There's a water drain at the front of our house which I think allows water from the kitchen/bathroom sinks (and shower?) to go back to the water supplier for 'recycling'. There's also a water drain at the side of the house.
They're both the same design (recessed, square with rounded corners, then a small circular drain cover about 10 inches in diameter). IMO it's a given that such drains ought to have some kind of cover (they both do, the same plastic type that you cut into shape to allow room for drain pipes), and despite that that one will still have to clean them out from time to time. The one at the side of the house is no problem, I clean it a couple of times a year to get rid of dried leaves and such and it doesn't stink. The one at the front of house though needs a lot more maintenance (maybe purely because it gets more work, but I suspect that stuff like dead moss gets into it as well) and the main thing I want to manage in a nicer fashion is to try and stop it stinking to high heaven (like retch-inducingly bad) on a regular basis.
I don't necessarily mind the idea of having to clean it every two weeks to minimise the stink, but it seems to me that the design of it is problematic. the sounded-yet-square surrounding area around the metal drain cover ought to be more funnel-shaped so that water more readily goes into the drain, but because the surrounding area is a bit on the flat side, it allows water to sit around the drain cover, so therefore any detritus has ideal fuel to rot and raise a stink.
Ideally I'd consult a builder and pay whatever to make it better, but I'm wondering if I'm missing some cheaper tricks to minimise the problem. One 'such as' is that the kitchen sink has a strainer in so that shouldn't be allowing much more than fluid to get through. I wouldn't have thought the bathroom sink gets much crap in it, and my wife cleans out the straining system for the shower from time to time. I think that despite my efforts to keep garden greenery from getting into it, I've seen dead moss (likely off the roof of the house) in it before, but because it often smells so bad I have no desire to inspect it greatly.
One thought I had is to get some kind of insertable strainer (maybe a fine metal grid that can be bent to the shape of the overall drain recess), so I can just pick up the strainer and shake it out somewhere from time to time.
PS: I'm 95% sure the front drain only ever stinks when stuff has built up in the corners. It seems to greatly depend on the time of year and weather for how quickly the problem builds up.
They're both the same design (recessed, square with rounded corners, then a small circular drain cover about 10 inches in diameter). IMO it's a given that such drains ought to have some kind of cover (they both do, the same plastic type that you cut into shape to allow room for drain pipes), and despite that that one will still have to clean them out from time to time. The one at the side of the house is no problem, I clean it a couple of times a year to get rid of dried leaves and such and it doesn't stink. The one at the front of house though needs a lot more maintenance (maybe purely because it gets more work, but I suspect that stuff like dead moss gets into it as well) and the main thing I want to manage in a nicer fashion is to try and stop it stinking to high heaven (like retch-inducingly bad) on a regular basis.
I don't necessarily mind the idea of having to clean it every two weeks to minimise the stink, but it seems to me that the design of it is problematic. the sounded-yet-square surrounding area around the metal drain cover ought to be more funnel-shaped so that water more readily goes into the drain, but because the surrounding area is a bit on the flat side, it allows water to sit around the drain cover, so therefore any detritus has ideal fuel to rot and raise a stink.
Ideally I'd consult a builder and pay whatever to make it better, but I'm wondering if I'm missing some cheaper tricks to minimise the problem. One 'such as' is that the kitchen sink has a strainer in so that shouldn't be allowing much more than fluid to get through. I wouldn't have thought the bathroom sink gets much crap in it, and my wife cleans out the straining system for the shower from time to time. I think that despite my efforts to keep garden greenery from getting into it, I've seen dead moss (likely off the roof of the house) in it before, but because it often smells so bad I have no desire to inspect it greatly.
One thought I had is to get some kind of insertable strainer (maybe a fine metal grid that can be bent to the shape of the overall drain recess), so I can just pick up the strainer and shake it out somewhere from time to time.
PS: I'm 95% sure the front drain only ever stinks when stuff has built up in the corners. It seems to greatly depend on the time of year and weather for how quickly the problem builds up.