Shop floor drain goes dry

[DKase]

Water in the trap in the bathroom floor drain goes dry every 3 days, and the sewer gas fills the shop. I tried RV antifreeze and that lasts a week. I do not have floor heat. I would think floor heat would make the problem much worse. Has anyone come up with a solution for the problem other than causing a plumbing leak to keep the trap filled?
 

[retired farmer]

Why do you have a drain in the floor in the first place?
 

[jper]

pour some vegetable or olive oil down the drain after filling the trap with water, it will create an oil slick on the water and should slow down the drying out process, they also make a device called a trap primer, it is usually installed on new construction to floor drains that wont be used very often it hooks up to a common used fixture such as a bathroom or laundry tub everytime you turn the facuet on a little bit of water will flow thru the pipe you would need to install below your floor to connect to your floor drain. i would try the oil first, easy and wont cost you much, good luck!
 

[Wade1984]

Use some vegetable oil to form a layer on top to keep evaporation down.
 

[DownSouth]

Send big Bubba in there every few days to do his thing. Certainly he will stop up the toilet and it will overflow keeping your floor drain adequately filled.
Seriously though, if it's really drying out that fast I would be concerned the trap is broken and the water is seeping into the ground under the floor.
 

[pete black]

could be you have a venting problem and the water is being pulled out of the trap whenever a large volume of water is dumped down the drain.
 

[Ted in NE-OH]

That is WAY too fast, you have another problem other than evaporation.
 

[504]

I know it is too late now, but my floor drains all drain out to the downspout tiles on the house. I have no sewer connections to my floor drains.
 

[PJH]

You know - I've heard of running the floor drains to the downspout drains, but I always wondered about getting an obstruction downstream and then having it all back up during a hard rain. A roof handles a lot of water. Am I missing something obvious? How would you keep that roof water from backing into your building?

As to the original poster - there's got to be a leak in your trap for it to dry up that fast. I know of a church addition that developed a leak in one of the waterlines under the men's bathroom. It was seeping up through a small crack in the concrete floor, and suddenly one Sunday the floor was completely dry. Upon close investigation I discovered a small hole had been drilled in the floor drain trap, allowing the seepage to go directly into the trap instead of coming up into the building first. A brilliant idea, I thought, but after we fixed the waterline leak, we had a perpetually dry floor drain trap because of that hole. I finally managed to get a sheet metal screw in the hole, but it was a bugger, and it still seemed to dry out quicker than the trap in the ladie's room. Thank God for those extendable magnets or I'd have filled the trap with dropped screws.
 

[Gregorius]

[jackinok]

go down to a plumbing supply place and buy a screw type rubber plug if you dont use the drain much. then when you need it simply pull the plug.
 

[LenND]

I agree with Pete. You either have a plugged vent or no vent at all. The vent could also be in the wrong location. The drain is being used as the vent for some reason.