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There are easy fixes for smelly drains


Of clogs and crud






Kitchen sink: Food disposers are the culprits more often than drains. Freshen inside the disposer with Borax or a commercial disposer cleaner, and clean the gunk from the underside of the rubber baffle around the drain opening. You have to do this by hand, and it's not pretty, but it works.

Odor problems

If your drain smells like sewage, that's probably exactly what it is, or at least sewer gas. Every drain in your house has (or should have) a trap — a U-shaped piece of pipe that holds a small amount of water at all times. The water serves as a plug to keep sewer gas from rising up the drain. (Toilets have their own internal version of a trap.) This simple system works beautifully unless one of the following happens:


• The drain isn't properly vented, and a suction effect in the system siphons the trap dry. The same thing can happen if the vent is blocked by tree leaves or something else.

• The fixture served by the drain is too close to other fixtures, such as a toilet drain that's too close to a sink drain. The force of the toilet flush can siphon the sink trap dry.

If you suspect a dry trap, run water in the fixture slowly for a few minutes, then shut it off and do a smell test. This should fill the trap and stop the sewer smell. This can help diagnose the problem but not solve it. However, most venting problems can be remedied by installing an air admittance valve, a pipeless air vent that can go almost anywhere along a drain line. Talk to your plumber.

Tough clogs

You could turn your smelly drain into a chemical spill site by using drain cleaners with no effect on the clog whatsoever. That's why plumbers clean drains with snakes or pressurized water, not chemicals. They also tend to snake a drain repeatedly even after the blockage is cleared. This is to remove the buildup of crud along the walls of the drain pipe, which has almost undoubtedly been exacerbated by the clog. So the next time you think a clog is causing a smelly drain, use a snake, not drain cleaner.

There are easy fixes for smelly drains 07/27/11 [Last modified: Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:48pm]
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