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View Full Version : I just have to share this discovery for keeping hair out of the drain!



Silverhalo
April 29th, 2013, 10:19 PM
I have been using the little flat metal drain strainers that sit in the shallow opening at the top of the tub drain to catch my hair. I have to reach down several times each shower to scrape away the hair so that water can flow again, and still end up with a several-inch watery mess at the end of my shower. Since I wash with conditioner-only washes, my water can be topped with a creamy foam that I then have to spray out of the tub after I get out of the shower and the last of the hair is finally caught in the drain strainer.

That darn thing keeps my hair out of the drain, but lengthens my showering process by a good ten minutes with repeatedly removing the hair and waiting for the water to go down so that I can rinse the tub at the end of my shower!

Well, my laundry repairman was out the other day and he told me about a different method of catching washing machine lint. It is called the Lint Trapper. It is made in the US, sold by a small company in Minnesota. It is a tube about 6 inches long, made of hard plastic. The bottom is many, many slats or vanes. You shove this end into the drain hole. It fits drains 1.5 inches in diameter or larger. The slats or vanes continue upward for about 4 inches, then it becomes one solid plastic pipe. As long as your tub has an opening at least a quarter inch deep, I would guess, you can place this into the hole. Lint or hair tend to get sucked downward. They end up getting sucked against the vanes. But since the vanes go upward for 4 inches, there is no blocking of the drain, like there is with my little metal drain strainer. When I saw how well it worked in the laundry tub, I had to try it in the bath!

I used the lint trapper in my bathtub drain today and had NO water accumulate in the tub at all, and at the end of the shower I did not have a scum of conditioner floating on top of water accumulated in the tub that I had to later wash down. The hair I lost in the shower was all nicely wound around the Lint Trapper, and all I had to do was lift it out of the drain, roll the hair off and throw it in the waste basket, and put the Lint Trapper back in the drain. No having to peel shed hair from my fingers and stick it to the shower walls ( I did go back and read the thread on here about clogged drains), no having to stop mid-shower to clear the strainer. I bet there will be no need to go fishing down the drain to pull up hair clogs in the future, either.

Lowes and Home Depot apparently used to carry this item, but no longer do. I ordered mine online at the website at http://www.linttrapper.com/cart.php. I got three - one for the laundry, one for the bath, and one extra. I was so thrilled at how well it caught my hair that I had to come back to this community I had not visited in a long time to let all of you know how well it works. I have no connection to the company.

jacqueline101
April 30th, 2013, 05:18 AM
Thanks for sharing this information my tub drain gets hair clogs alot.

browneyedsusan
April 30th, 2013, 06:18 AM
Thank you!!!!
I have just started making enough hair to have the clogging problems you describe.
You've saved me a lot of frustration!

Silverhalo
April 30th, 2013, 09:18 AM
This thing looks like a little Saturn V rocket (without the pointed end) sticking out of your drain, but because the vanes allow the water to pass the whole length of the thing, the hair cannot block the water.
Get one for your laundry tub, too. It works great there!
I am going to write to the company today and tell them that they are missing out on a whole marketing demographic - people with long hair.
http://www.pbase.com/nancyb/image/149945079

Neecola
April 30th, 2013, 10:38 AM
Thank you for sharing, Silverhalo!

fairy666tale
April 30th, 2013, 10:48 AM
Wow, that sounds perfect!
Too bad I'm not in the US:( And even if they did ship to here, I wonder if Dutch drains have different sizes than the ones in the US? Just like power sockets:confused:

Silverhalo
April 30th, 2013, 01:49 PM
Fairy666tale, if the drain is about 3.9 centimeters across or more and there is nothing blocking the drain hole for at least about 6 millimeters down, so that you can push the thing into the drain, the Lint Trapper would work. It is graduated to fit bigger drains. Smaller drains are a problem, but they do give instructions on how to trim the bottom vanes to accommodate a smaller drain hole. It is drain holes that are not open at all at the top that are impossible. I wish I had more posts here at LHC, so I could post a picture in my reply.

When I looked at other threads people have written about hair in drains, I saw that people were unscrewing the drain plugs in order to be able to fit the metal and plastic strainers over or into their drain holes. Doing that will probably allow a person to use the Lint Trapper, too.

If you really want one, I could mail it to you. Do you have a paypal account? We could arrange something, I am sure. My DH just got a trombone mute from England. Paypal converts currency. We could probably arrange it so you pay half, I send it, and you pay the other half when it arrives.

heidi w.
April 30th, 2013, 02:45 PM
I do something entirely different. But thank for the tip. I now have an awesome tub system.
heidi w.

ravenreed
April 30th, 2013, 03:33 PM
We use a Zip-it (http://zipitclean.com/) every couple of months to clear our drain. I am not quite picturing how the drain thing works. I will have to look into it a bit more.

Silverhalo
April 30th, 2013, 04:31 PM
Good, Heidi, having an easy system is important. My old system was one of the metal drain covers with holes in it. Trouble with it was that it filled with hair before my shower was done, and there I was standing in water halfway through. So I would pull the hair out of the drain and set it on the edge of the tub. I would have to do this several times, but still would end up standing in water and having to wait for it to go down so I could rinse the foam from my conditioner-only wash down.

Ravenreed, if you go to the link at the bottom of my first post, you will see the item itself and a cut-away picture of it being used in a laundry tub. You just push the vaned end into the hole of the drain. The rest sticks out. In a laundry tub, maybe the whole 6 inch length is needed. In a bathtub or shower, that much length is overkill. But it works. The hair stays out of the drain, it collects around the vanes and you just pull out the Lint Trapper, roll the hair off and into the waste basket, and reinsert it in the drain. Maybe if enough people buy it for hair, they will make a smaller model for tubs and showers.