ID plumbing setup, please, I'm baffled xpost

11 years ago

What is this contraption under a vanity sink? The black tube to the right leads up to nothing behind the vanity drawers. Another vanity, installed at the same time by the same plumber, has the same thing.

Can I safely cap that black tube off at the white pipe?

The gray tubing is supply line for hot and cold.

House was built in 1890s with mods over time in a town that had lax to no codes or inspections ... don't think "they'd never put ___ there", because they just might have.

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Comments (6)

palimpsest
11 years ago
This sink probably was not properly vented through the stack so that looks like some kind of rigged compensation for that. But I would think it would allow sewer gas in because there is no trap. It doesn't seem like it's in the right place to work for that, even as a jerry-rig.
User
Original Author
11 years ago
The local hardware store identified it ... it's an "Air Admittance Valve", a code-acceptable way to vent a sink when there's no way to run a stack pipe. The valve part is out of sight, up by the sink, above the level of the trao, as it should be.

However, it's usually running vertically, not out of the side like that.
http://www.diyadvice.com/diy/plumbing/kitchen/install-air-admittance-valve/ shows a properly installed one.
palimpsest
11 years ago
My sisters sink in her 1936 ish Sears house had one of these that was PVC pipe with a thing that looked like the plastic version of the air gap some places require for (Dishwashers?)
User
11 years ago
That is a health hazard is what that is. It's in no way shape or form any semblance of a real air gap. And there is no trap. No "plumber" ever did that. That's got DIY stamped all over it. It's a health and safety hazard to the home and should be removed and redone correctly IMMEDIATELY!
lazypup
11 years ago
LazyGardens:

Check your post in the plumbing forum...that is not an air admittance valve....
User
Original Author
11 years ago
REPOST from Plumbing forum:

Hey ... not my choice of plumber, and this town isn't big enough to support more than a few of them. Medium-range plans (next year or two) are to replace that vanity, so we'll replace that stuff (the grey PBE pipe) with real copper.

I have a copy of the building permit where it was signed off as OK. :) OK?

The trap is there, just above the top of the picture, and the valve is up and to the right, out of the picture. That drain is resting on packed dirt under the house, with a pipe hanger to the stud next to it.

Apparently the plumber responsible for this is well-known enough locally that when he saw the "idiosyncratic" way the trap was arranged (in a picture I have not posted here), the guy in the hardware store said, "I'd tell you who he is so you can avoid him, but he's dead."

Cheap, but dead.