'O' Ring in Shower Trap - What For?

[TheScullster]

Hi all

In our shower waste arrangement we have:

A chrome coated plastic grill. A removable cylindrical part with a cross bar that locates in the trap body. The trap body itself.

At cleaning time (both wife and daughter have long hair) I remove the chrome grill and twist/lift out the cylindrical part. The latter usually has a lot of hair caught on it which can be easily cleaned off. The thing is that between this cylindrical part and the body of the trap there is an 'O' ring and I can't figure out what it does. At some point the 'O' ring has become stretched and therefore fouls the trap body. I have removed the 'O' ring for now to allow the cylindrical part to be re-fitted. As the cylindrical part is open at top and bottom, I can't work out what the 'O' ring seals IYSWIM.

Any ideas on the purpose of the 'O' ring?

TIA

Phil

[Lobster]

's funny - having an identical configuration of wife, shower drain and daughter I keep meaning to ask the same question here myself.

The o-rings on both our showers suffered the same fate as yours several years ago, and have been missing ever since, with no adverse effect that I can see.

Hasn't made any difference to the hair build-up either. And daughter stil refuses ever to clean out the trap as it's "too mucky", preferring to wait until Yours Truly is alerted to the problem downstairs, due to water dripping through the ceiling because the 5"-deep shower tray has overflowed...

David

[TheScullster]

"Lobster" wrote

Thankfully my wife also uses this shower and is sufficiently house proud to clean out the trap before we hit "overflow" state, so this isn't necessarily my job. One thing I noticed this time when cleaning, I needed some bent wire to hook a significant quantity of hair which had snagged on the underside edge of the trap (IYSWIM). This was I suppose almost disappearing down the waste pipe at this point, with just a few die hard hair strands securing the bunch to the trap. Quite satisfying when you snag a serious clump of would be drain blocking fuzz.

Anyway, thanks David, I'll sleep easy knowing that flooding isn't imminent (a bold statement perhaps for someone living on the edge of Hull one year after the deluge).

Phil

[Bob Mannix]

The O ring seals the downstream soil pipe (the other side from the water in the trap) from the bathroom. The trap water forms part of this seal. The gap without the O ring is very small and is unlikely to cause a problem but it is possible that, with the wind in the right direction, some foul air might seep past it. As you have found, it probably doesn't matter!

[robgraham]

I'm a ditto on this too. It does make one wonder what testing the manufacturers do and what is in shampoo (I presume) that attacks the seal material. As these rings are used in all sorts of seals whatever is in the shampoo must be rather nasty.

Rob

[TheScullster]

"Bob Mannix" wrote

Hey thanks Bob, that clears up the other mystery. I was a bit slow there and didn't link the displaced seal to the new, not particularly agreeable, aroma. Are these seals easy to come by?

Thanks

Phil

[Bob Mannix]

Don't know - they are bound to be available "somewhere"! If no-one knows here then they probably aren't. You could buy a spare trap and have the other bits ready to replace as well, of course.