Rusted Galvanized Drain Pipe Leaking Under Kitchen Sink - Fixed

A bucket under the sink is never a good sign. That's exactly what we found here - a catch container sitting under a kitchen sink drain because the old galvanized pipe had rusted clean through and was dripping onto the cabinet floor. Not a slow seep. An actual hole in the pipe.

Galvanized pipe was standard stuff back in the day, but it has a shelf life. Once the zinc coating wears away, rust sets in from the inside out. Eventually it eats through the wall of the pipe entirely. By the time you're putting a bucket under your sink, the damage is already done - and it's usually been building for a while.

Here's what we were working with: a heavily corroded galvanized drain section where the pipe had rusted to the point of failure right at the wall connection. You can see the rust hole in the removed section - orange, pitted, and completely compromised. No patch was going to fix that. The only right move was to cut it out and start fresh.

We removed the bad section and replaced it with new pipe and fittings, tying it properly into the existing drain line with a secure connection at the wall. Clean p-trap, solid connection, no more dripping. The kitchen now drains the way it's supposed to - straight down the pipe and out, not onto the cabinet floor.

This kind of pipe repair and leak detection work is bread and butter for us. Old galvanized drain lines fail quietly until they don't. If you've got an older home and you've never had someone look at what's running under your sinks, it's worth knowing what's back there before a bucket becomes a flood.