It’s a terrible idea to handle small, valuable or important articles standing next to a window, a water body, an elevator shaft, a sidewalk grate, or a kitchen or bathroom sink. While you may not have something catastrophic happen every time you do it, it does happen often enough. It can be very hard on one’s feelings to see something deeply important such as a wedding ring, disappear.
In most of these cases, you might as well consider the matter out of your hands. If it’s fallen down your own sink drain, however, it’s probably retrievable. The first thing that you need to do is to turn off the water. Then, you need go on and perform a logical series of steps to get the ring back.
Table of Contents
Ideally, you should call in the pros
It’s very easy to do the wrong thing, and send the ring farther down the line that it has to go. Then, the only possible way to retrieve it could be to rip up plumbing. If it’s a truly valuable article that you’ve lost, calling in professional drain technicians is the most reasonable thing to do. If you don’t feel that the ring is valuable enough to be worth the expense, however, you can take a few steps to retrieve it yourself.
Check to see if it’s in the trap
While plumbing designers build traps into drains of every description to keep sewer gas out, they can be very useful as a way to trap important stuff that falls in. Whether you have a garbage disposal or a simple P-trap, getting in is a great way to retrieve your ring (if it’s the garbage disposal, you need to first shut off the power and unplug it, just to be safe). You only need to unscrew a cap, or follow other manufacturer-provided instructions.
If it’s the shower drain, there is no trap to unscrew. The trap is a simple cup in the line, and you can peer in to see if your ring is anywhere around. If you can, you may want to attempts to retrieve it with a wet vacuum cleaner or a piece of extended wire. It’s important to not attempt to join multiple pieces of wire for better reach, however. The wire could come loose and get stuck, requiring an expensive plumbing visit.
A little care is the best way to deal these situations. It’s easy to make things worse than they are by attempting crazy, creative improvisations. It’s important to not get yourself into bigger trouble attempting to save a few dollars.