Hello, this is Dustin with Home Mender, and today we’re going to change a basket strainer in a kitchen sink. It’s not that hard and there is no reason to pay a plumber 100 bucks to do it when you can do it for eight bucks. Let’s get to it
Sometimes these guys leak, sometimes they’re corroded. Sometimes they just get nasty. Either way, we’re going to pull this one out and change it.
1 Take the trap off and empty it. There’s no need to valve off the water since we’re working on a drain line. Have a bowl ready to drain it. Careful not to spill the water. It’s pretty gross and obviously don’t dump it back in the sink, you just disconnected the drain. Empty the trap in your bowl. Let’s disconnect the flange tailpiece from the basket strainer.
2 Loosen the basket nut from under the sink. The basket strainer may spin on you, so you may have to hold it. Take the nut off and remove the basket strainer from the sink. Make sure you clean off the bottom of your sink so we make a nice tight seal and clean out all the gunk from around the sinkhole on top.. Be sure to use something plastic. If you use something metal, you may scratch your finish.
3 Use plumber’s putty and wrap around the area that makes contact with the sink. Break off the excess. I like to leave it about an eighth of an inch thick and go ahead and smash it flat because it’s going to give us less resistance later when we tighten it down. Now, that’s ready to go in the sink. All the other washers and gaskets go underneath.
4. Fit your new strainer in the hole and push down the basket strainer to mushroom and flare out the plumber’s putty. You can pull off the excess, make sure your position is right in the center of the hole. Let’s go back under the sink. We’re going to take our rubber gasket, put that on first, then the paper washer and then the nut. The paper washer keeps the rubber washer from binding up.
5. Tighten the nut. Now, while holding the new basket strainer, we tighten the nut.
Now pull off any excess plumber’s putty that flared out before you get good and tight.
You may want to make sure that you’re still lined up in the center of the hole with your new strainer.
6 Put the drain tailpiece on the new strainer. Take, your slip joint nut off, making sure to keep your little plastic gasket. New washer goes into your old tailpiece and then fit the nut on.
Give it a snug.
7. Reinstall the trap.The slip joint nut goes on the tailpiece, then the washer and we hook our trap back up. Let’s give it a test. Any excess putty, we can just pull that off and you can smear the putty into the cracks of the strainer. Insert the strainer into the new basket and plug up the sink.
8. Test for leaks. Turn on the water. After it fills up over your basket strainer, you can get down below and check for leaks. If it’s not leaking, pull out the stopper and look below for leaks.
We’re good to go. So that’s it, we just replaced the basket strainer on a kitchen sink. Super easy and you avoided those high dollar plumbing prices. For Home Mender, this is Dustin. I hope you learned something today and if you did, subscribe!