I walk into the club just to pipe it up

There comes a time when something falls down your sink that you don't want to. Whether it be a ring, too much grease, $700 worth of premium Columbian white lightning, etc...When this happens your best route is to remove some of the pipes underneath the sink to get whatever you need out.

The first time I had to do this was cooking and in the process peeling carrots and potatoes, with the peels landing in the sink. The garbage disposal ground them up, but they gathered up in the pipes and clogged it up. Another time I had a friend pour some grease from something that he was cooking down the sink in liquid form. When the grease hits the water, the grease congeals and clogs up the pipe. No bueno.

The one thing most every sink (I haven't seen one without it) have in common is a p-trap. It is a pipe shaped like a U that dips below the level of the horizontal pipe going towards the wall. The p-trap serves two main purposes. The first is that gravity keeps water down in the "U" shaped part of the pipe making a seal that keeps odors and gases from coming back out of the pipes and up from your sink. Nobody wants to smell what ever gross stuff you washed down there yesterday. The second is to catch debris and valuables that may fall down into the sink.

Now before you get to overzealous and start pulling stuff apart like a mad person- get a bucket. I remember this first hand because I didn't have one, and I suffered the consequences. If there is a clog you will most likely have a bunch of water in the sink. A bunch of nasty water. A bunch of nasty gross smelly water. If you take apart a pipe between that water and the clog, you will receive all that water. And it will get everywhere. When you pull apart the pipe, take the bucket it and place it underneath, and aim whatever pipe towards it when you pull it apart. Water is already probably going to get everywhere when you are working down there anyways, might as well try to minimize while you can. So get a bucket and keep it close. Or don't. I don't care.

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Now depending on how your sink is set up, there are a variety of ways it can look underneath. If it is a single basin sink it will probably just be a straight pipe going down into the p-trap and into the out pipe. If a two basin sink is more of your style there will
be a more "T" set up underneath. One/two "L" joints going to the "T" and then a straight pipe going down into the p-trap. But there are other configurations as well.

The "T" set up tends to be slightly more difficult since there are more places that the clog or what ever you are looking for could be. That was the case when Chef Boy-R-Jake was at the helm and I had to spend my entire afternoon figuring it out. Turns out all of that nastiness got caught coming out of the garbage disposal, and not actually in the p-trap. Whould've thunk it.

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The way that the nuts and washers work to connect the pipes is by a threaded sleeve over one pipe with a washer that shaped like a wedge going underneath the lip, then the nut tightening down over top sealing the washer. You don't want to tighten the nut to tight or it will slip over top of the washer and not seal right. It's best just to hand tighten, not use a pipe wrench.

If for some reason the clog is beyond the p-trap, and you cant get to it, you can try a couple different things. you can get a drain snake. You can try your hand using drain cleaning compounds and just keep putting them down there, because as we all know harsh chemicals fix everything. Or.....call a plumber.

So good luck. This is probably my least favorite thing to do around the house, since thing can get really gross, really fast. The main thing to remember is to not put a bunch of stupid stuff in your sink to where you have to take the thing apart to get it out. But that would just make life boring, wouldn't it?