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A thousand dangers arise just by not being at home for a few days! As soon as you enter the kitchen after returning home, the householder is overcome by a foul smell! When you look for it, you find that this smell is coming from the kitchen sink drain. Why? Because food particles, fish and meat particles from the dishes that were washed in the sink have been carried by the water and gone into the drain. But since the sink has not been used for a few days, it could not be completely drained out. Rather, some part of the drain has remained clogged. It has decomposed and produced a foul-smelling gas, which has come out of the drain mouth and filled the kitchen.

Usually, there is an English U-shaped pipe under the sink, which is known as a ‘P-trap’. Some water always accumulates in this part. As a result, a natural seal is automatically created and the foul-smelling gas from the sewer cannot come back. But if the sink is not used for a few days, especially in the summer, this water gradually evaporates. The reason why this possibility is more in Bengali kitchens is because of the ingredients used in cooking. Ghee, oil and spices do not wash away easily in water. Accumulation increases the number of bacteria.

To find out what’s really wrong with your sink, you can do a simple test at home with a glass of water and paper. How to do it?

• Fill a glass with water and hold a square of paper over its mouth.
• Then, quickly hold the glass upside down over the sink drain with the paper. Make sure that the rim of the glass fits snugly over the rim of the drain. If it is made ‘airtight’, water will not drip out at all. Instead, it will be solid and sticky.
• Leave it like this for at least 20 minutes.

Normally, this test should take time for the back of the paper to get wet. But if strong gas comes out from inside the drain, the paper starts getting wet from the bottom. If it stays like that for a long time, the paper can get wet from both sides and tear. In other words, by looking at the test results, you can be sure whether there is garbage accumulated inside the drain or not.

In such a situation, lukewarm water can be slowly poured into the drain. If this reduces the smell, then it means that no damage has been done. But if this does not reduce the smell, then definitely take the help of an expert plumber.