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Submitted by: Cyberkedi via Submit a Kludge!
I’m never getting that hula hoop… – Ms. Fix-It
Favorite Comment: Drawing a collective “Ewwww”, Fixer Jompe71 says, “Someone is building a “Wet-N-Wild” for the silverfishes.”
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HURK. Weeeee.
…I shudder to think what situation called for a looping pipe like this one to make it SIMPLER. Lovecraftian plumbing might be the next step up.
It did a barrel roll!
It is not a simple loop, but a siphon.
Isn’t it just doing the job of an S-bend? ANAP, but this looks non-kludgey to me..
There is a higher volume of trapped water and silt, its going to drain slower.
If you’re talking about the white pipe (it’s hard to tell…) this fail is a fail, that’s on purpose and should be on every sink, it keeps sewage gas from filling your house or something like that.
Right – but you normally use a simple P trap that comes down from the sink, not a loop-the-loop. This setup will have water stagnating right at the bottom of the sink all the time (rather than several inches down) and be extra susceptible to clogging.
little refresher on physics: water will stagnate up to the lowest point (inside) of the white pipe at the top of the loop. That’s lower than the actual drain of the sink by a few inches.
Since the bends are not 90 degrees but more rounded, it may even have better cloggability performance…
The way I see it, the water will be near up to the top of the black elbow at all times. The water in this sink (a kitchen sink with a spray nozzle) will be sitting just below where the sink strainer sits (it sits in the upper part of the white section). This is just plain asking for mold growth problems as well as drainage problems.
You can act snide on the “physics” lessons, but that doesn’t change how bad of a plumbing job this is.
Someone set me straight here, please… Kludges aren’t fails, are they? They might be intriguing or even downright scary at times, but I didn’t think they actually fit the “fail” category like Kleanthes thinks…
*very confuzzled*
Kludges and jury rigs are generally used to mitigate or work around fails, either by replacing a failed element (such as a door latch), or by adding functionality that was not in the original design (such as the installation of a portable radio in a really old car). It can also refer to the use of one or more components to perform the task of an object that is unavailable (such as jury-rigging a task light with a flashlight and some clamps..
Kludges are just unattractive solutions to problems. Just has to get the job done, doesn’t have to look pretty.
First round of the 2010 Plumbers’ Challenge, Auger event. Extra points for refraining from uttering major curse words as you compete.
lmao…
I love watching these competitions on ESPN. Also love their crack-revealing outfits.
OMG! You mean there really is such a thing on ESPN? WIBD!
I guess they get some good laughs when the Roto-Rooter types break their machines while unclogging that sink.
To the contrary: the roto-rooter guys laugh when they break through the PVC of this trap.
Ohmigosh, my father created something like this when he installed a new bathroom sink for me a few years ago. He had to resolve the difference between the new sink and the 80-year old plumbing in my house.
Having a P-trap (the white portion) to contain sewer gases is normal. However, the black 90-degree elbow was seemingly introduced because probably there wasn’t enough clearance (due to the existing black horizontal pipe run) to connect the P-trap directly from the drain.
This doesn’t look like a Kludge to me, it looks like a professional work around for tight conditions. Like others have said before me, it was the only option to fit in a p-trap.
Only option? How about a proper p trap and simply lowering the other pipe? It isn’t hard at all to modify pvc piping. Even cast iron (doesn’t look like cast iron here because of the reflections) isn’t hard to cut, thread, and modify…… More labor, yes, but a whole lot less clogging later.
Thats what I am thinking. A couple of 45s and maybe a y and the p-trap becomes a simple instal.
A U-Bend pipe is the more normal approach for this sort of thing, but this would be just as functional for that purpose.
Who’s been under my sink ????
This is DANGEROUS! The p-trap (the white part should be rotated 90 degrees. There is supposed to be water in the u bend part of the plumbing to keep sewer gases from coming back into the house. This does nothing but make the water drain slowly and provide a nice aroma to the bathroom. As well yo can’t mix ABS and PVC they will not glue together, this has to be leaking horribly
Wrong! There is still a low point, and it will still hold a water trap and keep the gases out. It made my head hurt, but it’s basically safe.
It was simply assembled by someone with a pile of drain-pipe pieces and a general idea of how it goes – but absolutely none of the finer points of how it’s supposed to look when you get done.
You can take it apart to clean out the trap, but instead of a simple process loosening two horizontal gland nuts and popping off the bottom of the P-trap, he’ll have to take it all apart and hope he can hit a bucket with most of the water
heh heh…you said “gland nuts” heh heh… “p trap” heh heh…
sorry… I was channeling “Beavis & Butthead” for a moment there… terribly sorry…
This isn’t going to stop any sewer gases, the way it’s assembled. The whole point of a P-trap is a slug of water gets trapped in the low point, forming a plug that keeps gas out. There’s no low point in this assembly to trap water.
