Thread: That works; let’s redesign it.

All my life I have been using sinks with plugs, recently we got a new bathroom, with a sink, and a new sink and lavatory next to the back door. Both sinks have pop-up wastes.

Plugs in sinks worked reliably for years, then you went to the shop, bought a new plug and a new bit of chain and you were fit for another ten years or so. One of these wastes has gone wrong already, a bit of plaster or something has got down it I think, it is emptying very slowly and doesn’t pop-up reliably. When I try to unscrew it it simply spins without coming loose. The other one I unscrewed and fished all the hair from the cross below it, a harder operation than normal as it is quite a bit further down the pipe to accomodate the pop-up.

I can see that screw thread getting crossed sometime in the next ten years and the washer that makes the seal looks positively fragile. The whole concept of submerging a moving mechanism is dodgy, and why have moving parts at all when a static plug works?

Every layer of complexity added increases the possibility of error and the difficulty of correcting it. It worked, but it has now been fixed by the team that brought you built in obsolescence.

I could progress to a description of the way the central mixer tap discharges directly onto the pop-up waste, stopping one from swishing the water around the bowl to clean it ....

I'm sorry but you're right, you know--you are going to have to be "Mister Fix-It-Yourself" and buy--and install--a completely new trap, or pay someone to do it.

Otherwise you might try A) a powerful vacuum to clear the drain, or B) bleach.

Good luck!

Change her trap on her sink in her new bathroom for a rubber plug, do you think I am suicidal? Anyway they don't have a hole to fix the chain on these modern sinks.

I used to own a 2CV as well, it went round corners, over bumps and carried almost anything with the top down, it didn't have electric windows, air conditioning, or anything else much, but very little went wrong with it and mostly what did go wrong I could fix.

Sad but typical story, Olly. Ahhhh the price of progress. Another 'new' invention...the low flow toilet, absolutely worthless.

Olly, with any luck we'll all die before the drains clog up completely...

Well, then, you'll have to accept the suffering that goes with bad drainage. I'm sorry!

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

Olly, with any luck we'll all die before the drains clog up completely...

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

Olly, with any luck we'll all die before the drains clog up completely...

I was hoping to be buried myself.

I've never seen a rubber stopper in a sink.

You may not be in for the stopper maintenance nightmare that you're anticipating. A couple of the sinks in my house are 50 years old and the pop-up stoppers still work fine. I've installed new ones too -- and no problems with those either. This may come as good news. Life is short -- and replacing or fixing stoppers once a decade would be a real time stealer.

Then again, if you had to fetch your water from the town well, you wouldn't even need a sink. Oh, how I long for the good old days -- when things were simple.