A plumber came up with a red hot remedy to clear a frozen drain that left an elderly customer unable to use his toilet, sink or bath - by setting fire to it. Ryan Mills, 35, used a technique where he set the outside cast iron drain pipe on fire to thaw the rock-solid ice that had formed inside. The customer, who was in his nineties and lived alone, was unable to use his toilet, sink and bath after the pipes froze solid. Footage shows Ryan wrapping rags around the drainpipe at the home in Edinburgh, Scotland, and spraying it with WD-40 before using a blow torch to light it. The ice eventually thawed and he was able to get it out of the drain gradually, allowing the resident to use his bathroom again. Ryan said: "He said: 'My bath, my basin, my two toilets, everything is frozen solid. I can't use anything bar the kitchen sink. "So when I went to it, you see the amount of ice that was blocked solid, about three metres, easily, in length." "I got there at about six o'clock at night and I had other jobs I had to go to. I wasn't expecting it to be quite as bad. "I think I got away at about 8:15 pm, so a couple of hours I was there clearing it all, making sure everything was working, making sure his heating was working. "Like I say, I don't think he's really got any family and he's definitely in his nineties." The cause of the freezing was a fine trickle of water coming from the toilet that froze and built up causing the mass blockage. Ryan added: "My only aim and thought was 'let's get the toilets working for this poor guy.' "The easiest way of going about it and I've done it before, but I do not do that without thinking everything through, setting something on fire outside somebody's house."