Saturday, December 12, 2020

Adventures in rebuilding a sink drain (or "was nicht passt wird passend gemacht")

First, here is a "before" picture
that was taken by my Realtor, Wailana Herbst, who was very helpful in the last 2 years of my house-hunt (I didn't have my phone charged). It was leaking where the tailpipe (metal) is (was) connected ot the plastic parts.

Taking it all apart, which took a bench vise for 2 of the nuts (don't have a wrench that opens far enough), I figured out that the sink was misaligned with the drain by on the order of 1/16", so the existing parts couldn't be made to fit (unless, afterthought here, I might have been able to heat one of the part to soften it enough to make it fit). OK, says me, this calls for one of those flex tubes, but that has to be vertical otherwise you get too much buildup. For that the tail pipe had to come off.

Easier said than done, this is where I had to actually tighten the bench vise (glad I only have a small one) around the nut just under the sink, and that's the nut that broke. You can see the deposits on the pipe (the pipe is otherwise OK and I'll save it with the rest of my pumbing parts), and that's probably why the nut was held in place so firmly.

Next I connected the flex pipe I had bought in the meantime where the tailpipe had been and found

2 threaded parts next to one another. Take a short piece of pipe and 2 nuts and connect the two (there is a purpose to saving otherwise pretty useless plumbing parts - and keeping all your plumbing parts in one place together with the plumbing tools that have no other use, like e.g. a faucet seat wrench and your supply of teflon tape). As this made the part below the sink before the trap way too long I cut off part of what goes towards the sink. I have a Dremel that has a bit stuck in it to attach cut-off wheels to, which most of the time I find annoying, but in this case it came in handy because I didn't have to think about that part. I cut off just the right amount for the nut and slip joint washer to fit and the rest of the pipe to fully go into the sink part.
However, this still had the part coming down from the sink too long.
after which I decided I could just cut off a piece of the downward end of the slip joint tee where the second sink's drain connects and after a bit of fiddling, ogt all of it connected.
And while I left a bowl under it for the time being, I didn't see any dripping and I tested both sinks. - And, well, by the discoloration of the two (formerly white) nuts where I had to connect the two threaded parts, you can see that saved plumbing parts can be quite useful, and the piece of pipe inside in that area was a left over part as well.

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