I’ve been living in several apartments in Taiwan and I’ve often had a smell coming from drain, especially when it rains, but at the place I’m in now it’s especially bad. I’ve cleaned out everything I can reach with baking soda and vinegar followed by boiling water several times. Usually, that would work for a month or so, but in this apartment, when the rain starts, we get this rotten food smell. I just dump more baking soda down the drain and cover it and that absorbs most of the smell, though we can’t use the drain until the rain stops. I’m sure the smell is rotting food and bacteria growing in the buildings main drain, but why does it come when it rains? Do the drains in the buildings here exit into the street drains? I can imagine that the flow of water could create a wind that would push foul air up through the drainage pipes.
Another odd thing is that it’s only the kitchen sink where foul air comes up. We don’t have this problem with the bathroom sink or drains. I’ve poured everything I can think of down the drain, I’ve even pulled out the plastic drain pipe, cleaned it out, and scrubbed as far downward as possible, but everytime it rains hard, it happens again.
Anyone know a good solution for this?
It’s probably because only the newest buildings were constructed using plumbing traps. The trap in question is a bend in the pipe that holds enough water to trap rising sewer gas.
Without traps all buildings, even in the West, would be subject to sewer gasses. When it rains the rainwater diverted into sewer lines stirs the sewer waters up, releasing gasses that rise and end up smelling up the place.
put a metal/rubber lid on kitchen sink hole.
Break out your wallet and install a P Trap under the sink. The gas/ bacteria miasma eminating from that funk hole will make you sick.
A p-trap might work, but the drain in the floor is situated directly under sink drain. There’s not much space for the two curves.
Covering it with a rubber plug doesn’t help much. The gas can leak out through various other places.
That solved the problem for me,
Get a ‘water lock’ drain.
