Korean Job Discussion Forums

[taobenli]

My apartment smells like...vomit. It's coming up from the kitchen drain. We clean our sink and compost bucket out frequently and have poured draino down there. It's not us, it's just coming up from the main pipe. It's really foul sometimes, and I assume it's only going to get worse in the hot weather.

How to get rid of this smell as much as possible? Put a couple of those "Smell Eating Hippo" product box thingies down in the sink area? Any other ideas?

I love Korea, but sometimes it really smells.

[egrog1717]

Mine does the same thing :S...

I'll bleach it once in awhile, but that never works more than a few days and my apartment smells like bleach LOL

[Caffeinated]

My bathroom has the same problem butl uckily I can close the door and leave the fan on. Sounds like some plumbers need to take Drainage 101 again.

[oldfatfarang]

Try this Korean trick. After you've cleaned everything, and used draino etc, put the plug in the drain, and run about 2 inches of water in the sink. This water should stop smells coming out of your kitchen drain.

It's probably not wise to wash your dishes in a sink that's had water left in it, so you wash your dishes in a large metal bowl (placed in the sink).

Hope this works.

[8 years down]

Yeah some cities or areas stink bad.

One year I had to go under the sink and cover every hole with duct tape. I also made drain covers out of plastic and more duct tape.. Those seemed to work well.

[yellowdove]

my apartment STUNK for a month after my husband and i moved in. we tried EVERYTHING - cleaning out the drain with draino, scrubbing the cupboards underneath, washing the floors every day, we even thought that the smell was coming from the heat so we made sure to leave it off most of the time we were in the apartment, even though it was december.

one day, my husband was cleaning and the smell was SOOOOO strong around the fridge. he smelled in it, smelled around it, and finally smelled the back side - we had mold growing that was the size of 3 large dinner plates. that was what smelled. it was SO nasty.

check out the blog post for pics. http://wp.me/sD4Tp-thesmell

anyways, once we cleaned the mold by scraping it off the wall, the smell disappeared. it was magical. we still have a little mold here and there around the apartment, but its not nearly as bad as the massive one, and it doesn't really smell, so we're not that concerned.

long story short, check EVERYWHERE for mold. this country is notorious for it, and it can make your life miserable.

if it's not mold, see if your school can hire a plumber to come in and take apart your drain to see if there's anything growing in there. lol[/url]

[Dazed and Confused]

Try pouring boiling water down the drain. Then pour a cup of vinegar or bleach. As a previous poster says stop up the drain. That should help things. I think the smell is some sort of sewer gas. I get it in my second bathroom that we don't shower in.

[coralreefer_1]

You can find a kind of product for this. Typically they are called "sinkball", and they sell them at nearly every emart/homplus, and the larger neighborhood markets.

Basically it is something that looks like a mothball, or maybe it is a solid piece of chlorine inside a plastic casing with holes/slots.. Anyway, it has a string and a hook, and you hook it onto the cover over your drain, and the "ball" hangs down in the drain. It is advertised to eliminate slime and mold from your drain catch and drain, but it can also help (perhaps not 100%) eliminate odor as well as perhaps make those pesky insects that come through drains to choose another drain to enter.

The product shows you attach it to you catch in your kitchen sink (the thing that catches your food scraps) but you could attach it and let it hang down in your bathroom drain as well with a little work.

Here is a picture.

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x275/coralreefer_1/Cholebong/BasicCapoeiraVids.jpg

[GreenlightmeansGO]

Moved in a month ago and my bathroom smells like a combo of cigarettes and pee, while my kitchen sink stinks of old food that's been sitting in water since the dawn of time...or a few weeks.

Solution: blocked nose has worked wonders.

[atomicdeathmonkey]

I know this probably sounds funny - but i light a candle over my drain in the shower every night - as the smell of crap coming from it was pretty rough - i was told to do this by a korean person, it actually worked at eliminating the odour - burned it off over the time the candle is sitting there

if it's methane it works well

[bsrosenfeld]

I have THE answer for you my friend. My bathroom smelled so bad and the stank was coming from the shower drain. My school tried everything to fix it (as did I) to no avail. It got to the point that they were going to move me when the lease expires in a few months. Then one day I used the power of google.

Props to We've Got Seoul for finding this gem of info (http://wevegotseoul.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/stinky-sewer-smell-in-seoul-business-card-to-stop-the-stink/). If the link doesn't work just google 'Stinky sewer in Seoul' and it should be the first link.

I had a guy come to my apartment and install a 1-way valve in my drain. Essentially, it's a rubber stopper and silicone that seals the drain. It will only open when the water pushes it down. I had it installed 2 weeks ago and haven't had a single problem or odor with it since.

He charges 30,000won per drain which is a bit high for his 30 seconds of installation, but the results are priceless. I live in Ansan so he charged me an extra 20,000won for the drive as well. I actually got my school to pay for it and they eventually charged the landlord for it. Even if it came out of my pocket it would have been worth every penny.

Hope this helps.

[Ralphie]

My office smells like fart (from a pipe or drain) . Administration has been notified countless times. The director sends someone in now and then, but I'm so fed up now, I think these people coming in are just for show..., that "something is being done about it!" The K gal who shares this office says that since it's a public gov't office, things like this get slowed down in the bureaucracy/red tape/hierarchy crap. (No pun intended.)

My question is how do I get the directors to speed up and do something about the stink? I've started telling my students to write on the homepage. Apparently, only public complaints will get the supervisor to sign for the money needed to fix the problem.

[taobenli]

Unfortunately it's now seeming like this is not drain stink, but a mold problem (some kind of mold that sometimes smells like food and other times musty like mold?). I believe there is mold on the tile wall (or worse, the wooden floor) behind the kitchen unit (sink, cabinets, etc.). It's impossible to move since it's fused to the wall- can't be pulled out. Since a school didn't arrange this housing for us, I'm unsure whether to talk to the actual owners of the place (who we never see, but just transfer monthly rent to every month) or to the kyongbi adjusshi (security/maintenance man). We will need help/tools to move it to see what's back there. It's probably not been moved since the place was built in 1996. Ugh.

We wouldn't care so much, but my husband's parents are coming to stay with us in two weeks.