And that horizontal section that’s half-black and half-white is not a low point because Star Wars Gravity rules apply?
the low point is the whole flat section before the loop. if you had x-ray vision you would see water filled up in said section of pipe creating a plug.
The pipe below it most likely is for a dishwasher…
It only looks like a fail because it’s sideways.
But it does remind me of my own kitchen sink, installed by a guy who had a nervous breakdown while renovating this house. I could probably fill this blog for a week.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrea_r/2269476691/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrea_r/2269476695/
I think the plumber was looped.
plumbing by m. c. Escher
NO one light a match, please.
That bathroom has to be full of sewer gas with that improperly installed p trap…that’s what a p trap is for…also for stopping your wedding ring from going to the sewer gods.
The sewer gas in your own abode has muddled your thinking.
That’s an S trap turned on its side.
And yes, it will still function as a trap this way.
No magic required for the ring. Unless my toilet has magic in it, enough water flow will carry solid objects past a water trap.
Of course your toilet has magic in it. They all do. Ask the average person how a toilet works and they won’t have a clue – IT’S MAGIC!!!
I still have a hard time imagining that it would take less water flow with this set up than a standard one, though. It would seem that many people think that this is less effective at blocking sewer gas and other functions than a regular p trap, but all I see is a really big p trap that will clog easily.
measure twice, cut once. or buy more elbows. the pipe leading to the left aint got much pitch to it, either. notice also the hose with the weight; it’s probably for a sprayer, and if pulled to its’ limit, will pull on the other hoses. no professional plumber would own up to this mess.
Apparently this plumber was playing a real life game of “pipe dreams” and didn’t have time to change the piece before the water caught up with him.
Not going to the hardware store again! What do I have here…
Some is building a “Wet-N-Wild” for the silverfishes.
That’s not going to work as a trap. A trap is designed to fill with water to keep noxious fumes from entering the building. This thing is effectively nothing more that a straight piece of pipe.
please read previous comments before repeating same debunked theory. Thank you.
♫♪
ABS and PVC
Bound together with green glue hopefully.
Side by side under one sink.
S-trap? Oh, crap! Why not P?
We all know that people are the same wherever we go.
There is urge to kludge in everyone.
We learn to fix. We jury rig
Together what what we need to survive with duct tape and zip ties!
♫♪
I guess I should mention these lyrics are to the tune of ‘Ebony and Ivory’. Looking at the pipe colors made me think of that song. Please also ignore the duplicate ‘what’ in the last line. What else? I feel like I’m forgetting someth…oh yeah! Please don’t feed the silverfish.
LOVE.
That’s some kinky plumbing there.
Turn the whole “D” shaped section upside down and it will be a better trap… still very bad, though.
this will work, but there will be about 4 times the amount of water needed in the trap. The white PVC is connected with compression fittings so it won’t leak.
His biggest fail was listening to the advise of the 18 year old plumbing department clerk who watched a 15 minute plumbing video before be was put out on the floor as an expert.
Screen saver in real life.
Plumbing as inspired by the baritone saxophone.
Band geeks try their hand at plumbing…
In the world of a model, this is Morbidly Obese.
Barely qualifies for this site. Optimally, the drain should be spliced in to a piece of old garden hose, using duct tape as the primary joining technique. Then the hose should then be draped out of the kitchen window. Let’s not drop our standards here.
This is hereby voted most accurate response.
This looks like something you could play in the high school marching band, sewer gas or not.
I’ve read all the above, but I’m not sure it will effectively block sewer gas. A P-trap only needs a small ammount of water left behind to seal off the pipe and keep gas from entering the house. The small vertical rise on this and the large area that needs to be filled for the seal to work, makes me think a makes me wonder if the low horizontal piece will remain completely full. And it has to be completely full for there to be an effective seal.
If the liquids flow so fast that you can push the massive amount of standing water past the upright you may be right, but in most cases you’ll displace that standing water a bit, mix it with the incoming, and anything higher than the vertical bend will drain away (continuously). So the massive trap will almost always remain in place. You’d have to flush water down so fast that you empty at least half of the horizontal section (about twice as long as the vertical is high…ish) to risk losing the seal at rest. Most sink strainers won’t let water flow that fast throught them.
In paragraph one you say,”this thing does NOT drain quickly,” while in paragraph two you say “S-traps…drain too quickly.”
Please explain how both statements can be true. Is it like losing traction in a turn, because it is too tight and too loose?
