Homemade Drain Cleaner
Summary: Some people think of bleach as a homemade drain cleaner. Bleach is not an insecticide nor is it labeled for drain fly control. Pouring bleach down drains can also be dangerous to your health.
Cleaning drains with bleach has long been a popular homemade drain cleaner. But, pouring bleach down a drain to kill “drain” flies is potentially dangerous and absolutely wasteful. As a rule of thumb you should never mix household cleaning products. Bleach chemistry is dirty, and some reactions of mixing two common cleaning products might be cancer causing, especially when ammonia cleaner is mixed with bleach. Some people have damaged their lungs by mixing bleach with acid containing cleaners.
Bleach is not an insecticide. Clearly, the label on a bleach bottle says nothing
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If you’re wondering why you should never mix bleach and ammonia you need to do a little chemistry research. One of the byproducts is chlorine gas which was used as a chemical weapon during World War I and II. Another potential reaction which occurs when a greater amount of bleach is added than ammonia is sodium hydroxide and nitrogen trichloride. Nitrogen trichloride is a very toxic chemical to humans. You’ll never get close enough to ingest it because it would probably first explode in your face.
Instead of exposing the environment to potentially harmful products just take a round toilet brush and some liquid dishwashing detergent. Use the detergent laden brush to clean the inside of the drain pipe down to the water line and rinse with cool water. Presto! Drain fly nests are gone.
Comments
28 Jul 2008, 23:43
29 Jul 2008, 08:37
I can think of a couple more reasons not to use ammonia for insect control. Cost, being one, and the absence of application instructions. An ammonia bottle says nothing about how much product to use to control an insect. Do you use one ounce or ten ounces per treatment? See what I mean?