One of the worst things to happen with your plumbing is when you come across smelly drains in your home. When you are brushing your teeth or doing the washing up, the worst thing you want is a foul smell coming up from the plughole. Some smells can be easily remedied, whereas others may require a drain service professional. In this post, we’ll go through the easiest solutions to your smelly drains.

Kitchen Sinks:

The most common cause of a smelly kitchen sink tends to be food blockages within the pipework. One easy solution is to simply buy some drain unblocker and pour that down the plughole. The best time to do this is last thing at night so that it can sit overnight. In the morning, remember to rinse away with warm water!

Sometimes the kitchen sink can also become blocked with fat and grease, often the easiest solution for this kind of kitchen drain blockage is to pour a few kettle fulls of boiling water down the sink to try and dislodge it. By doing this, it heats up and melts the solidified fat and moves it through the pipework. After you have poured these down the sink, leave the hot tap running for a few minutes to push the fat through the rest of the pipe to make sure it doesn’t just solidify further down the drain.

If you follow these solutions, the smelly drain in your kitchen sink should be resolved. If not, you may need to call in a professional drain unblocker to clear the issue with the correct equipment.

Bathroom Sinks:

When you are leaning over the bathroom sink brushing your teeth, the last thing you want is to have a horrible smell wafting up from your drain. This will generally be due to a blockage caused by grime, soap scum or hair. If you can see any blockages, just simply remove them. This might not be the nicest job, but it will be the quickest route to having clean drains.

If after you have done this, it still smells, it may be blocked in the trap underneath the sink itself, so you may have to empty that. You will have to dismantle the trap, clean it out and replace it. Just be sure to refill it by pouring about two litres of water down the plughole.

Again, if this doesn’t solve the problem, you may want to call in a professional to have a proper look as they will have the correct tools for whatever the issue is in your bathroom, whether that is the sink, toilet or shower. 

Outside Drains:

Smelly drains found outside drains are a little trickier than kitchen or bathroom sinks. Smells coming from your outside drain will most likely need a CCTV drain survey to visually check the drain for any blockages and to find the source of the problem, so the quickest solution is to call in a drainage professional.

As the professional is already there, they will then be able to use the best method to fix the issue. This could be drain jetting or something similar to remove the blockage.

As Drain Doctor are experts in all plumbing and drainage issues, give us a call if you start to experience smelly drains and we’ll be there to get you back to normality!