The bathrooms in off-campus Hanover rentals tell you everything you need to know about the age of the homes they sit in.
Tile grout from a different era.
Pipes that take their time.
Radiators with minds of their own.
For students living in these houses, maintenance is a constant negotiation between short-term convenience and long-term risk. You want the water to drain, but you don’t want to make things worse. And every product you pour down the sink is a bet on which of those matters more.
Most students don’t think twice.
They buy what’s cheapest or what their parents used. A bright plastic bottle with a skull-and-crossbones icon on the back. The logic is simple: if it burns through the hair clog in thirty seconds, it must be doing the job. What’s left unsaid is what it does to the pipes.
Especially pipes that haven’t been replaced since the Carter administration.
(Or the Eisenhower one?)
This is where enzyme-based cleaners enter the picture. They don’t rely on heat, acids, or alkalis to clear buildup. Instead, they use naturally occurring enzymes to break down organic waste. Think food particles, soap scum, body oils, grease, and hair. These cleaners don’t scorch the system. They digest the problem. That distinction matters when you’re dealing with aging infrastructure and septic tanks, which are common in the Upper Valley. And it matters when you’re renting a place built long before Dartmouth added sustainability to its mission statement.
Earthworm brand enzyme cleaner is one such example. Earthworm products are built around enzymes that feed on the organic waste clogging up your drain. No toxic fumes, no gloves required. You pour it in and wait. It’s slow but steady. The process mimics nature, which is part of the appeal. You’re not forcing a chemical reaction. You’re feeding a system that already wants to clean itself. You’re working with the pipes, not against them.
In newer homes, this kind of distinction might seem trivial. Pipes are built to withstand chemical abuse. Municipal plumbing systems are designed to flush things downstream without much disruption. But Hanover is not a new place. Neither are the houses along North Park Street, Wheelock, or West Lebanon. Many of them rely on septic systems. And septic systems are delicate. They don’t like bleach. They don’t like ammonia. They don’t like the stuff in most traditional cleaners. What they do like are bacteria and enzymes. Products like Earthworm don’t just protect the pipes. They also keep the septic tanks alive. That helps landlords, tenants, and whoever ends up paying the bill when things back up.
There’s also the environmental argument. Enzyme-based cleaners are biodegradable. They don’t persist in water systems. They don’t release volatile organic compounds into the air. That’s not an abstract point. Hanover sits upstream from a lot of other places. What gets flushed here moves elsewhere. Students who want to live in a way that aligns with Dartmouth’s sustainability goals should care about what they’re using in the bathroom and the kitchen. Choosing an eco-friendly cleaner is easier than re-insulating the attic or rethinking your heating source. It’s low effort and high impact. That’s rare.
Ask any property manager who works near campus, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Harsh cleaners lead to more maintenance calls. They erode seals. They corrode joints. They kill the microbes that septic systems depend on. They solve one problem and create three more. Enzyme-based cleaners are not magic, but they lower the risk of damage over time. For a student on a twelve-month lease, that means fewer headaches and a better shot at getting a security deposit back in full. For a landlord juggling repairs across multiple units, it means lower costs and fewer emergencies.
There’s a cultural piece too. Students are taught to think critically in the classroom. That same attention to systems and outcomes should apply to the products they use every day. It’s easy to miss. You see a dirty tub, you grab something strong. But the strong choice isn’t always the smart one. Especially when you’re living in a house that predates indoor plumbing by a decade or two. Being a thoughtful tenant means knowing how to clean without destroying what you’re trying to preserve. That means choosing products designed to respect the systems they enter.
Enzyme cleaners like Earthworm work slowly, but it they work. You pour it in before bed and let the enzymes do their job overnight. By morning, the water drains better. There’s no harsh smell. There’s no need to evacuate the room. For bathrooms with shared schedules, that’s a real advantage. The company also makes an enzyme-based bathroom cleaner that handles mildew and grime without scrubbing off the tile glaze. It’s not perfect, but it’s safer. And safer wins when your bathroom’s bones are older than your grandparents.
This kind of product doesn’t require a lifestyle change. You don’t need to be a sustainability major to care about what’s going down your drain. You just need to live in Hanover for one full winter. The houses will teach you the rest. The pipes will complain when you treat them poorly. The clogs will return if you don’t handle them right.
Enzyme-based cleaners are a quiet fix to a long-standing problem.
They let the old systems breathe.
And in towns like this, that’s worth something.
