Kitchen sink, odd basket and strainer

Kitchen sink draining really slowly. Had a sort of cumbersome ABS set up for trap assembly - double sink with disposal.

I got it off and there was a small artist's paint brush, maybe 5 inches long protruding up from the first elbow. Add to that the long lateral piece had next to no slope, no surprise that it had a gelatinous mass lodged. Removed that with garden hose water pressure, then I took the tailpiece off and up inside the odd basket was a bunch of slime grunge. I'm guessing weeks of slow draining provided for a growing culture. You could see it from above also.

The basket gave no sign of easy removal. Almost looked glued on. I was trying to fish the stuff out with little luck. There was no sprayer in this sink. I have a garden hose sprayer attachment that's useful, only has the jet setting, but not the old twist type, has a handle, makes for tidier indoor use. These people had a good garden hose within range, so with their approval I hooked it up, no leaking, brought it in, and dooshed the basket out good and proper, complete with gnarly stink.

Not only is this a weird looking basket, I swear it had more room inside for slime to hang out. Maybe it would have twisted off but it was 7 pm, did NOT want to break the sucker and need to make a mad dash to the Home Depot about 20 minutes away.

The strainer looks normal enough, not sure if they are a tandem oddball unit. Good for me I got the whole thing working in fine fashion.

Anybody seen this before?

Looks ok to me I’m sure there are many brands out there if your real issue is not having a sprayer he or Lowe’s has one that would replace your aerator they work well I had one in my last house

No, the sprayer is not a big deal, turns out the end of the faucet pulls out as a sprayer. Of course I've seen that many times but this one was better camoflauged than the others. And it was a really weak stream at any rate. Might be a problem there but I'll ask them about that later.

My concern was how is it removed? Maybe I should have tried to do it by hand. The only other option would be my giant channellocks. If I hadn't been able to access a water jet I'd have wanted to take it out to clean it.

Loosen this nut and it should come apart

this looks like a chinese unit one of my granite suppliers used to use. they are the biggest piece of junk on the planet. if i remember correctly, the small screw in the middle acts as a retainer for the whole unit. you have unscrew it from above, and it holds the whole thing together. the problem we had was that the screw got locked into the metal insert thats in the lower plastic section and just seizes right up. our solution was a heat gun. just melt the lower bowl and keep pulling it out in chunks until you can get a grinder in and cut the bolt. then throw everything away and start again, using a quality metal strainer assembly

OK, you guys are good. I saw that black rubber looking thing in the middle and thought it was just a guide for the small center post of the removable stopper/strainer. I didn't look closely at it. It does have a bit of a hex shape. One hopes it actually turns, it must be something other than hard rubber but that's what it looked like. I never probed it or any other sort of close examination.

At the time I wanted to get it cleaned out and working and get out of there. They called me about 3 pm, I was on a bigger job a ways off, I got there about 6 pm, I did not want it to blow up into a 4 or 5 hour job.

These people are plenty nice and gracious but odd. The house is very nice, in a good part of Menlo Park. My first job at their place was badly clogged drains in the main bath, Two sinks, one not draining, the other slowly, the shower and tub - very slow drain. None of it hard to deal with but it had to have been that way for a while.

The kitchen sink had to have been a problem for some time as well. The size of the plug I got out of the double drain/pee trap assembly ... whoa. And the slime and grunge in the basket ... never seen anything quite like it. The water jet action saved me a longer job.

IOW, with these people it might be 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Could be I will never replace this unit. Oh well, good to know if I do need to or if I ever encounter one again. Much thanks.