Alright, today on Repairs101… I’m going to show you what you can do if you’ve gone and dropped a valuable piece of jewelry down the kitchen sink. Or any other sink, for that matter. I’ll show you a couple of possibilities.
Alright, I’ll try and keep this as quick as I can and apologies for the static camera angle. Let’s do a little zoom in and see what we can do to make this a little more interesting. OK.
Anatomy
Here on your left there is a sink. Just above my head here is another sink. We have some down pipes, some elbows. Here’s a water trap. Comes up and joins the tee junction that joins the two down pipes from the two sinks. And here’s another drain from the dishwasher right there.
Dishwasher right here drains through this hose right here and just tees into this pipe right here. Again through the tee junction into the water trap or elbow pipe, if you prefer. And out through the wall and down into the sewers.
Tools
So you’re going to need a container like a bucket to catch the water that’s going to come out of this. You might be lucky and you might have some new plastic pipes like this that are easy enough to just crack by hand and you don’t even need any tools but…
There are a lot of options available to you. As far as what you can use to open up that elbow joint. This pair of Channellocks here might be kind of overkill, they’re quite something. Just any ordinary pair that you might find in virtually anybody’s kitchen drawer on the other hand is really all you need.
MVPs
You can use a pipe wrench but pipe wrenches are heavy and cumbersome. And might be inclined to damage the plastic pipes. There is a new style of pipe wrench available. That would certainly be very effective and very useful but that’s kind of an expensive wrench for the average person. So I might still recommend you go with the medium sized Channellocks here.
If all you’ve got is say a chain wrench or a locking chain wrench… You know this kind of stuff will obviously do the job. But you’re going to have to be very careful, as with the pipe wrench. You know, you’re going to have to be very, very careful. You’re dealing with plastic fittings and they don’t take a lot.
Now, a specialty wrench here: the manufacturer was kind enough to let us know what it is. It’s called a “Slip and Lock Nut Wrench”. I’ve had a lot of use for this in the boat building industry. I use it on plastic “through-hull” fittings. It’s just a wide jawed adjustable wrench and you’re just going to slip it like that. Now this is a very, very light duty little tool.
Now your pipes might look just like this, they might be chrome plated. They might be a rusty looking metal, they might be a shiny…
Disassembly
I’m just going to undo that – that was easy. Undo this one – it’s the opposite because it’s attached to this tee junction. It’s not attached to the water trap, or elbow pipe if you prefer. It’s attached to the tee junction here so it just undoes the other way.
You see that? It comes out nice and easy. It drops off, pour it out and if there was a prize inside we’d have it.
Reassembly
OK so to put it back together you’re going to let it align itself. The important one is this one here, the self sealing one. So you want to allow it to find home all by itself. Just going to put that on and wind that up and before you’ve got it smoked down tight. Start winding this one down to meet it. Then before you’ve got that one smoked down tight come back and finish this one. Then finish this one and you’re done.
If you find that your hand isn’t strong enough and you don’t have any of the tools I suggested… Try wrapping your hand. Sometimes you’ll find a rag really improves your grip. OK, and therefore the power you can transmit to what you’re trying to turn.
Galley sink
Now if you’re really lucky you might find a sink drain like this. You’re more likely to find a water trap like this one in a boat than you are in somebody’s house. It’s just attached with a hose clamp and so they come off with an ordinary screwdriver.
There we go. Nice.
Now one last thing to consider is that if you didn’t find what you were looking for here in the water trap. It could be laying right in here, so you may need to reach up inside here. These are glued permanently. OK, you’re not going to be able to take that apart without doing some damage. But you could run a snake in here. Which would push it this way and have it drop through this hole. Or back into the trap if you’ve reassembled it like I have here. OK so it’s just another thought.
So good luck and thanks for watching.
