Anyone that know me knows that I am a great advocate of reusing things. We throw a lot of stuff out in this country. Some of it really should be trashed, however, a great deal of what we throw away is still useful to somebody. To that end, when a friend of mine was cleaning out an old defunct restaurant and came upon some old kitchen equipment, I thought I would take a look.
Low and behold, there was a perfectly good stainless steel deep sink. This deep sink can no longer be used in food service because it has welded seems which can harbor germs. However, it would be perfect for a general purpose deep sink. Best of all, it was free for the taking. We may not need a deep sink in the basement right away, but, as my lovely and talented wife pointed out, it would be a great place to clean paint brushes.
The sink itself was quite dirty, caked on grease and gummy black gook on the sides, back and all around the faucet. Mmmm, makes me want to eat out more often. It took several hours with a scotch bright pad, hot water and Comet to get it to an acceptable level. Even then, I think I will be cleaning again once it is installed.

Old washing machine hookups
In our basement, there is an old washer dryer hookup. I long ago removed the electrical feed for the dryer. The waste drain for the washer was cut out when we installed the 3 inch PVC drain during the kitchen move, which leaves these two spigots on the wall that go nowhere. That, it turns out, is the perfect location.

deep sink
First thing I did was remove the two old washer spigots and replaced them with 1/4 turn ball valves. I soldered everything with non-lead solder, as required by the plumbing code. For more on soldering check out “Plumbing part II, soldering“ Always install shut off valves on a sink, it makes life easier if faucet repair work or replacement is needed in the future.

1/4 turn ball valves
I rebuilt the old faucet that came with the deep sink, all it needed was new washers and a new valve seat for the hot side. The new valve seat is not at all surprising as the faucet was hooked up to city water for at least ten years. The chlorine in city water often eats away at brass and causes soft brass parts to crumble.
I drilled through the upper part of the back splash so I could rout the pipes down to the faucet and still push the sink all the way to the wall. I don’t know what alloy steel this sink is made from, but it is pretty hard, it took quite a while to drill through with a 1 1/8 inch hole saw. I was using the drill on slow speed so I would overheat the hole saw and ruin it.

deep sink installed
I when connecting the faucet, I used unions on the hot and cold lines so I can easily move the sink if needed. I used 1 1/2 inch PVC waste drain pipe for the sink drain. Since it is below the sewer line to the septic tank, I had two options; I could a) install a catch basin with a pump to pump the waste water up to the sewer drain, or b) since it is gray water, empty it into the sump and let the sump pump remove it out into the yard drain. I choose the (b) option because I don’t think I am going to use this sink all that much and it is an approved method for gray water in my town. Other municipalities may have different rules.
After all that, I turned the water on, and as they used to say in the Krylon Spray Paint commercials, “No runs, no drips, no errors.”
All in all, a good Saturday project.
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