I’ve been trying to properly clear our kitchen sink drain for months. Every time the dishwasher pumped out, the dirty water would come up into both sinks. Dreadful mess. I’ve tried using a manual auger before on the pipe but because there are 4 x 90 degree bends at the start of the run, it was very difficult to get anywhere with it.

In comes the Ryobi. The instructions are rubbish. Basically, take it easy, keep the tool close to the entry to the drain. Don’t try and go in from the plughole – take off the trap and go from there. Took 3 goes and we’ve managed to clear what must be a couple of years of food particles, fat and other unmentionables. It easily gets round the 90 degree bends.

One piece of advice – if you’ve got a rough idea of how far the blockage is down the pipe, either put a stripe of nail varnish or a sliver (has to be a sliver kind of in between the spring-like auger because otherwise it’ll get stuck) of insulating tape at the appropriate place on the wire. It’s easy to see as long as you’re going at a sensible pace – then you lock off, spin, reverse, lock, spin, etc.

Job done. Fortune saved.

Our home has a really poor kitchen waste in that it runs for some distance under a concrete floor with very little, if any, drop. As it take the waste from a waste disposal unit and a dishwasher it easily gets blocked with solids.

For some years I have found the best solution is to use a drain cleaning rod of the type where I can push it in to the pipe and turn a handle to try to “drill” it through the blockage. It works but it is a slow messy job so when I saw this it was a must have purchase. One use proved it to be a good decision.

I have not used Ryobi kit for years but still had a couple of 25 year old Ryobi nicad batteries plus an adapter that would allow DeWalt batteries to work with Ryobi kit so took the risk of ordering a bare unit. The old batteries charged OK and work with the drain auger perfectly.

In use this device has proved to be very good. I have not tried it from the sink onwards as no rod could get past the strainer and trap but simply opened a joint in the pipe where it goes into the ground. The end of the rod was pushed in and it easily powered forward and around the bend to the horizontal pipe and carried on extending into the pipe with no problem. With no effort from me the rod carried on forward and through what was on this occasion a minor blockage. Press the reverse button and rod easily retracted into the drum. Looking at the rod on the way out it seems to have had the additional benefit of breaking up dirt on the inside of the pipe.

One small point to remember is that there is no way of telling how far forward the the rod has gone or, indeed, whether it is moving at all. Realising this could be a problem, before I started, I pulled out enough rod to reach the further end of the horizontal pipe and marked about a foot long section with day glow felt tip marker. It worked OK but maybe in future I will wrap a length of bright coloured tape around instead as it will be easier to see.

I have no idea how much battery power I have used but one charge of a really old nicad lasted through all the testing and playing with the device plus feeding out and back to mark the length and pushing it through the pipe and back so I guess any available battery capacity would be OK for domestic use.