Jakedeg
New Member
Hi All!
I moved into a new home last fall. It was fully gut-renovated back in 2014 and from the outer looks of everything, they spared no expense and did a great job. A few months into living here, I decided the walk-in shower drain was a bit slow, so I snaked it. I got a ton of stinky gunk out of there and I was thrilled. The drain was fast again, and I assumed after a few minutes, the smell would clear. Unfortunately, it did not. Ever since then, I have sewer gas smell. It goes away when I run the shower for a few minutes, but comes back soon after I turn the shower off. When I look down the drain, I can see standing water about 8" down, but I assume that there must be a partial p-trap there but maybe it's not deep enough to allow the water to make a complete seal and some air can travel freely above the water line. And I figure the hair and gunk I pulled out of the drain was actually blocking some of the gas from making its way into the bathroom... Does this sound like a plausible theory?
So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I have been looking at back-flow preventer devices on Amazon and I've bought and tried this one and this one but both make the drain way too slow so I'm standing in water after a few seconds. Does anyone have a recommendation for a device like this that actually can keep up with a shower running full-force?
After more research, I found this YouTube video where he basically makes a DIY P-trap alternative by having a vertical pipe (in red) with the bottom submerged in a cup (in green) which fills with water (in blue). Like this:
It seems like such a good idea that I should be able to buy something like this that just fits right into my 2" ID pipe. Does this sort of thing exist off-the-shelf? Does it have a name? If not, is there any reason I shouldn't try to make one myself out of PVC? Will it be just as slow as the things I've tried on Amazon?
I moved into a new home last fall. It was fully gut-renovated back in 2014 and from the outer looks of everything, they spared no expense and did a great job. A few months into living here, I decided the walk-in shower drain was a bit slow, so I snaked it. I got a ton of stinky gunk out of there and I was thrilled. The drain was fast again, and I assumed after a few minutes, the smell would clear. Unfortunately, it did not. Ever since then, I have sewer gas smell. It goes away when I run the shower for a few minutes, but comes back soon after I turn the shower off. When I look down the drain, I can see standing water about 8" down, but I assume that there must be a partial p-trap there but maybe it's not deep enough to allow the water to make a complete seal and some air can travel freely above the water line. And I figure the hair and gunk I pulled out of the drain was actually blocking some of the gas from making its way into the bathroom... Does this sound like a plausible theory?
So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. I have been looking at back-flow preventer devices on Amazon and I've bought and tried this one and this one but both make the drain way too slow so I'm standing in water after a few seconds. Does anyone have a recommendation for a device like this that actually can keep up with a shower running full-force?
After more research, I found this YouTube video where he basically makes a DIY P-trap alternative by having a vertical pipe (in red) with the bottom submerged in a cup (in green) which fills with water (in blue). Like this:
It seems like such a good idea that I should be able to buy something like this that just fits right into my 2" ID pipe. Does this sort of thing exist off-the-shelf? Does it have a name? If not, is there any reason I shouldn't try to make one myself out of PVC? Will it be just as slow as the things I've tried on Amazon?