A floor drain is a drain that is installed usually in the basement to protect the basement from flooding in the case of a water line bursting or hot water tank leaking.
Floor drains are necessary to protect your basement, but also they can be the cause of flooding as they are directly connected to the city’s sanitary sewer system.
If a city sewer was to get clogged, then the sewage would back up into your drainage system, and come out the floor drain.
Sometimes people complain of a foul smell in the basement. A lot of time the cause of this smell is the floor drain. A floor drain has a trap on it, which holds water. Occasionally the water that was sitting in the trap dries up, which causes a foul smell to come up from the city sewer.
A simple solution to this is to pour clean water into the drain and watch it to see if it disappears. If the water stays then you are good to go, but if the water disappears then that means you have an issue and it’s time to call in the experts.