Common sources are: A design flaw in having too short of connecting pipes from sink to main drain pipe. A clog that causes water and soap suds to bubble back up a drain.
Bar soap often blocks drains more than liquid soaps due to re-solidifying inside the drains. This means that clumps of soap can group together to form a large mass over time.
Soaps, especially liquid hand soap, leave fatty deposits within drain lines, and creates a catch point for hair, lint, or anything else that may go down the drain.
You may be surprised to learn that pouring soda down the drain does work for some clogs. To be specific, you need a dark-colored cola (such as Coca-Cola or Pepsi). This type of carbonated beverage usually contains a good amount of phosphoric acid, which given enough time, can eat away at some types of clogs.
Drano Liquid Drain Cleaner flushes clogs away quickly. It works great to remove hair, soap scum, and other gunky clogs.
With time, baking soda and vinegar may work as a natural drain cleaner on weaker drain clogs, and the benefits of regular drain cleaning can help keep your drains free of clogs. But for tough drain clogs that need to be dissolved right away, you may want to use a stronger drain cleaner, like Liquid-Plumr.
Greasy clogs can be cleared with dish soap and hot water.
For this method to work, the drain needs to be cleared of water. Squirt dish soap down the clogged drain and then pour boiling water down the drain. Grease is eliminated!
Normally, a bar of soap is not big enough to clog up the sewage PVC pipe which is usually 2″ in diameter, a bar of soap could be very slippery, it won't clog up or plug up the toilet, will be dissolved in a day or two if it is accidentally flushed down the toilet. Don't worry about it.
Adding water to a soap can ruin the preservatives and contaminate the bottle. Bacteria may start to grow, and you could wind up with more germs on your hands than you had at the start, Larson said. It should be noted: Your hands are often covered in bacteria.
Soap scum: The soap products you use as handwash, body wash, and even detergent for your dishes can all create soap scum as a byproduct of regular use. Just as with small strands of hair, tiny pieces of soap scum can get lodged into the joints of your drains, where the clog starts to form.
Well, if you've flushed a soap bar down your toilet and it's now stuck, you could try pouring hot water into the toilet bowl to loosen it up. However, if that doesn't work, you may need to use a toilet snake or auger to break it up and clear the blockage. You can also try using a plunger to dislodge it.
Stir the solution with a clean wooden spoon or plastic spatula. Soap dissolves faster when water is in motion. If you used a pot, you can place it on the stove on the lowest heat setting. The heat causes the soap to dissolve instantly because of the soap's fat content.
It is Extremely Corrosive For Your Drains
When your pipes are clogged, Drano will sit on top of the clog, continually reacting and generating heat until the clog dissolves. This can put a great deal of stress on your drains as the heat can cause PVC pipes to soften and even break or collapse.
If your drain is clogged with hair, baking soda can dissolve hair in a drain. To try this safe and easy method at home - first, pour a cup of baking soda down the drain. Then pour a cup of vinegar (white vinegar) down. Allow the mixture to sit for several minutes.
Try pouring hot water down the drain, then follow it with one cup of bicarbonate of soda and a cup of vinegar. Leave it for ten minutes, then chase it with more hot water. A combination of the hot water and the natural cleaner mixture can break blockages up.
Baking Soda and Boiling Water
Combine baking soda with a little vinegar and some boiling water and you've got yourself a powerful, chemical-free unclogging compound. Here's what to do: Fill a kettle with water and heat it to a boil. Pour the boiling water down the drain to loosen the clog and warm the pipes.
Basically, if you don't rinse away the soap, it does more harm than good to your complexion. And over time, you may even wind up with contact dermatitis: a red, itchy rash caused by common irritants like perfumes, disinfectants, and—yes—even soap.
Body washes tend to have more moisturizing ingredients, says Nicole Negbenebor, MD, a dermatology resident at Brown University. But if you just need to get clean or prefer a squeaky clean feeling after you shower, a traditional bar soap or shower gel can be what you need, says Jones.
Additional studies have been done over the years where environmental bacteria has been found on bar soaps, as well as the surface of liquid soaps. But, none have shown to be a source or risk of infection. Both liquid and bar soaps are equally cleansing.
However, from a purely health-conscious standpoint, bar soaps contain fewer chemicals and do just as good a job in preventing the spread of germs as their liquid counterparts.