Have you ever looked under your sink or maybe at the back of your toilet and
notice those funny shapes in the pipes. This is called a P trap.
And today I'm going to show you how you can diagnose this, troubleshoot it,
and make sure that all of your drains are running properly.
Thanks to this ingenious little invention,
this little system that you see here today in some form or another has been
around for almost 250 years.
Alexander Cumming invented this in Britain in the year, 1775.
He called it the S curve. It was a different shape than this.
And then over a century later, Thomas Crapper also from Britain,
modified it to become more like what we see today.
And that was called the U curve. But in a sense, they're both a trap and a trap,
meaning it traps some water in here to prevent noxious fumes from the sewer,
from having a direct line into your home, through your drains.
If it weren't for this P trap here,
your house would smell like a toilet all the time. Now,
when I asked my kids what they know about P traps,
they all assume that it was called that because of pee or urine or something
like that. But in fact, it's all about the shape.
If you take the letter P flip it around and lay it down,
that's what you see right here.
There's a letter P and that's why it's called that.
So the P trap has been around for a long time.
And if you understand how it works and how your general plumbing around your
house works, it will help you to troubleshoot all kinds of issues.
As far as drainage and movement around the water in your home.
Now I've got a fog machine over here to simulate the vapors that would come up
through the sewer. And if your P trap isn't functioning, this is what happens.
Let's take a look.
That's bad news. All of those vapors are coming right up through your sink.
And they also go up through the air vent, which is normal.
But when they come up through your sink like that,
that means that that sewage smell and those noxious fumes are coming into your
home. Now you might wonder how does water actually get through?
Does this not trap the water that's going out? And the answer is no,
it actually works just fine. So when we pour some water down here,
the pressure of the water going down creates an overflow.
And then the water goes right through the plumbing, just as it normally should.
We've got fumes coming out of the air vent,
but nothing can come out of this side. Over here. The P trap is doing its job,
protecting you and those in your household. Now,
even if you have a fully functional P trap installed and everything is working
as it should, there are a few things to watch out for, with these.
Number one is evaporation. If you have a drain that doesn't get used very much,
then eventually the water that's inside here will evaporate.
This will sink down below that level that we showed,
and those fumes will come up through the drain. And that can be a real problem.
Now there's, what's called an AAV or an air admittance valve,
and they come in all different.
But the general idea is they keep these replenished with water and make sure
there's always some water in there to block off those fumes. Now,
another thing that could go wrong is that if you've got a lot of hairs in the
drain or you've got strings or fibers or different things like that,
they create a little stream right here, a little trail,
and they can actually absorb the water that's in the P trap and let it travel
down the line. And that will dry out what's in here. So that's another issue,
and that's another reason you want to keep those P traps clean. Now,
there are a few other things that you want to keep in mind if you're
experiencing any issues with drainage, the first is the slope of your drain.
And if you look at that, you can see the bubble as far to the left,
meaning it's sloping downward, which is a good thing.
The recommended amount per international plumbing code is about a quarter inch
for every foot of pipe. So if I had a six foot pipe, for example,
from here to the other end,
then that other end should be an inch and a half lower. Now,
if I move this up a little bit like this, to where it's level,
it might drain somewhat, but it's not going to drain well.
And if I move it up at all to the opposite slope,
then it's definitely not going to drain properly on a shorter distance.
You might be able to get away with it,
but you definitely want to make sure that after you make adjustments to your
pipes under your sinks in particular, that you haven't messed with that slope.
And then it's going downward, just like a.
Another common issue with homes is the vacuum system inside your plumbing gets
messed up because there's no air being pulled through the vent.
And that's usually caused by an animal that's crawled down into those black
pipes on your roof. And it has blocked that.
And so you want to always check to make sure that you've got no blockage down
there because otherwise it becomes that same situation where you've got a block
here of the air.
And so there's a vacuum and there's nowhere for that water to leave.
So be sure to check that out with your air vent pipes on your roof.
On the topic of plumbing.
One tool that I've found is really helpful is my TOPDON ITC 629.
This is actually a thermal imaging camera. This thing is really cool.
So this will actually allow you to see the temperature visually of everything
around you. So here under the sink, for example,
you can easily see the hot water line going up,
and then you can barely see back there, the cold water line,
and you can even see how the P trap and all of the plumbing is heating up with
that hot water. That's running the drain system.
This is also super handy for things like 3d printers to make sure you've got
even heating along the bed and also to see what your temperatures are.
You can switch this from Fahrenheit to Celsius,
and you can see on the side here,
the range goes from -20 to 450 Celsius and -4 to
842 Fahrenheit.
Now for a limited time TOPDON is actually offering a discount coupon on this.
So you can check out the link in the description below.
I want to thank them for sponsoring the video today,
this product actually also comes with its own hard case,
some free thermal gloves, the power charger and USB cable.
So you can transfer images to your computer and everything you need.
So be sure to check out the links in the description and get yours today.
[Inaudible].
Now, as I mentioned earlier,
I think we should all be pretty grateful for this little humble P trap.
It really does make our homes that much more enjoyable to live in.
Now it has not changed a lot in about 140 years,
which is crazy because this,
this thing has been around that long and it's been effective that whole time.
However,
we are starting to see some cool new ideas and inventions and iterations of
this. One of them I'm testing out in my house right now,
and it's got a little trap door to let you have easy access,
to clean things out to make sure everything's running as expected,
not a sponsored video, just something I wanted to try.
If you want to check that out, be sure to subscribe. And that will let you know,
as soon as that video is available. Now,
if you want to learn more about plumbing as a homeowner,
I've got my plumbing for homeowners playlist right here that you can check out
and learn a whole lot more. I'm Nils with LRN2DIY. Thanks for watching.
And we'll see you on the next one.