POPULO Drain Auger, Plumbing Snake with Gloves, 19-50mm Pipe Snake Drain Clog for Toilet, Bathtub Drain, Bathroom, Kitchen, Sink and Sewer Snake Machine

Works very well, upgraded over old version that I had. Stronger build. Only complaint is I wish it was 25 foot or have different size options. Will buy again.

This product is completely useless. It may well function as intended, but the design is useless. It cannot be operated with just two hands unless all you want to do is push the cable a meter or less downward into a sink drain. Anything other than that (a horizontal pipe like a bathtub overflow drain, etc) it is completely unusable. The main problem is that the auger does not have a locking mechansim. The only way to lock the cable under tension so you can force it down the drain is to squeeze the big trigger clamp, but this takes full adult male strength, and you must keep holding it because as soon as you relax the cable lock releases. This means you cannot push the cable into the drain and turn it at the same time unless there is little or no resistance in the pipe - unless you have a second person to assist. The tool is totally worthless as a result. Older pipes or pipes with any turns that have blockages require real force to push the cable through. Any useful auger must lock fully and then allow the user to push the cable in manually, otherwise it just thrashes around. In addition, the drill feature does not really work. It's unclear if this is a clumsy safety feature or a faulty design. But the drill does not actually turn the auger. If you run the drill at full power, the auger will start to turn just a little bit, but there is massive slippage. Again, this might be a safety feature. But this means that the drill will not turn the auger against any real resistance. This also makes it useless. Utterly worthless tool.

My household drains run underneath a concrete slab, so I can't get to them directly; and on top of that, I don't know exactly how they run. Apparently the bathroom sink joins up with the tub on the way out, because for the longest time both of those drains have run very slowly. In addition, running water at high volume down that sink caused gurgling noises under the tub. So I figured there is some longstanding constriction downstream of that point. Sometimes it would get REALLY slow, and then I'd attack it with drain cleaner, and sometimes some suction. At best, though, it was just a slow slow drain, and I learned to live with it that way. Periodically, over the years, I would consider whether I wanted to try to snake it somehow, but didn't have high hopes for that approach either. Nevertheless, running across this Populo auger revived my interest, and I finally sprang for the purchase. I opened up the pipe connection below the trap under the sink, sent the auger in, and removed it again, feeling not entirely sure how much I had accomplished. But when I took a shower that night: wowza! Problem solved! (I had forgotten what it was like to come to the end of a shower and not be standing ankle-deep in water.) This augur can be propelled with its hand-crank, and also provides an option to rotate it by attaching a power drill. I assumed I'd be tackling my own drain manually, as I didn't expect the problem to be very far down, and thought I might get better tactile feedback that way when I reached an obstruction. Well, it didn't take long to tire of that method. Each full rotation of the crank extends (or retracts) the auger only inch or less, so that adds up to a lot of spins. And working under sinks isn't usually the most comfortable posture anyway. So I soon pulled out my variable-speed drill, and that proved just the ticket. Other than counting your rotations, there's no clear way of knowing how deep into your drain you are getting as you work. (I think a nice addition to the design could be to color-mark the auger at fixed intervals -- say 5 or 10 feet.) Usually you will be able to remove the auger from your pipe by pulling it back out by hand, so at least you can see after the fact just how deep you were. (In my case, about 8.5 feet solved the problem.) This product includes a pair of protective gloves to be used when pulling the auger out by hand. I'm a fairly tall man, and the gloves were still large enough to be useful. Even if I never have to reach for this drain auger again, it will have been well worth the purchase.

successfully cleared a deep blockage in shower drain. Much cheaper than a plumber

I bought this for a kitchen drain. The knob on the end was too big to fit through the drain holes in the sink and the drain cover doesn't come off so I had to take off the pee trap and go through underneath. It is VERY hard to use when you're trying to use it horizontally. The bar you have to squeeze to move the snake forward/backward is VERY hard to squeeze if you have a smaller hand or are using it alone. Additionally, it's kind of heavy so holding it sideways while squeezing and turning it manually is a challenge. If you're doing this, using a drill is a must. ***PSA *** If you're using a drill, make sure that the manual turning handle is folded down. I didn't do this and almost broke a finger.