Hair Traps and S-Pipes

I have this goal of posting some of the things about life in Korea.

Here is my first one...hiar traps. I must admit that before moving to Korea I did not give much thought to hair traps. Korean bathrooms always have a drain in the floor of the bathroom. We were here but a few weeks when our bathroom would start flooding anytime we would shower. The water would come up through the drain. We tried Draino...it didn't work.

Exibit 1: I don't know if you can tell, but look at the trash can (please don't look too closely inside), it's about an inch deep! And that is my foot making ripples in the water.

Exibit 2: Look at that hair! And that is only half of it. Though I smiled for the picture...I don't normally smile through the task. Normally, I accomplish the task a quickly as possible!

The only way to fix this problem is to open the drain and clean the hair trap. That is what you see in the picture. Basically I get to pull all that hair off of the trap and then stick my hand down the drain and pull another good chuck of hair out of there. This task isn't completely horrible, but plastic gloves, lots of paper towels, and a clothes pin for your nose are a must! I actually chose to forgo the gloves for the first time last time I cleaned out the hair trap. The gloves do make the task more enjoyable.

We have to do this about every two weeks. Beka and I are blessed with such wonderful thick hair! In the States I never even once considered how the hair did not clog our drains.

You know that pipe under the kitchen sink and the bathroom that snakes around and takes up a bunch of space underneath the cabinet and really messes up trying to use that space for anything useful? Yea...well, I would take an s-pipe if I could. I never knew what purpose the pipe served, that's just how it was. Well apparently the pipe is designed that way in order to manage the lovely smells that would otherwise come up from the pipe. It is not everday, but fo a few days each month we will come home to the lovely aroma of sewer smell. It's nothing unmangable, we open our windows and burn a candle...but makes you appreciate s-pipes.

I never gave much thought to plumbing in the States...but we have few good things going in that area. Living in Korea is such an education is so many ways...plumbing just being one of them!