Not sure what that means? That's OK. Many people aren't familiar with the words "pop-up assembly." Here at Landmark Home Warranty, we know a lot about pop-up assemblies since we provide coverage on different parts of your sink, so we are going to explain what a sink pop up mechanism is, and how it works. 

This is a sink pop-up mechanism:

The rod on the back of your faucet that you were pulling earlier to plug the sink is a part of the pop-up assembly.

SO HOW DOES A SINK POP-UP MECHANISM WORK?

It’s actually a fairly simple design. When the lift rod is pulled upwards, it pulls the pivot rod up as well. This pivot rod is attached to the stopper, which is pulled down, effectively sealing the sink.

In this graphic, you can see that the pivot rod is connected to the stopper by going through a small circle on the bottom of the stopper. This allows the pivot rod to pull the stopper down. The pivot rod is connected to the lift rod by the clevis screw and clevis strap. It is also held together by the spring clip, which the pivot rod goes through. The sides of the spring clip go on either side of the clevis strap. When the lift rod is pulled up, the clevis strap is pulled up as well, which pulls the pivot rod as well. This pulls the small circle on the stopper down, as well as the stopper itself. The seal that you can see in the graphic makes it so the water running down the pipe does not leak out into your bathroom.  As you can see, the way the pop-up mechanism is designed can trap a lot of gunk, which results in a slow draining sink. Sometimes the pivot rod can get rusted and slip out of the stopper, which obviously makes the whole pop-up mechanism not work. If the pivot rod is not connected to the stopper, then the basin will not be plugged, and water will keep draining out of the sink. 

If your sink isn’t draining properly, cleaning your pop-up mechanism is the first step. If your sink won’t plug with the pop-up mechanism, you will have to replace it with a new one. Luckily both of these problems can be fixed simply and with the same steps! You can go to our next article and   learn how to replace or maintaing your sink pop up mechanism on your sink.

If you have a Landmark Home Warranty, you might have noticed that pop-up mechanisms aren’t covered with your home warranty. That's because a pop-up assembly costs less for parts and labor than your service call fee would be. A pop-up mechanism can be purchased for anything between $4 - $11 at most stores. Not only that, it is a cinch to replace – it takes less than 10 minutes. Landmark Home Warranty isn’t going to make you spend a service call fee between $60-$100 on something that doesn’t cost anything near that amount.

If you are interested in purchasing a home warranty that covers large appliances and your home systems, please visit our compare home warranty plans page.