My sink woes
When I got back from my trip out west, I noticed there was a slight smell in the vicinity of my sink. I did the old baking-soda-vinegar thing, flushed down with hot water. But I noticed over time that the smell was still lingering.
So late last night, I did again again. Whoosh! The pipe under the sink sprung a leak, and the water started oozing out from the undersink cabinet.
Ugh. And even smellier.
The plumber came today and fixed it. I had to throw out a major amount of stuff from under there that had been siting in the gunky water. The smell should resolve over the next few days.
I hadn’t done anything wrong; it just was old and worn. But I absolutely hate stuff like this. Anyone have any ideas about what to do to disinfect the cabinet under the sink?
In the past I have used a mold removing enzyme that usually kills all the stuff living in those types of environments. They have no smell and I think they work well.
Downside is that they are pretty pricey
Plumbers: can’t live without them, so we happily pay what they charge for their skilled labor. And as someone who has a mixed record on do-it-yourself work, I see at least 2 advantages of plumbers: because they know what they are doing, they will do it a lot faster than an amateur, and are much less likely to mess it up than an amateur- as I did one time. ( I’d also add that from observation of plumbers working on my HOA’s boiler room, there is a wide variety of competence in plumbers, ranging from those who can do little more than install a faucet to those whose grasp of the intricate pathways of boiler room piping approaches the abilities of engineers.)
I recently bought a new toilet from a big box hardware store, including the store doing the installation. It took six weeks to get it installed. Similarly, it took a trusted auto repair shop a month to get a complicated repair job done. Skilled labor is short and expensive these days.
During the installation of the toilet, the toilet’s shut-off valve failed. It was worn out- not the fault of the plumber. I found out the container holding the leak-off filled up about every 2 hours, so that was something one wanted to fix before going to bed.
The plumber told me to schedule the water shut-off with the HOA, and get back to me. I called the HOA’s manager. The HOA manager got in touch with their handyman who does water shutoffs for the HOA. The handyman told me that not only would he shut off the water, but he could probably install a new shut-off valve, which he did. Very promptly.Much cheaper than the plumber, and meant I could also get a good night’s sleep.
The plumber on another unit did some work that resulted in hot water being sent to both hot water and cold water lines. After several weeks, it got fixed.
I give my HOA kudos for good management of recent plumbing issues.
Bummer. The nose knows. I usually would pull out the bleach and rubber gloves for that sort of situation.
NEO;
Try white distilled vinegar as a cleaning agent to clean / disinfect the cabinet.
Try clear distilled vinegar to clean / disinfect the cabinet.
A small, inexpensive Ozone generator is one of the best things you can own. I live in coastal Central Florida and the humidity here is killer. Running the Ozone generator in closets, bathrooms and other moist places keeps the mold and the smell away.
Chlorine bleach will generally disinfect just about anything. It will also remove stains from mildew, providing it’s safe for the surface.
Fresh air
Your problem with the pipes “rusting out” (I assume that is what happened) is why “plastic pipes” are used, that and they are easier to use. We had a bathrooms remodeled last year. The plumbers were expensive but had to be done by them. They put in new water lines, which are now red for Hot and blue for Cold. Less chance of mixing them up.
Shirehome,
Sounds like you have some of the flexible PEX lines installed. They are much more resistant to bursting in a freeze than the old type white, rigid PVC pipes.
I know a guy who had to replace his , presumably, old PVC water pipe system because something went wrong under the concrete slab. So they installed the PEX system in the attic, instead of digging under the slab.
There are some types of quick disconnects in the PEX system that are not supposed to be used under the concrete in new construction. So like all things, there is a right way, and a wrong way to do PEX as well.
During the great Texas freeze of 21, we had a pipe burst inside the wall of the garage. The plumbers installed a PEX connection to the old copper pipe where it came thru the bottom plate of the wall. So hopefully, that wall is not so vulnerable anymore. Also, before I rehung the sheetrock in that wall, I added insulation inside the wall, which it previously did not have.
