Another Home Repair: Kitchen Sink
2020-11-14 22:06 - General
For years I've had an extremely minor leak in my kitchen sink drain. For a long time I had a try under there to catch drips, and though it clearly displayed signs of having been wet, whenever I'd check, it would also be dried out. At one point I felt like things got better and removed they tray after not seeing new signs of drips for long enough. Then things got worse. More recently I re-added a tray to catch drips, and regularly found it full of standing water. And started checking more often, and needing to empty it more and more often. Can't ignore it anymore. The drips are coming from the top joint right between the sink and the drain. So today I finally did something about it.
I also feel like I've always been just a bit unhappy that the drain was off-center with regards to the opening in the sink. And when I got it out, the discharge pipe certainly does not line up with the center of the opening either. Here is where mild hijinks ensue. It took craziness to get this far: wood blocks and clamps and lots of inappropriate hammering on the lock nut to remove the drain. Now I'm stuck, if I want to fix this. I really can't see how to line the pipe up with the drain correctly, plus I'd really like to end up with a nice on-center look. So, an extra trip to Home Depot to grab a big pipe wrench, and I've got things further disassembled. I made another extra trip to grab a replacement part: Under my sink('s drain) are two 90 degree elbows, a short pipe for the dishwasher to connect to, and a huge solid brass P trap. I tried getting a different 90 degree elbow, smaller, which would move things closer in enough to (I thought) line up.
Turns out, wrong thing. Not only would it mean going from metal to plastic pieces, it didn't have the right style of connectors on both ends (threaded, both sides while I needed threaded on just one). In figuring this out I did further disassembly, and found that the existing elbows were adjustable enough to be installed so they line up correctly!
So I laid a healthy bead of plumber's putty in the sink, and (with the discharge pipe out of the way) started installing just the drain, which went pretty well. Then, re-assembled the various parts to connect to it, which also went well. It seemed. I filled up a 2-quart bucket and dumped it down to find ... worse leaks than when I started.
Thankfully all it took was re-dis-assembly to add some teflon tape (in spots where it wasn't, before I started). Tried again: no leaks, no drips at all!
There we go. Almost perfect, except tightening the last connection turned that slot a bit and it's no longer nicely lined up...
