ComStar Pure Lye 2 lb Drain Opener, 99% Sodium Hydroxide Beads, Soap Maker

I read through other Amazon reviews about this product, so decided to give it a try. I have to say, I'm totally impressed! I had a bathroom drain that was nearly completely clogged up, mostly with hair. Ordinarily, I'd have just pulled out the drain plug, dug the hair out with my hemostats, and been done with it. But this particular plug is unnecessarily difficult to get out, so I thought I'd try something else. My first attempt was with some sort of drain cleaner. Directions said to use half of the bottle, I think there was maybe 1/3 of the bottle left, so I used that. Poured it into the bathtub drain, left it overnight, took a shower the next day and saw no improvement whatsoever. It took 1 inch of water in the bathtub about 40 minutes to drain. Expecting the Lye to perform no better than my drain cleaner, poured it down the drain 4 times, rather than "just" following the directions. I reasoned that perhaps most of the solution would drain PAST the hair clog, and NOT dissolve the clog? So, on the first night, I estimated doing what the directions said, 1 cup of Lye dissolved into 1 to 1 1/2 cups of water. Poured it down the drain. Left it overnight. Next day, made up a small solution - maybe half of what the directions suggested, poured it slowly into the drain. Did that, again, that evening, and, again, the next day. Four days later, I took a shower in that particular shower, and it drained just fine, I couldn't believe it! So, now I'm wondering how much the lye actually worked after only ONE administration, rather than 4. But I'm glad and quite impressed that it really did work. In total, I used about 2/3 of the bottle, with plenty left over for other drains in the house. Of note: Lye is not the nicest stuff to use or have around in your house. I found out that when you mix it with water, it generates heat. I could easily feel the heat through the plastic bucket that I used to mix the solution. Lye will chemically burn your skin, to be careful. Don't let it touch your skin, and be especially careful not to get it into your eyes. Also, according to wikipedia, Lye can pull enough water out of the atmosphere to turn itself into a liquid solution (which generates heat) and can potentially ignite other flammable substances (paint? gasoline? paint thinner?) So I'll use ALL of the remaining Lye in my other household drains, and NOT store it in the house or in the hot garage. Knowing full well that the next time the drain even STARTS to drain SLOWLY, the solution is only one quick visit to Amazon and a couple of days away.

My kitchen sink backs into my bathroom sink once a year. The plumber says its roots. I dont beleive him. This year, I wasnt spending $700 for them to come out and clear the lines. Since december I have tried zap stuff, twice and it didnt work. I borrowed a snake, snaked thru the entire line, didnt work. I almost gave up and called a plumber but decided to come on Amazon and look at reviews on drain cleaners. This product does NOT disappoint!!! It arrived about 2 hours ago. I heavily armed myself with protective gloves, eyewear and old heavy clothes. (My dad scared the life out of me about this stuff being very dangerous) I read the directions about 40 times before I was confident enough to use it. I really didnt want to burn an arm off or worse, cause my pipes to melt causing me more money that I dont have. Ok. I followed the direction for a slow drain. First I boiled water and sent that down the drain a few times as it says to "warm the pipes up" then I used one cup of this miracle stuff in each drain. It fizzed, hissed and reminded me of the science experiment in middle school of an exploding volcano that only half works... it erupted, slightly. Then all settled and I waited, and waited. I didnt want to jump the gun at just 15 minutes. This was some major clog we were working with. So while I waited, I started boiling water in ever big pot I had on all my burners. Alexa rang and my time was up! I started off pouring the boiling water SLOWLY down the first drain I dropped the product down. Nothing. No fizzing, no exploding. It just kept draining. Shocked. I ran to my kitchen and started dumping water down the drain... surely it would back up into my bathroom sink again... three gallons down the hatch... i run to the bathroom... it's clear! Holy moly! I put this stuff to the test. I run both the sinks hot water full blast down the kitchen sink and bathroom. Now I'm running back and forth like a crazy woman but guess what! Nooooo clog, no water pooling, nothing. I'm so amazed with this product. For weeks I have been stressing about not having the money to fix this, but after spending under 6 bucks on this stuff I am floored. I will NEVER buy any other drain cleaner again and neither should you! This stuff is a game changer!

Product work great I do highly recommend it .