I had a “congratulations homeowner” event today. I noticed a lot of large birds of various types flying by and taking an interest in a spot about 60 feet from the house. I had a pretty good idea that I did not want to know what it was, but it was too close to ignore. It was a dead deer or rather the head and spine of a deer. Not happy.
Clorox will kill all the germs. Be sure to dry the area thoroughly. (Use a hair dryer or small electric heater.) Just a small amount of moisture in a dark space with wood for sustenance can create an environment for mold.
Good luck.
As it happens, yesterday I had a plumber in to fix the suddenly very leaky kitchen faucet.
I considered taking a bash to fix it myself. But most things aren’t that simple these days and I realized I didn’t even know how to shut off the water.
When the plumber arrived, he couldn’t find a place to shut off the water either. He had to phone home for that information as well as my kitchen faucet unit, which has been discontinued for ten years. (Turns out the water must be shut off from a hatch in the sidewalk.)
Long story short. He replaced a sort of ball joint for my faucet, probably listed for $37 in the parts catalog long ago, and charged me $370 for the part plus another $200 for diagnosis, labor plus tax.
Labor was about 15 minutes.
I asked him about replacing the whole faucet unit with something more modern and better. He said $1420 plus labor and tax.
I’m not exactly outraged, but it does seem exorbitant.
huxley:
Try youtube for how to do it videos. $1420 seems ,,,,, but I learned how to do these things from my father and have acquired the tools over the years. Your family history was not like mine IIRC, Good luck.
@ huxley — faucets should NOT cost $1420 unless you are getting top of the line ultra fancy European spa brand; get another estimate!
I replaced my kitchen sink last year, including a nice high-neck faucet & sprayer, for under $500 at Lowe’s.
AesopSpouse can do most of the simple things, but he just doesn’t like to drag out all the tools anymore, so we are cultivating friendly ties with our neighbor across the street, who works for a local plumbing company and has his repair truck at home.
PS – old joke (you can tell because of the price) about why the plumber charged $350 just to tap a pipe in a particular place with a hammer: $50 for the tapping, $300 for knowing which pipe to tap.
@ Neo – something similar happened when I cleaned my mother’s bathroom sink with the vinegar rinse, also doing it twice in two days.
My theory is that the only thing keeping the pipe “intact” was the gunk on the inside, so flushing it out allowed the weak spots to bust open.
I use the zep mold killer spray. Home depot and lowes both carry it. I do / manage maintenance on apartments.
Ozone generator is great on smells.
Plumber costs vary a lot. My preferred plumber is $175 base. A wall leak, drain, from 2nd floor leaking on 1st floor I called a plumber over. Cost to fix was $350 without fixing the wall they poked holes in to see where leak was. Lots of water damage for the wood under the sink on 1st floor. My guess was leak was there a while, and somebody covered it up. To get it quickly fixed, it was worth it to get a plumber.
Handyman are cheaper, usually. Quotes ranged from $150 to $450 to replace a shower valve. I replaced it for $20 valve cost.
Sink faucets if you have the right tools are usually easy to replace. Amazon has some nice low cost ones.
Bleach, but you don’t have to use it full strength. Put a cup of bleach in a gallon of water. We just went through this; I put that mixture in a big spray bottle and it definitely kills the mold. (I’m sure you know this, but it’s worth posting a reminder never to mix bleach with ammonia. Or any product with ammonia in it.)
Febreeze also works pretty well for odors, in my experience.
fine ground coffee will take care of odor , a trick old truckers use in meat trailers
@Huxley: that is not a plumber you are dealing with, I would categorize him as a thief.
Bleach is best, it will disinfect the area and thereby eliminate the source of the “gunky” smell. As Sarah says, does not need to be full strength to be effective.
JohnTyler has it right. White vinegar kills bacteria and is cheap. Then make sure it is completely dried out.
I asked him about replacing the whole faucet unit with something more modern and better. He said $1420 plus labor and tax.
I’m not exactly outraged, but it does seem exorbitant.
