The kitchen sink hasn't been draining as readily as it might.
I've been administering (legal) chemicals over the last couple of weeks, without avail.
I am reluctant to use the contents of a container I have in the shed, after my last experience with the bathroom sink.
This is the one I bought a few years ago from my local, friendly builder's merchant, the sale of which was closed with the words 'Don't tell anyone I sold you this'
In the absence of the nuking it from orbit option, I realised I was going to have to get mechanical on the sink's ass.
Oh man! Who put this f*ing house together?
I started to remove the water trap, a circular affair, the bottom half of which pokes through a hole that someone has helpfully cut in the shelf in the cupboard.
Only the hole isn’t actually large enough to allow the trap to pass through it.
You find this out only once you have unscrewed it sufficiently that it starts to release its contents into the bowl I have strategically placed below it (Smart I am, like that)
So then begins the tricky process of doing up the trap (while it continues to release its contents) in order to figure out what to do next.
Once the flow is stemmed, I begin to realise that the only way the trap is going to come off is as the last item to be removed.
The first one being the removal of the sink, taps and all, from the worktop.
It is at this point that I start muttering things like ‘What cnut put this together? I’ve no intention of removing the sink!
I allowed some time to pass, and some thought to take place, before it became apparent that I might be in with a chance if I unscrewed the (home-made) shelf brackets, working from under the shelf, and dropping the shelf giving me unabated access to the trap.
This turned out to be the result I was looking for \o/
I dropped the shelf, having decided that, once the plumbing has been dealt with, I would jig-saw a larger hole in the shelf to avoid these shenanigans ever having to take place again.
The trap turned out to be mostly empty, with just a surface layer of scaly kak, so lets move down the line and open up the first rodding eye (still under the sink).
I removed the cap and Oh my! There is no bore to the pipe. It be solid. Full. With at least 16 years worth of drainskog, and probably more. Like from when the house-conversion was done in 1984.
I wasn’t going to be able to deal with this just with a long (No. 2 tool kit) screwdriver.
Out came the drain springs, and into the skog they went.
What I pulled from there was little different to excrement, but not the excrement of any creature known on this planet.
Bleargh!
I extracted what I could / was prepared to do, into the washing up bowel
[sic], replaced the cap, flushed, and repeated the extracting / flush process a couple of times before moving on to the rodding eye which is outdoors.
That turned out to be less unpleasant. Thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure how it could’ve been more unpleasant.
So, now I have a sink which drains readily \o/.
I’ve jig-sawed a larger hole in the shelf (that’ll go back in exactly the same way it came out - after the water trap is back in) and gone for the final assembly of the water trap.
Only I cannot stop it from drip, drip leaking.
Turns out that the o-ring which interfaces the two halves of the trap, is misshapen
and will not seal.
I give the join a couple of turns of single-wrap PTFE tape (I know you’re not supposed to use this on plastic fittings, but we are talking desperation here…)
That passed the hot water seal test, but failed the cold water one
Drip, drip, drip.
Dismantled the trap again, removed the single-wrap, and gave the thread many turns of conventional PTFE tape and re-assembled.
It passed the hot water seal test.
Here’s the Jesus trick - After running hot water through the trap for a few minutes, when everything has expanded a bit, you can get another half turn from the fittings before running them with cold to contract everything again.
I’ve repeated the heat-up / tighten-up and cooool thing twice now, shelf has gone back in, and finally, I think we are ready to go to sea.
Only once during this process, did I do the schoolboy error of sending something down the sink plug-hole when the trap wasn’t in place. Luckily the bowl was, and caught the contents.
I think there is some justification in my enjoyment of this glass of Sauvvy Blanc.
