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OldFashnd t1_jdb3qyn wrote

it isn’t technically useless. The point of the p trap is just to keep the bad smells of your plumbing from coming back up through your drain pipe. This will still accomplish that. Your water level will raise up to the point of the drain pipe though, meaning that your garbage disposal will have some standing water in it, which may create it’s own smells, and will probably cause corrosion/mold/whatever else in your garbage disposal.

You didn’t mention changing the garbage disposal out though, so if that and the drain pipe have always been this way and you haven’t had any smells or otherwise negative consequences then it probably isn’t a big deal. It’s definitely functional as a p trap, it will prevent the smell/gas from coming up through your sink like it should

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Fantastic_Seaweed978 OP t1_jdb4jbt wrote

Gotcha, yeah I guess it technically does function as a p-trap. My understanding is that ideally, only the bendy pipe should hold water instead of the vertical pipes.

I was also thinking about what caused the old one to fail in the first place, since the washer on the lower part had completely detached from the pipe. My thought was maybe it's holding more water weight than it was designed for? Could the friction fit be failing because the column of water is too high?

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OldFashnd t1_jdb83dx wrote

Agreed, this setup is definitely not ideal. If it was me, it would get put on my to-do list of things that need done, and then it would sit at the bottom of that last and never get done because other stuff takes priority lol

In other words if you’ve got the time and the desire to fix it, it is probably worth it. Doesn’t look like it’d be too difficult to cut the main drain pipe and plumb in a new one that is the correct height.. It will probably be fine though

Disclaimer: i am not a plumber, just a dude who has done just enough home plumbing to be dangerous

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