You got it. It’s the price of owning tools.

They saw the water and didn’t even look for the source. I was at the house to answer a question about their cable modem hook-up when the water leak was mentioned.

Everything ends up at the sewage treatment plant, and those chemical are not a good thing to be pumping into the system. If it doesn’t respond to plunging, I generally start pulling things apart to get a “snake” down the drain. Most of the real clogs aren’t a result of build up, but something dropped down the drain, like a Star Wars action figure, or the covers on disposable razors.

For people with garbage disposals it is usually pork bone splinters.

Yes, baking soda, vinegar, and salt is a cheap and effective way to clean out build-ups if you don’t want to get physical. Most sink clogs today are the result of not having a regular flush of the kitchen system with hot, soapy water from doing dishes.

They actually sell a silicon plumbing tape to idiots customers who want to do that. It costs most than the new PVC fittings. The old duct tape would have done it, but not the new stuff. The lead tape used to wrap nuclear warheads would have been a permanent fix. That was great tape.

That 50-year-old chrome-plated brass tubing is not especially forgiving of the use of tools. That trap had pretty much corroded to the chrome on the bottom of the trap. I assume that someone used chemicals and didn’t flush them through on more than one occasion.

With a hole that big, I think you have exceeded the upper limit for “leak”.