Important lesson learned cheap, passing it on

[Jim K.]

This year, I had an impressive first in my landlording career. I've already had to change out two legacy bathroom sink drain assembles in two rentals in two months. Anyone who has had to do work on bathroom vanity drain systems knows what it's like, you're hunched under a bathroom sink in extremely tight quarters. Once you get some of the always slightly caustic drain trap fluid on your fingers, your fingers soften up and the skin abrades easily on them. I was impressed by the stifled inventiveness of my own swearing today. The tenant doesn't like using the central air conditioning, which I suppose is great for me (when I'm not there).

The first drain I took out this year was made of some sort of cheap base metal and cracked under normal use. The second was practically new but was a plastic and chromed-plastic affair with a chrome-plated drainpipe. What happened was that my tenant started dying her hair in the bathroom sink, and the dye managed to clog up the drainpipe before the trap, right under the sink stopper. This is the second time I've seen the same sort of clog in hair-dye situations.

Now I hope no DIY handyman landlord working in C/D properties is so slow on the uptake as to tell women of a certain age that dying their own hair in the bathroom sink that they rent from you is forbidden in your rentals. If you are, well, thanks for the business. If we accept that hair-dying in the sink is as inevitable as death and taxes, then the kind of drainpipe+dye goop+stopper hair clog I'm describing is also inevitable (unless we go with popup drains without traditional lever-operated stopper systems, but no, that's not going to work for me).

So when I took this drain apart to clean it out, the first thing that happened was that the chromed plastic cap on the stopper port in the back of the drain cracked when I reassembled the drain. I took it apart again and a large chip had broken off the threads. I rigged that with some silicone caulk, and then put the trap together again. Then I saw the drainpipe would not stop leaking at the trap, so I replaced the polypropylene trap assembly and put in a new washer in place on the polypropylene trap. That also didn't work. So I took that apart again and rigged it with some more silicone caulk, got that leak stopped. OK! But then I saw that the whole drain had started to leak from the main sink connection. That was the last straw. I was done with temporary rigging for the day.

With much ado and swearing, I removed the whole cheap plastic assembly, tossed it in the trash, and replaced with a full stainless-on-brass assembly (this is usually sold as a "heavy-duty" 1 1/4 drain assembly in the big box stores but more accurately as "all-brass construction" in my local plumbing supply store).

The lesson is learned, and I'm trying to pass it on here. Both vanities in these low-cost rentals that I worked on in these months were of full plywood construction with a sheet of flat roofing rubber glued into the bottom, the right kind of vanity to take the abuse vanities get in my rentals. I got off cheap. You can to. From now on, I'm done with renting apartments that don't have all-brass ("all-metal" is NOT ALWAYS all-brass) vanity drains in them. No more dying by inches playing Whac-A-Mole with a drain's problem everything time I have to go over there and service it.

If you buy these all-brass drains in big box stores, be aware that every community has types that are going to try to cannibalize small parts from these drain assemblies and walk off with them without paying for them. Always check the contents of the box the assembly is sold in and make sure that what's supposed to be in the box is actually in the box.