Sulfur smell in kitchen sinks

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jkm

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My daughter just bought her first house. She has a sulfur smell coming from both sides of the kitchen sink. After using a drain build up removal agent, then bleach, then vinegar, then taking the P trap apart & cleaning it by hand, the sink still not only smells like sewer, but the sinks usually gurgles up when you drain the sink water. I've attempted to enclose pictures of the set up under the sink. Would this be a plumbing set up problem, a vent problem, or what? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
 

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Timothy LaDuca

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I am not a plumber, nor have I done much in the way of plumbing, but what strikes me as odd is the height of the outlet to the main drain. Here is a pic of my kitchen sink plumbing:
IMG_0668.jpg
Note that the water level will get as high as the base of the main drain. In your daughter's case it looks like the base of the main drain is as high as the "T" (the long horizontal pipe connecting the one drain to the other). So all of that plumbing up to the level of the base of the main drain is full of water (even part of the pipe coming from the dishwasher). I would hazard a guess that this setup doesn't drain very well and allows for a good bit of solid waste (especially from the dishwasher) to just float around in there and cause and rot and cause a stink. Not sure about the gurgling though.
 

Terry

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I'm going to guess that it has a deep sink with a granite counter.
The sink drians are lower than the outlet in the wall.
If you can open the wall, remove the tee and lower it, that would help. It may be that you are having siphoning problems with the drain.

sink_dw.jpg
 

jkm

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Thank you both so much for your thoughts and insight into this problem. Yes, you're right, the guy who remodeled the house put in new counter tops and deeper sinks, and then probably just tied into where the T was to begin with, which is too high for this setup. So, how does one open up the wall behind the kitchen cabinet to lower the T in this plumbing setup? Thanks, jkm
 

Dj2

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The way you have it set up, you have a lot of water sitting in your drain - not good. Re-do the wall drain, as suggested above.
 

Terry

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Here's an example of a kitchen sink remodeled with a very deep sink. The people doing the remodel hooked up one sink without a p-trap.
And because the dishwasher was not high looped or installed with an air gap, all kinds of dirty water was winding up in the dishwasher between loadings.

sue_lower_drain_1.jpg


The wall was opened up and the santee in the wall was lowered. If this had been a trap arm going horizontally, it would have been more work.

sue_lower_drain_2.jpg


While I was at it, I took out the vintage disposer and added an air gap on the counter for the dishwasher.

sue_lower_drain_3.jpg


The air gap is to the right of the faucet.
 
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RplumberC

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You have essentially created a MASSIVE trap (Your drain is basically holding water an inch from the basket strainer). I agree that the san tee must be moved.
 
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