Pop up wastes.

Hence her blinding white smile...

Limescale. Two days ago I freed up friends pop up waste by pouring vinegar on the mechanism every 10 minutes for an hour. The top just unscrews to gain access to the mechanism. After the 3rd application the mechanism again worked but with some obvious stickiness but was completely free after a few more applications of the limescale remover.

I just can't understand why anyone ever wants one of the horrible thing, they rarely work well. What's wrong with a traditional plug?

Nothing. Modern basins don't seem to come fitted with them or any retention provision if you supply your own.

Hmm. We have a water softener. I blame toothpaste as that is all that goes down my shower basin.

The one I have works okay, but I reckon the frequency of necessary application of soda crystals by toothbrush(1) is directly proportional to the hairyness of the user(s).

Nick (Mode=Men Behaving Badly) Not my own toothbrush, obviously.

Tim Lamb presented the following explanation :

My two, which I fitted 10 years ago, both still work fine. The only issue I have had with them is the adjustable steel stud under the plug, rusting. I replaced those with a brass version.

I would not touch one with a ten foot pole. Cleaning materials gum them up and its also easy to damage them. What is wrong with a good old plug on a chain? It seems odd to me that technology has not come to the rescue of designing a tap that can turn on and off a waste pipe reliable for many years.

Brian

Tim Lamb snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk> wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk:

Greasy fat based soap is the curse of them. Use liguid hand cleanser and it doesn't leave a sticky scum.

Tim Lamb snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk> posted

When we replaced our bathroom fittings last year we spent ages looking for basins and baths that would accept traditional plugs. Couldn't find any.

The chain can always be hung around the tap if there's not a little loop built in to the basin.

Isn't it a standard hole that will take.....

No problem with mine in the years I've had them.

Many basins don't come with a hole for the screw to which the chain attaches.

Or, what we have in the bathroom basin and bath, a captive 'plug' that is a disk that is free to be rotated in the waste and so can never be lost?

And in the 25 years or so it's been there and used many times a day, has never gone wrong (or been lost)? ;-)

Possibly because the chain often fixes to the centre of the overflow connection.

well they don't come with that fixing either

mines, just a hole

tim

mine keeps on clogging up with "solid" waste sticking to the inside edge

it's surprising how little it takes to knackers the outflow from the sink

available.

They are, dumped the pop-up waste on the bath (didn't seal properly, kept getting clogged with hair) with a standard waste and plug. Similary the pop-up on the hand basin but with the captive disc type(*) that does catch some gunk but is slightly easier to clean, less bits down the hole in the water flow.

chain

China basins just have the overflow moulded into their structure, so just a bare hole into that from the bowl. Metal sinks on the other hand have a fitting to which the plug chain can sometimes be fixed.