The smell of the sink: causes and methods of elimination

What causes the smell of sewage in the apartment? How to eliminate the smell from the sink in the bathroom or aromas with unclear localization?

Is it possible to prevent their occurrence in the future? Let's figure it out.

Who is guilty

To begin, let's examine the possible mechanisms of the appearance of amber. During normal operation of sewage in the risers, inevitably there is a thrust (as, actually, in any sufficiently long vertical pipe). It is intensified in winter when there is a significant temperature difference between the warm wastewater and the air heating up from it on the one hand and the cold atmosphere of the street on the other.

This, however, contributes to the ventilation of the sewage system, but in no way can it transport odors to the apartment, simply because all the air from the riser is drained outside the house through the funnel that opens onto the roof.

Where exactly does a fun pipe open?

Two options are possible:

1. In the unheated ventilated attic. This scheme is typical mainly for houses built in the middle of the last century. The influx of large amounts of moist air contributes to the rapid destruction of rafters; but with limited attic ventilation, the temperature in it extremely rarely drops below zero.

Please note: the attic is heated not only by the inflow of air through the sewer risers. Heat leaks through the overlap and often placed in the attic supply heating heating also contributes.

1. Beyond flat or pitched roof. Riser towers over it about half a meter.

All this perfectly working system can be broken. Causes of malfunction can be natural and artificial.

Natural causes

Let's imagine what will happen in extreme cold with a fun pipe opening to the street.

The walls of the cast-iron riser are heated from the inside by an upward flow of warm, moist air, while simultaneously being cooled outside by the street atmosphere. At a certain temperature, the dew point (condensation of water vapor) will not be in the thickness of the pipe wall, but on its inner surface, after which the steam will begin to actively settle on the wall in the form of droplets.

Further - more: with further cooling of the walls, the settled moisture will not drain into the riser, but will freeze on it, gradually reducing the clearance. At some point, the gap in the fan pipe will be almost blocked. But the thrust in the pipe will remain.

Further predictable. At the slightest leakage of the joints, the air and the accompanying aromas will begin to seep into the apartment. As a rule, the source of odors becomes the connection of the sewer socket and the knee under the sink; with a significant amount of air, it can push through the water trap and flow directly through the drain grate.

If all the sewage connections in the upper apartment riser are hermetically sealed or their capacity is insufficient, the sambers begin to fill the apartments in the lower one.

Artificial causes

Remember, what two problems were mentioned by the classic as the main ones for our country? Roads and yes, they are the most.

• Residents of the upper floors of the sewer riser above the tee behind their toilet often seem to be an architectural overkill. After all, no one lives above, so why sewer? With a light heart, it is dismantled and jammed, completely stopping the operation of natural ventilation.
• No less often, tenants who store canned food and rarely used household utensils in basements, hermetically sealed open tees in sewer roof planks (horizontal sewer lines): after all, when there are blockages, drains flow from there! As a result, at the slightest counter-slope of release to the well, when flushing on the upper floors, the air at the water flow front is not forced out into the basement, but pushes the water seal in the apartments downstream of the riser.

What to do

Who is to blame - we figured out; and what can you do with your own hands from the practical side? How to get rid of the smell of the sink, if it appears seasonally or permanently?

Winter scents

To begin, let us examine the case when smells appear at the peak of cold weather. Here we can clearly speak about the freezing of ice in the funnel outlet of the riser.

By the way: in the case of a corrugated siphon-tube, the level of the water seal is changed by simply rearranging the mount.

All year round

How to get rid of the smell of the sink, if he pursues you year-round?

1. Make sure that the riser opens to the roof or attic and the rising air flow rises from it. If there is no air circulation, obviously, the reason is one of the national Russian problems on the top floor of your riser. In such cases, an unauthorized change in communications is activated by housing workers, after which the riser is restored at the expense of the owner of the upper apartment.

Hint: when dismantling the riser, instead of restoring it, you can put a vacuum valve on the upper outlet of the tee. It will suck in the air when flushing, but, of course, does not affect the thrust that occurs in the riser. The price of the device - from 1000 rubles.

1. If you live on one of the lower floors - go down to the basement and make sure that there is at least one open sewer tee near your riser.
2. Finally, the above recommendations on sealing joints can help in this case.

Conclusion

We hope that acquaintance with the work of the sewage system and its typical problems will help the reader to get rid of odors in the apartment. The video in this article will traditionally offer additional materials. Successes!