Day 149

I got the drain fixed. It was a good news, bad news sort of thing. The good news is that I didn't have to use any of the parts I bought. The bad news is that it was another battle with the half assed way that the dumbshits who lived in this house before built it.

When dealing with plumbing it's important to remember the first rule of plumbing, SHIT ROLLS DOWN HILL. The dumbshits didn't understand this.

The sink is a double sink. The left sink drainpipe goes straight down and into the p-trap. It works fine. The right sink wouldn't drain. Its drainpipe went down a few inches, turned horizontal, and connected to the left sink's pipe just above the p-trap. Halfway across the horizontal section was a connection to a small plastic tube that heads up behind the sink in the general direction of the dishwasher.

There were three separate problems. First, the horizontal pipe wasn't really horizontal. It was slanted AWAY from the left drain. Second, the tube connection blocked half of the horizontal pipe. Third, the connection of the horizontal pipe with the left hand drain also blocks half of both pipes.

Not surprisingly, there were clogs at both the connections. I had to take apart the whole thing to clear them. A nice messy (and stinky) job that involved getting dirty drain water all over. There's no way to fix the problems with the connections because that's the way the fittings are designed. The fittings are also designed in such a way as to pretty much eliminate the effectiveness of drain cleaners.

I made a partial fix to the first problem. I couldn't fix it completely because the dumbshits had cut off the down pipe from the left hand sink too short. It's difficult to replace and I didn't have the right parts to fix it. I did cut as much as possible off the down tube on the right hand side. This makes the pipe closer to horizontal. If this doesn't turn into a long term fix I'll have to redo the whole thing.

That's enough work for today. I'm going to spend the rest of the day messing around. Unfortunately it's cloudy so sitting out on the deck won't be as much fun as it could be.