Plumbing

Regular readers will know that among my (many) worries, plumbing is really pretty high on my list of concerns. There's nothing that gets me worried like a scary story of plumbing gone wrong, and I've lost some sleep over some of our own various plumbing concerns. So last month, when I started hearing a slightly distressing "glug glug glug" coming from the un-used washing machine drain in the bathroom, I was on alert. I convinced myself that it wasn't a big deal, and tried to ignore it. But every time the upstairs bathroom toilet was flushed, there it was: the big "glug glug glug," which in the past meant clogged main drain, which means a call to the plumber and so on.

This morning, in addition to the usual "glug glug glug," there was a smell. A smell wafting from the washing machine drain. This made me think that it was possible that our studor vent in the attic was somehow malfunctioning, sending the nasty toxic sewer gases back into the system and into the drain pipe. But Jake came up with a simpler possibility to check first. You see, the drain in question is one that's in the wall where a washing machine was once hooked up (not since we've lived here). This drain, presumably, has a "P-trap" which holds water and makes a seal so that the gases don't come up through the pipe. But since the drain is NEVER used, no water goes down, and thus, eventually, the water sitting there eventually evaporates. Thus, nasty noxious gases can escape. So the simple test was to pour some water down into the drain to see if we could fill the "P-trap" and stop the gas.

Guess what.

It worked!!!!!

Not only did it stop the smell, the "glug glug glug" has also stopped! I'm so pleased! Plumbing stories rarely end so happily.