We have a "half bath" – a small room with a toilet and a sink on the first floor. The sink is made of two pieces, the basin and the pedestal, both of porceilian. The pedestal hides the water and drain pipes, it's of a vintage of the past decade.
The basin is simply propped atop the pedestal, it is not attached with any hardware, nor it it fixed to the wall! The pipes alone keep it in place!
I checked to see if there was any way to mount it to the wall or the studs behind the wall, but there were no holes for mounting hardware at all.
The problem is where the drain built into the sink meets the PVC pipe of the house's plumbing, just a nylon nut keeps them together.
If a guest is heavy, or has a leg injury, or is inebriated, they may place their hand upon the basin to help them get up from the toilet. When this happens, if they are sufficiently heavy, it will shift the basin off the pedestal and pop the metal drain from the PVC drain, causing a significant leak, and I have to crawl under the sink and hope the threads weren't stripped as I reposition the nut to join them again.
How can I mount the sink to either the wall or the pedestal such that it won't shift with ordinary weight applied briefly?
Best Answer
All the pedestal basins I have seen have the pedestal free-standing and the basin supported by being bolted into the wall.
I would aim to get the basin fixed firmly to the wall. If you cannot find mounting holes, I would try to obtain or fabricate some mounting brackets.
If you have a masonry wall, you can use masonry bolts. For a wood-framed wall you need to locate the studs and may need to open up the wall to insert some supporting woodwork to take the weight of the basin (and struggling inebriated guests).
If you can identify the make and model of basin, or include photographs of its top and undersides into your question, you are likely to get answers that give more specific assistance.
An alternative would be to replace the basin and pedestal with a small cabinet mounted basin / freestanding basin / countertop basin / vanity unit.