Hi there!

I am living in Peru and have recently built a few rooms with bathrooms on my second floor. I know the construction guy has experience and i assumed his work would be up to (peruvian) standards.

I have recently started to use one of the bathrooms myself and noticed light sewer smell in there... :-( I started to research the internet a little bit and dug up a picture of one of the bathrooms' plumbing (before they put the cement floor on top). I am pretty sure none of the shower or extra drain pipes have traps.



You can see a shower in the upper part of the picture, a toilet and sink on the right. Left and bottom are two extra big holes and a small one that have lid covers on them now.

Please however bad or funny this setup might be, i don't know. I am pretty sure the traps should be there and are not. But please bare with me, i already have been through a lot of problems and please understand that breaking open the floor and putting new plumbing is NOT an option.

I guess in some way this would be 'common' in Peru!? But is it that bad?
What can i do to make the situation livable? Is there a way to deal with the smell?
Thank you!

 

Traps were originally mandated not mainly because of smells but because of fires and explosions of the methane that is sometimes in sewer gas.

 

Hi Ray! Thank you for responding. Ok, so i understand also there is a security issue with the missing traps..
I am curious to know if in a practical way this setup will cause me problems in it's functioning and what i could do to solve the smell issue?

 

Traps need to be installed. There is no alternatives I know of for showers. Sinks should have traps. If they do not easily added. If they used S-traps for the sinks they can gi dry and are not code in the U.S. however converting to P-traps is easy. Washer drain standpipes can easily have traps added. Conventional toilets have a built in trap and tubs can be converted to P-traps if they have drum traps or none. so it all comes down to the showers. You may need to redo those. Wait to see if the plumbers have a solution.

Of course if by showers you really mean tubs with showers not stand alone showers there may be a solution.

 

Hi! thanks again

I will add the following picture of the new situation on that same bathroom.



I think the sink with sifon can be considered a P-trap. Then we have the toilet. The shower as well as the extra little safety drain hole below i am afraid have no traps (based on the first picture). That's why i think i have a sewer smell. I am wondering if this is a big problem and if there is something i can do about the smell.

 

Is there maybe a plumber here that could tell me if my bathroom plumbing is acceptable?? Is there a serious danger of malfunctioning? Can i do something about the smell?? It still smells bad.. :-(

 

your smell would most likely be coming from the shower with no trap. All ports in floor look plugged but you may want to seal them better with some type of silicone on the cap threads.

The sink looks trapped and the toilet with water in it is a trap. The toilet should sit on a wax seal so no sewer gas from there. The only other place is the shower.

Put a plug in the shower drain. Let us know if the smell goes away.

If so you'll need to raise the shower higher and add a trap to fix.

And if the city has high methane gas issue installing a whole house trap at the sewer outlet may help if you have smells outside from the sewer vent.

If no sewer vents were installed then the toilet and sink water ca siphon out and cause more smells..