Remedial logic:
He says “this thing does NOT drain quickly”
He says “S-traps… drain too quickly”
NOWHERE does he say that this is an S-trap!
What it is, is a P-trap mounted on a 90-degree elbow. It would work fine as a gas trap, not very well as a ring-catcher, and VERY well as a floor flooder when you need to unclog it.
It is indeed an S trap, but it is not in the usual orientation, so it will function more like a crappy P trap.
Leo, simple: This is not an S-trap. This is a kludge.
An S trap is shaped like an S turned on its side, with one leg going up and the other going down, and a low point followed by a high point in between.
This has a very long low-point and an unusually high high-point, so it will collect a lot of water and drain very slowly instead of quickly. It will do the job of an S-trap, but it’s very poorly implemented.
FWIW, IANALP, but I do rehab houses and have done plenty of plumbing therein.
You cannot connect two P traps to achieve that configuration, as one of the arcs must be threaded, the other tapered. So these pieces are from an S trap.
It looks like this sink didn’t have a trap originally, and this was installed in a cut-out sectionn to fix the problem. True kludge.
I’ve actually plumbed under a sink like that – that’s the only way I could get the pipes to fit. Never had a problem with the sink stopping up or stagnation.
Here is my non-plumber assessment. First, this is a kitchen sink not a bathroom sink. The flex hose that’s strung through the lead weight is connected to a removable faucet sprayer head; the weight ensures that the flex hose will retract when you put the sprayer back into the faucet. Also, the size of the drain is large to fit a strainer that will keep the potato peels, etc out of the pipes. Odds are that this is a replacement sink that is not only much deeper than the original but also has a center drain, while the original might have had an offset drain closer to the faucet, therefore nothing lines up. The horizontal vent pipe probably goes through a hole cut through the cabinet and/or wall, so moving that’s not an option and the drain pipe itself is probably plumbed through the cement floor of the kitchen. Things could be worse- the Mrs. could want a garbage disposal. If that were the case and I were him, I’d buy a goat or a pig (no plumbing required).
Is it wrong that my first thought staring at that was, “Oooh, that is so not up to code.”
So far as the clearing too quickly and too slowly goes drainpipes are engineered the way they are for a reason. If the reservoir is too large the standing water is harder to get moving and stagnates helping blockages to form. If the reservoir is too small it siphons out every time it’s used due to too much momentum. Much as fuel pumps in cars are matched to the engine so is plumbing matched to the drain. ( If you doubt me rig a racing pump to a street car and see how many blocks you get before your engine floods )
Do a barrel roll!
“me i want a hoola hoooop”
“ALVIN”
The Internet is a series of traps!
No one can resist plumbing of this magnitude!
I had something like this under my kitchen sink for a while. It leaked and ruined the cabinet floor, and all of it had to be replaced. What was it?
A sink installed and then plumbed by a carpenter.
The plumber looked at this mess, looked at me, and as we both looked in the cabinet I told him about the carpenter. I knew at that moment that I’d have paid less to have called the plumber sooner rather than later.
IT’S NOT A TRAP!!
IT’S A TRAP…
As a professional plumbing design engineer, there are a couple of problems – first of all, the trap is not connected to a vent pipe, which exacerbates problem number two – the “trap”, as it were, will tend to siphon water out and there may or may not be enough water left to effect a seal. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not.
The installer could have installed another tee below the second drain line and connected it there, although that doesn’t solve the venting problem.
We all got a good laugh at the office on this one. It simply screams that the installer knew just enough to be dangerous.
if this was connected to a toilet it would be a poop loop
This is two traps connected to make one. You can clearly see two U bends that connect easily into one another and allow for flexibilty to the next connection. Why do I know so much about this? Well after watching my father fiddle around with street elbows and threaded 90′s and what not for and hour and a half I assembled this exact same thing in 5 mins. Had I thought it was extremely special I would have sent basically the same picture in a month ago. Now my lawn mower repairs they’re something special
sure you can walk to walk and loop the loop but whats it gonna take to plumb the plumbing?
(insert mario bros reference here)
Is this an “O-trap” or an “Oh crap!” ?
looks a bit like my “U” bend …
Just another example of why we have building codes. Obviously done by one without the proper experience or knowledge. Thank you Home Depot for making incompetents think they can fix anything!
This is not really a fail.. It´s a little clumsy, but still serves it´s purpose.. Where i come from it´s called a “water-lock”.. It stops sewage smells and rats from comming up througt the pipes. Put there are some that are much smaller and smarter than this one.. Ones that are actually made for this purpose..
what kind of moron designed this?