Living in an Imperfect Home: How to Avoid Leaks Under the Sink
THREE TIMES in the past year, my day got derailed by an under-sink leak. No, they weren’t all the same sink, and they weren’t for the same reason! Unfortunately, two of them were not discovered before mold started to form, and if you’ve smelled that musty smell before, you know it’s not an easy fix. Since it’s better to learn from other peoples’ mistakes, I just wanted to share my experience with you…you can thank me later!
In no particular order, here are some causes of under-sink leaks:
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Too much “stuff” under the sink. When cleaning bottles and supplies get shoved under the sink, they often bump against the drain pipes that have to live there. This is exactly what happened in the guest bathroom at my parents’ house: a drain pipe got loosened at the back of the cabinet, where it allowed water to drip into the wall unnoticed. With limited storage for cleaning supplies, this was the go-to place for cleaning supplies, until the leak. Now, I’m very careful to place only a few essentials to one side, where they don’t interfere with plumbing.
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A drippy faucet above. Of course, drips tend to happen at the most busy time of the week or year, when you think you can’t possibly fit another thing into your schedule. Think again! If I had known that the drip was running down the faucet hoses onto the floor of the cabinet, I definitely would have stayed up for 20 minutes more one night to tighten the faucet cartridge (that’s all it needed). When I put that off for a week (or two), the drywall in the back of the cabinet was a crumbling, musty mess and the gut job required 2 hours (just to clean it out, not to repair it).
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If you don’t use a sink, plumber’s putty can actually dry out and fail. This happened on one side of a double-basin sink, where my parents had placed a drying rack. Even though we regularly put washed dishes in there, there wasn’t enough water to keep the putty moist. After changing the putty and drain, we know to regularly run water into the basin to avoid that. This was one part of the problem on that “fail”. The other part was the next reason…
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Hard water–which is a problem for many Americans– can cause corrosion of metal pipes, drains and valves. Besides being a pain to clean off sinks and toilet bowls, the minerals (often calcium and magnesium) can actually corrode metal. I know this because the water that leaked past the dried out putty caused a powdery white substance to appear on the threads of the sink drain, which then failed. I could push the threaded collar up and down on the threads without having to “screw” it on, causing us to have to throw away that part. Now, here I can say that some drain parts are made of better materials than others. Although I initially balked at the $20 price for the new drain, it was substantially heavier and more robust-looking.
After all the cleanup, here are the things I instituted to make these jobs obsolete!
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Undersink mats are just the greatest. Besides covering the ugly, stained plywood, they work so much better than the standard contact paper, because there’s a lip that will actually hold some water (some mats up to 3 gallons). Make sure to measure the area under the sink before ordering, as this is not a mat you want to cut to size. If there are any pipes protruding from the cabinet floor, measure for a smaller mat so that it lays flat. If it is slightly smaller than your cabinet floor, make sure it’s under the drain piping (especially the “U”, which is always full of water) and then pull it forward to the door. This way, if water does accumulate, you can gently press on the edge to release a little at a time to another container below.
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Leak detectors are simple gadgets that let you know (usually with a piercing alarm like a smoke detector) that something is amiss with a water leak. Some types of sensors are one use only (meaning the battery can’t be replaced once it dies) and others have a replaceable battery. You can even go high-tech by getting the wi-fi kind, which is super if you travel a lot or have a vacation home. Get 1-2 packs of them to place under every sink in the home, in the water heater tray (even if it’s plumbed to a drain), under/behind the washing machine (a burst hose can be disastrous in a few minutes at 35 psi!), behind the fridge (ice makers have hoses too), under the dishwasher, and in the AC drain pan. Of course, just because you made the effort to install them, you may never hear them alarm in your lifetime, but it’s way better than dealing with a leak!
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If you live in a place that desperately needs renovation but you can’t get to the plumbing just yet, cut a sheet of heavy plastic or aluminum to “guide” any drips from undersink valves to the mat and leak detector. Cut scallops to fit behind the valves on the wall, and use screws or tacks to install it to the drywall or back of the cabinet (be careful not to pierce any plumbing or wires behind it), allowing the bottom to drape into the mat. This way, you can be quickly alerted if those valves fail and start leaking, because the water will run to the leak detector instead of down the drywall or cabinet.
Got some more tips for averting water leaks? Let us know!