Let me first state that you need to follow all safety precautions when using this product. Gloves, Eye protection etc. I had an issue that has been ongoing for years - the washing machine would drain and water would back-fill into the kitchen sink then slowly drain out ok. Over the years I had plumbers come and snake the line from the kitchen and this would either solve the problem for a while or just not even work very well. Snaking does not get rid of anything, it just moves the gunk around. My house is 50 years old and I assume the pipes were filled with grease and lint combo that had gotten to a point where the pipes should have been replaced. I tried everything over the last few months. All the liquid plumbers, worthless enzymes etc etc. Literally wasted a few hundred dollars on all that. Nothing worked. The problem got so bad that water was now backing up into the washer drain pipe as well. I had to stand next to the washer during the drain cycle and stop the draining then start it again. I was almost ready to give up. I kept searching on Amazon and this Lye stuff showed up in the search result. I never heard of it before. I bought two of these and will now explain what my procedure was: Put on gloves and eye protection. Put about half of one container into a bucket. Added about 6 cups of cold water. Used old wooden chop sticks to slowly mix it. It will get really warm. Poured it slowly into the KITCHEN sink. Did the same thing again with the rest of container one and poured it into the WASHER drain pipe. I did not allow any water after that to get into the pipes for the whole night. I pre-poured water into buckets for washing hands and even late night pee runs were done in a bucket pre filled with water. I did this process for two nights in a row using both containers of this lye I bought. The next day I filled the kitchen sink with VERY hot water and dish soap. Let it drain. This was done each day so a total of twice. The problem stated has been completely solved. I can run the washing on full load and run the kitchen faucet at the same time as the washer drain cycle and there was no back-up of water. UNBELIEVABLE!! This was my last chance, if this didn't work then I would probably spend thousands to just have those outgoing pipes replaced. Thanks to the people who make this product.

I didn't get the benefit of hearing a "whoosh" or anything so incredible when I used this on my bathroom sink drain, which is about a century old, which has been getting backfilled with stagnant water when I leave the sink on for more than 5 seconds. After first trying a drum auger I found with no luck, I decided lye might be the solution and used it as part of a trifecta of clog removal solutions. The clog was very obviously deep in my wall instead of being immediately accessible and I'm just a typical 30-year-old with no knowledge of plumbing really... For me, there was no explosion or craziness, but I did don a mask and a full-length coat just in case something crazy did happen (and you should as well if you buy this). After the first pass through with the lye, I didn't notice any change, so I decided to do it again, this time mixing it in a plastic container with the hot water in advance and then pouring it down the drain all together (Do not do this unless you have the gloves and the protective glasses!) and letting it sit for a few hours. When I poured hot water into the sink after letting the lye sit for about 6 hours, it immediately backfilled and I was really bummed out, but I decided to actually *boil* some hot water and pass that through the pipes. A lot of people say not to do this if your sink has a PVC pipe in it but I passed about 10 quarts total of boiling water and started seeing a bit of an improvement at that point. I finished everything up by allowing the sink to fill some and using a plunger on the drain. At this point, all sorts of disgusting black stuff was coming up... but the sink finally returned to a somewhat functional state. I'm sure this clog pre-dated me living in my house and unclogging it felt like a serious effort. In retrospect, I would have probably just paid for a plumber to come out because it ended up eating my entire Sunday. On the other hand, I would recommend the lye as a PREVENTATIVE maintenance tool for stubborn and clog-prone sinks. Personally, I think the plunger technique was the most effective, but this lye definitely jumpstarted the process. I'm guessing if you don't live in a super old house, this stuff will do the job much more easily... in which case, you should buy this instead of Drano because it's way cheaper, but you should also try not to be a Darwin Award winner and maintain a healthy fear of lye, because the stuff is really dangerous to play around with if you're not taking all the precautions.

I bought this is 2018 and never used it. Why? I have no clue, maybe I didnt believe the hype? who knows. Fast Forward 7 years, I just moved into a new house (on septic), of which the master bathroom shower is clogged, pretty much have to stand in an inch of water when you shower, which is not nice. I tried this stuff call Drain CLR or something like that. You pour 2-3 ounces down the drain for 5 days. Well this did absolutely nothing. Then I was going through moving boxes in my garage when I stumbled upon this and I figured, what the heck, I remember people raving about this, let me try it. I used it exactly as the directions on the bottle told me too, Ran steaming hot water down the drain, waited for all the water to clear and then poured 3 ounces down the drain. I had a glove on one hand and I did have to move it around for it to all go down the drain, but then I left it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, I came back, turned on the steaming hot water and my shower no longer was clogging up.....WHAT? Wow! No idea why I waited so long to try this, but i am a true believer of it now. This stuff works QUICKLY and is septic safe! Love it!

