I’ve got a clogged sink, and have been reading the labels on a bunch of different products lately. I’d always assumed that they were a strong acid of sorts, which would dissolve whatever sort of material was built up in the pipes. But I’ve noticed that a lot of these products specify that they’re non-corrosive, so I’m not sure what other sort of mechanism may be at play here.
I’m not aware of any that are acid, usually they’re strong alkaline, NaOH or KOH which is extremely corrosive, but there are some that are enzymatic that are supposed to break down organic material, not very well in my experience.
Yeah, I cheaped out and bought a bottle of a store-brand cleaner which I think may be the enzyme type. It’s made a bit of progress, but not much so far. :(
The enzyme products are generally meant to be a maintenance thing, i.e. if you use them regularly they remove light buildups of crud stuck to the inner walls of your pipes before they build up into being thicker layers of crud, which become blockages (or just reduce the effective inner diameter of your pipes).
This stuff might theoretically clear the right kind of total clog, but it’s likely to take a long time.
My advice is to get yourself a drain snake. Chemical clog clearing products “may” work, with various pros and cons depending on the type of clog. But physical removal of the clog with a snake always works, you will never run out of your bottle of snake, and provided you manage not to fuck it up so badly that you break it the snake is also infinitely reusable.
Just get one of those 50’ long jobbies you can put on the end of a drill. That’s just fine for most residential work and should only run you $20 or $30 at the hardware store.