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In plumbing, a trap is a U-shaped portion of pipe designed to trap liquid or gas to prevent unwanted flow; most notably sewer gases from entering buildings while allowing waste materials to pass through. In oil refineries, traps are used to prevent hydrocarbons and other dangerous gases and chemical fumes from escaping through drains.
All plumbing fixtures have traps in their drains; these traps are either internal or external to the fixtures. Traps are pipes which curve down then back up; they "trap" a small amount of water to create a water seal between the ambient air space and the inside of the drain system. This prevents sewer gas from entering buildings.
'S' trap inlet to drain. The air lock phenomenon can be used in a number of useful ways. The adjacent diagram shows an 'S' trap. This has the properties a) that liquid can flow from top (1) to bottom (4) unhindered and b) that gas cannot flow through the trap unless it has enough extra pressure to overcome the liquid head of the trap.
He improved the S-bend plumbing trap in 1880 by inventing the U-bend. The firm's lavatorial equipment was manufactured at premises in nearby Marlborough Road (now Draycott Avenue). The company owned the world's first bath, toilet and sink showroom in King's Road. Crapper was noted for the quality of his products and received several royal warrants.
Also, the tortuous S-shaped path the water is forced to follow offers a significant obstruction to the flow. For high pressure domestic water systems this does not matter, but for low pressure systems where flow rate is important, such as a shower fed by a storage tank, a "stop tap" or, in engineering terms, a "gate valve" is preferred.
In the past, wood and lead (Latin plumbum, from which comes the word 'plumbing') were commonly used. Typically metallic piping is made of steel or iron, such as unfinished, black (lacquer) steel, carbon steel, stainless steel, galvanized steel, brass, and ductile iron.
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A trap primer (or trap seal primer) is a plumbing device or valve that adds water to traps.The water seals in traps are needed to prevent sewer gases from entering buildings, but because this water is exposed to the air, it is subject to evaporation over time in infrequently used floor drains, leading to the release of sewer gas into the environment.