How to Install a P-Trap on Your Kitchen Sink

Designed to catch items you don't want to go down the drain, like your wedding ring, the p-trap under your kitchen sink is a plumbing fixture that is easy maintain. Often you can clean the grease and hair out of the p-trap and solve clogging problems. But in time, p-traps may begin to leak and need to be replaced.

Things You'll Need

• Safety goggles
• Bucket
• Slip-joint pliers
• P-joint with cleanout
• Teflon tape

Instructions

1. Purchase your supplies. Get a p-joint with a cleanout valve so you don't have to take the p-joint off the next time you have a clogged drain. Make sure the p-trap you purchase is the same diameter as the drain in your kitchen.

2. Put on your safety goggles. There may be caustic chemical in the pipes and you don't want to expose your eyes to them.

3. Remove all the stuff from the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Set a bucket under the pipe to catch anything in the drain as you open it up.

4. Use the slip-joint pliers to undo the compression nuts holding the p-joint to the tail pipe in the sink drain and the main pipe. You may be able to loosen the compression nuts with your hands if the plumbing is fairly new.

5. Hold the new p-joint in place to make sure the fit is right. Make any adjustments in its alignment before you tighten it on.

6. Wrap Teflon tape around the p-joint ends in a counter-clockwise direction. Connect the p-joint to the sink's tail pipe and main drainpipe with the compression nuts. Only hand-tighten the nuts. The Teflon tape should seal the connections the rest of the way.