Hi, this is the pipe connected to a sink. What is the reason behind this kind of plumbing design? I have noticed this at work and in my rental apartment. I believe they are the source of foul odors in the bathroom. What can I do so that it doesn’t emit bad smells.
22 comments
Pop it open and clean it?
Bathroom should have a floor drain because it’s a “wet space” (I’m not sure about correct terminology). Makes it easier to wash and clean your bathroom. And because your sink needs a drain too, why not combine them. This is a pretty common solution.
The bad odour propably comes from the floor drain when there’s not enough water in the stench trap (?) to block the smell. That tends to happen if the bathroom isn’t used frequently enough. Try pouring some water in the floor drain regularly. That should help. If not, the problem lies elsewhere.
I heard that modern bathrooms have two drains in case someone passes out/falls asleep in the shower and blocks one of the drains. Cheaper than fixing water damage…
If there is a bad smell coming from the floor drainage, then it points to the smell-lock that is inside there is not correctly placed or it is not wet
It probably havent been cleaned in a while. An easy way is to cover the whole thing with baking soda. Like 5 dl of it and then pour vinegar over it. It will losen the grime and after that you should pour a lot of boiling water down the drain.
Could be a bit difficult to do at work but still managable
Water lock prevents odor. It’s basically similar than the S-curve in your toilet seat.
If it starts to smell, the S-curve is empty, or you might have lots of hair etc hanging throughout the S-curve.
Try to clean it or use pipe opener, which is acidic and removes biological stuff from there.
Yup baking soda and vinegar. 3 euros and doesn’t destroy the planet like bleach or something harsh would 🙂
Nothing wrong with the design. You get rid of the smell by cleaning it.
Before doing anything else, please pour couple liters of water to the drain. Directly to the drain grill on the floor, not through pipe connected to sink. The water trap is probably dry and you can fix it in under 30 seconds.
Many recommend baking powder and vinegar or other chemicals. This does indeed clean it, but bigger chuncks of hair will still be stuck in the drain. Also if it’s loose, the chemicals won’t do a thing for the smell.
Rubber gloves on, open the drain with a pen or screw driver, remove all the debris, make sure the inside of the floor drain is installed properly (sits tight), pour some water in and close it.
Just pour water in…it is dryed out and odours from sewer line are getting thru the water lock.
If this place is used regularly and it still smells try cleaning that drain. Sometimes hairs can make it so that water siphons between them and drain dries very quickly.
Is it in bathroom? There will need to be two drains. Because students sleep in bathroom.:D
Open, clean and spray some Desinfektion cleaning detergent like something chlor based. But yes this design is not the best against smells for sure.
Pop open the grate, Clean the trap with a bleach cleaner, be sure to use rubber gloves. The bleach cleaner kills 99.9% of those stinky bacteria.
“Propably” count in this thread: 2
Put water on it, the draining gets Dry and thats why odors.. if you pour water to it smells stop
Pour in some vinegar, let it sit like that for a while, then pour in water. No need for baking soda or anything else.
Alternatively, you can just pour in water as well, but it’ll start smelling again faster. Vinegar is good in getting rid of all kinds of smells for extended periods of times.
Vinegar by itself doesn’t disinfect much, but it does have SOME bacteria killing properties, and it’s acidic, so it also cleans away some grime & muck buildup.
time to clean it.
There are two floor drains in the bathroom to prevent any water damage. It was fairly common especially in student apartment buildings to have someone pass out in the shower blocking the drain, and then the water would flow everywhere else but the drain. I believe it’s mandatory to have two drains in new buildings.
The smell is either for dry drain or for all of the nasty stuff that have gone down the sink and even the shower drain (they may be connected). Because you most likely use the sink quite often, it shouldn’t be dry. Therefor my first advice would be to disassemble the pipes and clean them and the drain. You don’t need any chemicals for that, just a bunch of plastic gloves, toilet paper, plastic bags and maybe newspaper to cover the bottom of the cabinet. That should be effective, and should it not work, contact your landlord.
The shower drain should be cleaned at least twice a year or every time that it’s not working properly. I would say the sink pipes need to be cleaned more often, 3-4 times a year. If you trim your beard over the sink, try to block any hair going down the drain. Also, if you use stuff such coconut oil for makeup removal, the pipes will get blocked quicker.
That’s probably not the only one so it just goes from that to the other one which is more centered in the room and that one would have the actual lock.
There is a odor trap that collects hair and dead skin cells and anything you flush down the drain. Hair and dead skin cells will prevent odor trap from working correctly. It also needs to be properly seated. You could call your apartment handyman help with it.
Laziest and easiest way is to buy drainpipe opening liquids/grain. Though if the drain is totally blocked don’t do it. Also if you ever use such products and you need to call the handyman to open the blockage tell them about it, that stuff burns like a mf.
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E: Some older apartments do not have removable odor trap and your only option is to use the drain opening stuff or call handyman.