Get multiple estimates. Our electric stove died last spring and we decided to replace it with a gas stove. Our problem was that gas had to be piped into the kitchen. We have a gas water heater and dryer but the line was too small so we had to run the gas line all the way from the meter to the kitchen, about 50 feet across the roof. Our house is typical Arizona “Territorial” style so a flat roof. We got the first estimate from an outfit that had sold us a new HVAC unit the year before. They wanted $5,000. Two estimates later we paid $1800 for the gas line. That of course is twice what the new stove cost.
One of our bathroom sinks sprung a leak while we were on a week long vacation. Luckily my brother spotted it and turned off the water at the wall before it ran for days.
One solution is to simply shot off the water main to the whole property when you’re going for a longer spell. Alternatively, one can shut off each toilet, sink, washer inside the house. This has the added advantage of forcing you to turn those handles that are often so hard to turn you need leverage to do so, and of leaving the landscape watering on.
There are pros and cons, obviously, to whatever you choose to do. Particularly if you have automatic landscape watering, or if you’re having someone who might be housesitting for a day or two. But the cons are way outweighed by the ugly possibility of major water damage.
In my mind, water is the biggest enemy of your house, both inside and out.
@ Dale Harris (8:59am)— ground coffee in a frying pan on the stove is a favorite of homicide investigators, too, when the report of the offense is delayed.
My favorite “snag” is trying to find the proper cartridge for the single-handle faucets, especially when the brand name is not out in the open. So many of the faucets get discontinued after a couple years, if you have a home built 10 or so years ago you have a real treasure hunt on your hands for parts. Much more than that and replacing the enitre faucet is often the best solution.
It is not uncommon to have only the “chrome” coating holding together the under sink drain trap; one false move and you have free-range water.
The only self-defense is to learn enough of these trades to do the straight forward stuff. Have a professional, always, for work on gas lines.
Well, vinegar might work. And you can get 30% vinegar at Home Depot, but use care since the normal vinegar you get is 5-6%.
You can also try hydrogen peroxide for mold and such. Get a spray bottle of it at like Walmart but refill with the cheaper regular bottles. This worked to get rid of persistent mold I had just inside my bathroom sink overflows that just never went away with bleach.
But if you just want a general disinfection. You might try a chlorine bleach solution or Clorox clean up spraying then close.
Years ago, I had an apartment near San Diego that didn’t have a bathroom vent and would develop mold if not careful. I noticed after cleaning the shower with Clorox Clean up and closing the door so as not to fumigate myself out of the apartment that my mold issue resolved itself from the fumes.
I had similar luck keeping mold at bay in my dampened, but not soaked apartment in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I had a spray bottle with a noticeable but not huge percentage of chlorine bleach that I hit mold with as soon as I noticed it, like in the HVAC closet walls. Similarly, some ceiling areas. I transferred out in December so can’t say what long term mitigation the complex had to do.
Thanks all for suggestions about kitchen faucet repair!
I was stuck. I had called several plumbing companies, but no one had openings until later this week and I was tired of half the water leaking onto the kitchen counter each time I did dishes.
Plus I have a trip to Florida coming up this week and I wanted to take care of the problem before that.
So I ate the big charge and will call someone else next time.
Chlorox makes a spray cleaner that has a bit of chlorine bleach in it – I think they call it Chlorox Cleanup. I use this on our kitchen trash cans on trash day, which does a great job on smell. You have to be a little careful not to over-spray onto something that can be affected, like laundry or so on.
If the smell of chlorine bleach bothers you, you can also make up a solution of your preferred detergent cleaner and add oxygen bleach to it – something like Oxy clean. This doesn’t have a smell, but still works on bacteria reasonably well; roofers will use this kind of solution to clean the mold off shingles, for instance.
Sometimes our garbage disposal gets smelly. There are packets that you can get on Amazon whereby you run hot water for a minute, turn off the water, drop in a packet, and turn on the disposal to shred it up. A satisfying, clean-smelling blue foam comes bubbling up as it scrubs everything down there. Then you rinse it all down. I usually drop one every few months or so and it really does the trick.
