We have all happened to each other: we enter the house and suddenly we notice a pipe smell that pulls us back or we open the bathroom door and we have to close it again. Why it happens? It can be for several reasons and almost certainly most of them will take you to the same place, the drain.
Tips and Tricks
The first advice to not have the bad odors in bathrooms and kitchens, is to prevent. The saying goes, “prevention is better than cure” and it is totally true. In the bathroom, it removes every day the scraps of hair that can fall in the bathtub and the sink, they are very useful the gratings that are placed over the hole of the drain because they prevent that they are stuck. It is also good to place them in the kitchen sink, so if food scraps fall they will not reach the drain.
A home trick to keep drains clean is to add salt in hot water. If we are late to the first of the recommendations and are already stuck, then pick up the plunger or pour one of the products that exist in the market. If the jam is in the siphon, place a bucket underneath and unscrew it. Bring with a piece of wire carefully. Before reassembling it, smear some petroleum jelly into the thread, so if you have to re-disassemble it will be a lot easier.
Another cause of the bad smell is that the siphon is left without water. The siphons are an “S” shaped pipe normally, in whose curves there is always water that prevents the gases coming from the pipes to go out. However, when you are away from home, for example for the holidays, it may happen that water evaporates from lack of use.
It can also be emptied because the sink and the bath are connected to the same pipe and the latter sucks the water from the first. Another cause is that it rains heavily and saturates the sewage network. In any of these cases the solution is as simple as opening the water tap and letting it run. If the problem repeats frequently you may have to change the siphon.