Overflowing Sink

Описание: We inspect houses from the top down. We fill bathtubs with water, then drain ’em. Same with kitchen sinks. This forces a big slug of water down the drain all at once, which will often reveal leaks that can’t be found with other methods. It’s also a great way to make sure everything drains properly. By the time we get to the basement, we sometimes find icky stuff in a basement sink or around the floor drain that may have backed up as a result of our testing. To confirm this, we’ll typically repeat our test.

We do this by going back upstairs, filling the kitchen sink (or tub, or whatever), pulling the drain on the sink, then running back downstairs to get another look at the sink/floor drain/standpipe in question. If the drains don’t function properly, the lower plumbing fixture can back up with water. This particular video clip shows a basement bathroom sink spewing water out of the overflow, which was the result of water draining from the kitchen sink into a clogged drain. The water had nowhere else to go but to back up out of the basement sink, and it overflowed.

Oh, and this should go without saying, but of course we cleaned up the mess. We recorded the whole thing because there was nothing else to do until the water from the sink above had finished draining.