Followup, you know I didn’t think of it right away, but you might also consider getting hold of a small ozone generator if the problem persists, and just park it under there for a short period of time. Not long, though! Ozone attacks rubber goods and other things.
Ozone generators are what the water damage / mold rectification companies use when they are fixing smoke and water damage from fires.
Before any of this you should ask management to remove the body beneath the floor.
Aggie–
I’ve used Clorox Cleanup for years when washing out my cats’ litter boxes as well as to clean the kitchen sink and shower stall. Another thing it’s good for is washing out empty cat food cans, which can get pretty smelly in warm weather if there’s even a little food residue left in them.
I agree that you have to be careful not to spray it accidentally on clothing, towels, etc., and to make sure any pets are in another room when you’re using it.
As for bodies under Neo’s floor, Jimmy Hoffa was disposed of somewhere in Joisey years ago.
All sorts of ways to disinfect. The most obvious is to spray liberally with either Clorox or Lysol (or other brand) cleaner/disinfectants. I personally like this one — it’ll be strong smelling, but likely much more pleasant than just clorox (the obvious option) or the original smell…
Another option is to look up homebrew carpet cleaner/disinfectant mixes (generally water + commercial vinegar + a perfume agent to counter the vinegar smell) on the internet. Then put those into a spray bottle and spray liberally. You can get jugs of vinegar for this real cheap, and I found squeezing the perfume out of the self-dissolving “air freshener beads” (The soft vinyl/latex-covered type — usually by poking a hole in one, or using a razor cutter to slice it open — use cut-resistant gloves if you feel unsteady for this) to be adequate.
}}} I asked him about replacing the whole faucet unit with something more modern and better. He said $1420 plus labor and tax.
I’m not exactly outraged, but it does seem exorbitant.
Um… I don’t know where you live (can be a large part of it), but this kind of thing is really, really REALLY not that tough. Modern systems are pretty modular, you do need to make sure openings fit, etc., and if you really really feel thumbfingered, you might wind up in an homemade I Love Lucy episode, but it really isn’t that hard to do it.
Look for videos on the activity.
I replaced my garbage disposal a couple years back, and re-did the wiring so it is now plugged into a water-resistant AND GFCI socket (I could have direct-wired it, too, but thought it was better to have a plug under a plastic cover on the GFCI). I also checked my rewiring was done properly with a circuit check tool, and found out that the idiot who had done the most recent wiring actually failed to connect the ground connection properly)
The point is, it’s usually mostly common sense — turn off the water as needed, turn off the electricity as needed, including “common sense”, turn it off when playing with things under the sink just in case water sprays somewhere you don’t want it to)If you watch a few** videos and THINK about what you are trying to do, most of it is really not all that complex. And if you need a tool, chances are, a nearby Harbor Freight can provide something suitable for your purposes (while HF does have some absolute crap, most of it is suitable for home-owner purposes) — double check things are as you expect them to be (e.g., water off, etc.) anytime you “break” for a reason, and restart.
Checking prices, you can find some pretty nice to completely “classic standard” units for 100-200 tops, OR you can spend even 300-500 on some higher end units.
Some examples:
https://www.lowes.com/pl/Kitchen-faucets-Kitchen-faucets-water-dispensers-Kitchen/4294735696?view=List
You can get a total kitchen classic-style faucet for as little as 40 bucks.
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** I say “A few” videos, because there ARE some people who make videos who don’t know what they are doing or do things in the least sensible ways. Look at the comments below, too, for people telling the person they’re an idiot or are doing something wrong. Not unsurprisingly, you do something right in a video, you get a dozen “thanks!”… if you do anything wrong, you will have 500 people insulting your skills, as well as criticizing your wife’s fashion sense AND your mother and father’s parenting skills… “Oh, and that kid of yours is really really ugly!!” 😀
Watching a few videos and seeing where they differ can give you a better feel for what matters and what is variable, and/or what may be applicable to THIS type of thing you’re installing vs. a different design for the same purpose.
