Best Chemical Drain Cleaners for Unclogging Your Home in 2025

I leaned on my background as a chemical engineer to offer insights on the effectiveness of these controversial chemicals. In my experiment, I tested eight of the most commonly available chemical drain cleaners: six alkaline and two acidic. I performed dissolution tests to evaluate how well each of them could dissolve drain blockages. I had one goal: to determine which products, if any, would work effectively against the most common clogging materials. For this rundown, I headed to CNET's product testing lab in Louisville, Kentucky, to conduct a comprehensive batch distillation experiment with eight of the most commonly used chemical drain cleaners on the market. My primary objective was to determine the efficiency of each product in dissolving various types of clogging materials, including organic matter, grease, paper products and pet hair (the same pet hair we use for our robot vacuum tests, as a matter of fact). Throughout the experiment, I also noted the pH levels of the cleaning ... Read full article.