I have had a stubborn bathroom sink for what seems like forever. A few months back it finally gave up and clogged 100%. I had zero drainage. I tried going the super cheap method and using what I already had in the house, baking soda and vinegar, to no avail. I did a little research on Amazon and ended up buying a "snake", or plumbers auger, for the drain. That did have an effect on the drain in that it allowed it to drain the water that had been sitting in the sink for a few days by this point. It did not, however, solve my problem. I still couldn't use the sink beyond any type of trickle lest it back up again. I then tried one more thing before I declared defeat and called a plumber; this product. I followed the directions exactly as written and it didn't seem like anything happened. The hot water I poured down the drain after the prerequisite wait time clogged back up! And what's worse is that it was spewing a sort of chemical "smoke" in the air! So that didn't work; I was left with about a half a bottle. I give up! I'm calling a plumber. Fast forward a few months and I never called the plumber. My excellent procrastination skills combined with a work schedule that didn't match up with any plumbers, and there I was brushing my teeth in the shower ever day! On this most recent Presidents Day I decided that I'd finally make the call, but before I did I'd go ahead and use the rest of this Pure Lye stuff; I did pay for the whole thing and still had half a bottle after all. So again, followed the directions to a tee, except I just dumped the rest of the bottle down the drain. Whoa nelly!!!!!! Stand back baby! I have no clue if the additional amount this time around made the difference or if it was the fact that I had used this stuff months back and the drain sat bone dry for all that time? Or maybe it was a combination of those things. No matter what it was, it worked this time! As soon as the hot water went down the drain that chemical "smoke" came back up but I had a plastic bowl ready this time and covered the drain and also had the bathroom window open as well. There was quite a bit of noise coming from the drain below the sink! It sounded like a gurgling rumbling noise and I shut the doors below sink in case it exploded! It was THAT loud! After a few seconds a foam started to appear from underneath the bowl and I added more water to the sink. Out of nowhere came this "whoosh!" sucking sound and then it happened - my sink drained!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot what it was like to brush my teeth in the sink it has been so long!! I have since ordered another bottle of this stuff to keep on hand for future clogs as this was the only thing that worked for me!!!!

I believe this product can be pretty decent, but I myself won't use it again, and part of the reason is actually my fault. I think I poured the powder into the drain thinking it would just mix with the backed up water, but the powder hardened inside the plastic pipes and completely clogged it. I ended up having to replace that section of the pipe because nothing I did would remove the rock that the lye formed into inside the pipe. Fortunately, it didn't harden deep into the pipes; otherwise, I would have had to hire a plumber to figure out what was going on. I then used a liquid version of lye (Instant Power Hair & Grease Drain Opener by Scotch) that I found at Home Depot for a very reasonable price, and that has worked well. I got a little bit of lye on my leg, and that part of my leg is now smooth and hairless, so I believe it when they say lye works well on hair. I don't know if it is effective against foods in general though. There are a few things that I would caution against when buying this product: 1. I think compared to the lye that is already in liquid form at Home Depot, the powder version has one more step required that makes it more dangerous. When you're mixing it with water, you need to completely dissolve it so that the powder doesn't harden into a rock inside the pipes as it did for me. And mixing it with water makes it more likely that some of it will splash on you. Lye is very caustic and can do real damage to your skin, hair, or eyes. 2. I'm not sure you're really getting that much bang for your buck with this product. For big clogs, you're only getting one or two uses out of the whole bottle. The only reason you'd get this powder version is because you can't find the liquid version at a nearby store. There is likely added cost to shipping dangerous chemicals, so you'll find the "Instant Power Hair & Grease Drain Opener" to be really expensive ordering it online. Lye seems to be very effective against hair and grease, so if you want to get lye for clogs, you're better off skipping the powder version and getting liquid instead.

Buen producto

Had high hopes for this product to clear my very slow moving sink drain. As I had watched videos and read previous reviews saying/showing that it does the job. But this isn't the case for me didn't work at all and I tried using it 3 days in a row to give it a chance. You do get a lot of product in the bottle and the instructions are clear. But my drain is stubborn still hunting for a product that works this is the 4th I have tryed.