And another thing is, try not to force anything if it’s resisting, until you’re pretty sure that (more force) is really what is needed. You might waste time futtering with it, but it can save you from having to replace something expensive or wait a week for a part to arrive.
I was replacing a valve in a bathroom faucet, and it was really not clear from videos or component descriptions how it came apart, so I fiddled with it for an hour and then came to the conclusion (not unsurprising, it was probably 10y old) that the part that unscrewed was just frozen… Applied some various loosening agents (WD-40, Lithium Grease), let it soak for a bit, and then just raised the force level until it let go. Drip no more!! Also, interestingly enough, the faucet went from fairly resistive to being turned to “push it lightly with your pinky”. I hadn’t even realized it was resisting being turned on.
(p.s., another thing for this, I only had to buy a replacement for one of the faucets, but I bought a pair, just in case I had to replace the other one before long… FINDING the right part can be fun, sometimes, and why go through that twice — even more so if it is something 10y old or more, and may no longer be available when the “other” one fails, *forcing* you to spend 50 bucks because you can no longer buy a $2 part?)
Yet another thing, keep links to any sites you find useful or informative, you might want them again — AND it can make it possible to see if the WAYBACK Machine can help you find the spot if it’s gone tits up over time. Much harder to do without a link to the exact page you seek.
Unless huxley left out some important details, I don’t think his job was that easy. If the only shutoff was outside in the sidewalk (at the meter? late in-laws house was not metered and the only shutoff was at the street) that implies the service lines were connected directly to the faucet.
I do most of my own wiring and plumbing because I built this house. The only plumbing job I have contracted out in the last 10 years was when my chinesium septic pump died an early death and that was because of the ick factor. All the vanities have the same product family faucets, and all showers and baths have the same product families as well, so a couple of replacement cartridges were purchased at that time. I also take traps apart to clean them out and replace anything suspect. Because I did my own wiring, I went hog wild so to speak (e. g. two 200A service panels).
A tale of woe and a warning.
Full strength chlorine bleach will corrode (eat) through the faux wood paper thin laminate applied on particle board used to construct a bathroom sink vanity cabinet and corrode away the underlying particle board.
A pinhole leak in a new one gallon bottle of bleach in less than one month caused a fine circular groove about 1/4 inch deep. Brand new cabinet brand new bottle of bleach.
Put bleach into separate polyethylene tub (secondary containment (HazWaz industry term)).
Took a while to repair the damage and find material suitable for the bottom of the cabinets. “Formica” laminate isn’t that resistant to full strength chlorine bleach BTW. Replacing the cabinet was not in the budget and I don’t do Buba and duct tape.
They don’t make bleach bottles as strong as they used to?
}}} A pinhole leak in a new one gallon bottle of bleach in less than one month caused a fine circular groove about 1/4 inch deep. Brand new cabinet brand new bottle of bleach.
Yeah, I had a plastic jug of Clorox bleach just arbitrarily split “a little bit” (enough to slowly drip) on me one time while on one of those standard wire closet type shelf. Did not get moved much (I rarely use bleach) but did it anyway, even though the jug looked fine. They’re making containers a bit too thin these days. They don’t fail regularly, but they CAN fail for no clear reason.
}}} “Formica” laminate isn’t that resistant to full strength chlorine bleach BTW.
Yeah, possibly the best thing you can do is just use ceramic tile laid down without grout… anyone can do that. Yeah, things can get down into the underlayment at the cracks, but it’ll resist minor spills… if you are worried about notable spills, you can probably get some kind of caulk that could resist things — as long as the pieces are set close, then shimmed at the back edges as needed, they won’t be moving much.
ObloodyHell:
After replacing the damaged particle board and sealing leveling the surface (West Epoxy is my friend) I covered the bottom of the cabinet with PLAS-TEX sheet, a waterproof but bondable construction panel made from polyethylene/polyolefin/polypropylene. A 4×8 ft x1/16 in sheet was ~$25. Lots left over so I installed a sheet of it in the other undamaged bathroom vanity cabinet for grins. I cualked the perimeter of course. That left about 1/2 of the sheet unused.