Do Sinks Come With Drains? (Explained)

You might be wondering why you need a drain for your sink.

A typical sink comes with a drain. However, your sink may come with or without a drain depending on the type of sink you purchase. A sink drain is one of the essential components of a sink. As a result, buy a sink that features its drain to avoid inconveniencing yourself.

Do Faucets Come With Drains?

It is no secret that the drain and faucet are the two major components of a sink, particularly a kitchen sink. Interestingly, a sink can’t achieve optimum functionality when either of the two is absent. But one wonders, do faucets come with drains?

While most kitchen sinks feature a paired drain, faucets, on the other end, do not. However, there are some instances where kitchen faucets come equipped with suitable drains.

This would be only the case if you specified it in your requirements. Otherwise, when ordering a facet, expect it to come with a drain.

Although faucets do not come with a drain, they cannot operate without it. Using a faucet without a drain would cause a huge mess that will have you go through trouble in a desperate attempt to solve.

Moreover, being two integral parts of a sink, they cannot function with either of them absent. Therefore, it is important to pair your purchased faucet with a separate but suitable drain since the two are interrelated.

However, note that if your kitchen sink already features an installed drain, there is no need to purchase a separate drain for the faucet.

When you purchase a modern bathroom faucet, it should come with a drain stopper. Moreover, the new faucet should feature everything you need to install the new drain plug. This includes the pull rod attachments as well as the pull rod in some cases.

The pull rod is the long rod attached under the sink and runs from the base of the faucet.

Do Sinks Come With Drains?

Kitchen sinks feature a matching drain that you can either pay a professional plumber to install or do it all by yourself. Such drains are structured and designed to suit their specific sinks. Buying a drain that comes fully fitted with its sink saves you the hassle of purchasing additional components for the sink.

However, the case does not apply to all sinks since some brands prefer to sell the two components separately.

If the sink you purchased didn’t come with a drain, you can use an old functioning one or buy a suitable drain (not necessarily from the same brand as the sink). Provided the drain works perfectly, you are good to go.

However, I recommend that you purchase a sink that features a standard paired drain if you do not have an old drain to use. This will save you the cost of having to pair the sink with a separate drain.

What Does A New Kitchen Sink Come With?

A complete sink kit includes fitting, drainpipes, supply lines, basket strainers/ filters, and shutoff valves. Here is more information on the filter and strainer body.

Strainer

The strainer is a very integral component of the kitchen sink, specifically the drain. It is a metal mesh whose role is to prevent solid wastes such as food particles, among other debris, from washing down to the drain pipe.

This is a crucial role since such debris can clog the drain pipes or, even worse, damage the garbage disposal blades when they manage to go down the drain.

So, in simple terms, the strainer is just a lid that you place over the drainage to help prevent solid waste from passing through. However, being perforated, it can easily allow water and other liquid to pass through easily.

Cleaning the strainer is quite simple, and you can do that by simply pulling it out from the sink and emptying it into a bin or trash can. However, some filters cannot pull out easily since they are screwed on the drain. As a result, cleaning such kinds of strainers tends to be a little tricky and often messy.

Thus, I recommend that you purchase a kitchen drain that features a removable strainer instead of a permanent one.

Strainer Body

A new kitchen sink features a strainer in a strainer body- also known as the seal. Regardless of its small size, the strainer body connects the sink to the attached drainage system.

As noted above, the strainer is an important part of the drain system since it prevents solids from passing through, thus helping to lengthen the lifespan of your drainage. Also, since it lacks an extensive body, the basket strainer makes up the whole strainer body.

Sink Tailpiece

Other parts, such as the tailpiece, are integral components of the drain pipe that you should attach to the bottom part of the strainer. Also referred to as the sink tailpiece, the tailpiece is a straight piece of pipe that connects to the bottom-most part of the sink drain.

If your sink uses a popup drain, the drain assembly treadle rod connects to the back of the tailpiece via a port.

When attaching the sink tailpiece, ensure that you screw it in the correct direction. You can attach it at the bottom of the basket strainer. For the best sink tailpiece, I recommend that you get one made of brass since they tend to be more durable than others.

Besides durability, a brass tailpiece tends to be more watertight if attached correctly. When using a tailpiece made from other material besides brass, ensure that you place rubber compression gaskets at the bottom.

Are kitchen sink drains universal?

The standard kitchen sink drain assembly on the market measures 3 ¼’’ in diameter. Similarly, kitchen sink drain openings (holes) also have the same measurement. Thus, it is safe to say that all kitchen sink drains have the same size.

A typical sink drain has the same size as a standard shower drain which is 3 1/2” inches larger than a bathroom drain. The standard bathroom drains measure 1 ¼ inches in diameter.

While some older sinks feature drains that can connect to a 1 ¼” tailpiece, modern drains feature an outlet of 1 ½ inch. All pipes connecting to the tailpiece, including the horizontal extension and P-trap assembly, are either 1 ½ inch or 11/4 in diameter.

Do bathroom sinks come with drains?

Most kitchen faucets and sinks normally come with drains. Bathroom sinks, on the other hand, do not include a paired drain. However, the case is not the same for bathroom faucets which includes a suitable drain.

As such, when you want to purchase a sink for your bathroom, you needn’t have to pair it up with a matching drain. Instead, ensure that the purchased sink can match your bathroom faucet so that you can use your faucet drain with the bathroom sink. This way, you will avoid having to incur the cost of an extra drain for your bathroom sink.

Fortunately, even if your bathroom sink does not match your faucet, measurement issues are unlikely to occur since almost every bathroom faucet is universal and would fit in any sink with minimal to no hassle.

However, with such an arrangement, it means that when the need to change your bathroom faucet arises, you not only have to replace the handle and spout but also change the drain.

Conclusion

As clear in this post, drains are essential components of kitchen sinks. Neither a sink nor faucet could function optimally in the absence of a drain that works to back them up to get the job done.

In addition, when looking for a drain, ensure you purchase the right size for your sink to avoid inconveniencing yourself in the future.

If possible, I recommend that you purchase both the sink and drain from the same brand to guarantee compatibility. I hope that I have answered most, if not all of your questions regarding faucets, sinks, and drains.