Swapped to a dedicated drain snake after fighting with a shop vac for months

I spent the last year clearing clogged dishwasher drains with a shop vac and it was always a mess. Finally grabbed a Ridgid 3/8 cable drum snake last Tuesday and it cleared a 15 foot clog in the kitchen of a house in Portland in under 5 minutes. The vac left soap scum everywhere and took 3 tries every time. Has anyone else made the switch and noticed a huge time difference on these jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

butler.finley1mo ago

Oh man, that brings back a memory. My buddy Jake spent a whole Saturday trying to get a slow draining bathroom sink cleared with his shop vac. He had to take the whole p-trap apart twice and still couldn't get the gunk out. A few weeks later his dad let him borrow his little hand-crank snake and he said it took maybe three minutes to pull out a gross wad of hair and soap. He was so mad he hadn't just bought one himself.

jamesm481mo ago

Poor Jake, that sounds like a classic case of learning the hard way. We've all been there, spending hours on something that a simple tool would have fixed in minutes. A small hand snake is one of those things you don't think about until you really need it.