Time for Those Summertime Honey Dos

By Billy Aldridge

The heat is on in North Florida in July and August.  We’re talking flame broil here, with temperatures in the nineties most days.  That means that most of us guys are busy crowding the golf course at first light or lighting out before sunrise with rod and reel in hand.  Anything to avoid the heat of the day.  Of course on weekends this means spending way too much time indoors with nothing for your significant other to look at but you.  And you know what that inevitably leads to: The dreaded honey dos.  So to help you keep the peace at home during the dog days of summer, I have pulled together some simple plumbing DIY projects that can not only save you money, but also keep you off the wife’s radar.  You’ll thank me later.

      1.      Exercising Your Cutoff Valves – There are actually two types of cutoff valves in your home.  The first is the cutoff for the entire house and the second are the valves behind every sink, toilet, washing machine and dishwasher, as well as the ones atop the water heater.  The ones inside the home need to be exercised from time to time to keep them from jamming when you need them.  It’s a good idea to turn them on and off every couple of months to keep them in proper working order.  To do this you need to support the valve with one hand while turning the cutoff off and then back on.  If the valve is hard to turn or will not turn at all, do not attempt to use brute force, since this can break off the valve.  Simply grab a can of WD-40 or some other lubricant and give the valve a spritz.  Then wait for at least thirty minutes before trying to turn the valve once more.  If it still stubbornly refuses to budge you can have someone support the valve with their hand while you gently apply a wrench to try and free it. (And I stress gently.)  If that fails to do the trick you will need to have the valve replaced by a plumber.

      2.      Is your toilet a water hog? Utility bills being what they are, the last thing you want to do is donate any more of your hard earned money to the utility company. Since the toilet can be one of the thirstiest water hogs in the house, you need to be aware of the fact that if the system has a leak or the flapper is old and out of shape, then you are wasting water and with it your money.  There are two ways of detecting for leaks: by sight and by sound.  The way to see if your toilet is not sealing properly is to grab some food coloring from the kitchen and put a few drops into the toilet.  Do not flush it, rather walk away for ten minutes or so and then return to see if the water is clear.  If it is still tinted, then you don’t have a leak.  The other way is to flush the toilet, let it refill and then stand there for a few minutes to hear whether the water runs intermittently, indicating a poorly seated flapper.  Changing a toilet flapper is one of the simplest DIYs in the plumbing trade.  Below is a video designed to take you step-by-step through the entire process.

      3.      The Thing in the bathtub – It’s big, it’s hairy and it lives in your bathtub drain.  It likes nothing better than to hunker down and slow the water attempting to flow down the drain to a crawl. It will stop the flow altogether given half a chance.  While this bathroom menace might be gross, it’s also fairly easy to tame.  Due to the architecture of the standard bathroom drain, it has a propensity to gather and trap hair and soap into a ball that slowly but surely impedes the flow of water.  If you have noticed lately that it seems to take forever for the tub to empty after a bath or shower do not panic.  Most likely the trap just needs to be cleaned.

To accomplish this you will need a pair of needle nose pliers.  Start by removing the drain cover.  (See the video below for more details.) Once you have used the pliers to unscrew the cover, turn it over and clean it since it tends to be a collection point for gunk.  Then lay it to one side.  Next you should use the needle nose pliers to reach down the drain to fish out the hairball that has been causing the clog.  Throw the hairball away and with the cover removed, run the water to make sure that the drain is now clear.  Reassemble and go have a beer, you’ve earned it big guy.

Billy Aldridge is one of the Doctors of Plumbology at Aldridge & Sons Plumbing in Jacksonville, Florida.  For even more helpful plumbing tips and helpful DIY videos, visit http://plumbers-jacksonville-fl.com

Do You Know What Lives Behind Your Walls?

By Billy Aldridge

Unless there is a water stain on the sheet rock most people do not even consider what lurks behind their walls.  That’s a shame, since if your house is more than twenty years old there can be any number of nasty 

Cast Iron and copper DWV (Drain, Waste and Vent) Piping in a Timber Residential Building in Mission, British Columbia, Canada in the 1980s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

things that can happen with old pipes that can cost you way more than a simple repair if they should either leak or burst.  While a burst pipe can get your attention fast, slow leaks can cause as much or more damage if left unchecked, since these can cause mold. Of course, just because your house was built before 1960 doesn’t mean that the pipes are the ones originally installed when the house was built.  To find out what’s living behind your walls you need to remove an access panel or two in order to do a little detective work.

Sherlock Homes to the Rescue

Homes built during the twenties and thirties were fitted out with galvanized pipes, which are easy to detect since they are battleship gray and have knobby joints.  If you detect these lines in your walls, you need to look for corrosion, since steel rusts.  You also need to test for flow since galvanized pipes tend to rust from the inside out.  To do this, turn on the taps one at a time, since the hot water side tends to rust faster than the cold water side.  If the flow for one side seems slower than the other, this is a sure sign of internal corrosion slowly but surely  clogging the pipe.

If your house was built in the 1950’s then your pipes could very well be copper.  This is good and bad.  It’s good because copper pipes practically last forever, since they are highly resistant to corrosion.  It’s bad, because copper is very expensive to repair.  In fact it’s so expensive that it isn’t unusual for houses with copper piping to have the pipes stolen if left vacant for any length of time.

Newer homes on the other hand have plastic pipes that never rust, are easy to install and repair and are even color coordinated (red for hot water and blue for cold).  It’s still a good idea to eyeball these at least once per year since they tend to leak at the joints and connections when they do leak.   

Speaking of connections, the larger pipes that carry the water from your drains, sinks, tubs, dishwasher and 

English: Under Slab Leak Repair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

washing machine also bear scrutiny.  These are known in the industry as waste pipes, and they live beneath your home.  Homes built before 1970 typically have cast iron pipes which people back then thought would last forever.  Since iron like steel rusts, these waste pipes tend to get rough with age which can start to restrict the flow.  They also tend to get what are known as pit holes that can slowly but surely bore completely through the pipe until they begin to leak.  Repairing these pipes can be expensive, since cast iron waste pipes are heavy and difficult to work with.

If your home was built in the 70’s, then PVC waste pipes came into vogue.  Since these plastic pipes are much lighter than cast iron, they are much easier to repair.  Since plastic never rusts, they are also much more reliable and less likely to clog.  The only downside is that roots can find egress into these pipes through even the tiniest of crack which is why you need to contact a plumbing professional if water seems slow to drain or starts to back up.  Particularly here in Florida where afternoon gulley washers are the norm, the last thing you want to do is let your waste pipes clog before a major storm comes to call.  Then you’ll really find out what lives behind your walls, since flooding almost always requires the removal of water damaged sheetrock. 

Billy Aldridge is one of the Doctors of Plumbology with Aldridge and Sons Plumbing.  For mor helpful tips and how-to videos visit http://plumbers-jacksonville-fl.com