Unfortunately, many homeowners have the unfounded notion that they can fix any home plumbing problem that comes their way. This could not be further from the truth. The vast majority of plumbing problems can only be handled by a professional and certified expert plumber, such as Ar Lake Plumbing Brisbane. While a quick DIY fix can indeed save you money on a simple plumbing matter, going it alone on a more complex plumbing job could end up doing far more harm than good. When in doubt, leave it to the professionals.
Don’t be a stubborn macho man hell-bent on impressing the wife or your neighbor at the risk of your own personal safety and the integrity of your home plumbing lines. Plumbing can be a potentially dangerous job that most DIYers fail to realize. It is also far better to hire a professional plumber to fix something than it is to do the job wrong or cause untold amounts of damage to your home.
8 Insane Things You Could Do Fixing Your Own Plumbing Alone That Will Give You a Big Problem
1. Forgetting to Turn The Water Off – One of the biggest and most catastrophic mistakes that homeowners make while attempting to fix their own plumbing problems is they forget to turn off the water line. The reason most homeowners make this mistake is simply due to the fact that they do not know how to turn off the water in the first place. Even crazier is the fact that some homeowner even think that if no water is running in the house that it must mean that all of the water is adequately turned off and at the faucet level.
2. Crawling Into a Flooded Basement – As a golden rule, if your plumbing problems are ever as severe as your basement flooding, then you should immediately call a professional to take a look at it. Crawling into a flooded basement or section of your home could be potentially fatal for a naive homeowner. If raw electrical lines are exposed to water in a flooded basement, then one step into such water would more than likely be an extremely fatal mistake. Never make assumptions when it comes to your own personal safety, rather, let a professional do the job efficiently and safely.
3. Forgetting to Slope The Shower Cabin – One of the craziest and dumbest things a homeowner DIYer will often do is installing a shower cabin without a slope for water drainage. If they don’t botch the slope by forgetting to add it altogether, then they might remember to add it but not angle it properly. Not sloping your shower can cause your shower to either not drain properly, or it will cause your shower to drain somewhere where it is not supposed to. The last thing you ever want is your shower draining straight on to your bathroom floor or into the surrounding sheetrock.
4. Not Sealing The Pipe Correctly – Most homeowners fail to realize that not all plumbing pipes are sealed the same way. Many of them are screwed together with a special sealant placed on the pipe threads. Without knowing how to properly seal your pipes, you run the risk of having a major pipe leak at some point down the line, and likely over the short term. Homeowners should realize when you are dealing with water damage inside of a home, this damage can oftentimes reach into the tens of thousands of dollars. Consider that the next time you clumsily attempt to fix your own plumbing.
5. Overdoing it With The Drain Cleaner – If you are reading this then I bet you didn’t know that you can severely damage the inside of your home plumbing pipes by overusing drain cleaning solution. While drain cleaner is great to use every now and then to unplug a stubborn blockage, you definitely don’t want to overuse it. The powerful acids within drain cleaning solution can badly corrode the lining of your pipes if it is used too much. Some homeowners find out the hard way about this when they discover that huge segments of their plumbing system need to be replaced.
6. Not Remembering How to Put The Plumbing Back Together – You would be shocked at how many homeowners get halfway through a DIY plumbing fix, only to realize that they have no idea whatsoever as to how to put their disassembled plumbing back together correctly. Even more tragically, many homeowners will find themselves in this predicament without the necessary funds needed to hire a plumber to fix the problem that they created. To avoid this common pitfall, hire a professional plumber right from the start of a project and have the plumbing done the correct way.
7. Don’t Over Tighten Pipes and Fixtures – Many homeowners are shocked when they discover that something they just supposedly fixed within their plumbing lines is now already leaking water again. Contrary to what many of these naive DIY plumbers think, you can easily over-tighten a pipe or plumbing fixtures. There is science to plumbing, as well as finesse and delicacy. If you don’t know what you’re doing like many homeowners, you will ignorantly crank down on your wrench while attempting to tighten the plumbing so hard that you nearly turn blue in the face doing so. Only a plumber knows the correct way to properly tighten a plumbing pipe or fixture.
8. Mismatched Pipes – Another hilarious yet costly mistake that DIY plumbers make is that they mismatch pipes. They might mismatch a pipe due to sizing issues, or more commonly, they might join two different types of pipes together. For example, a sewage pipe might have a different lining than a clean water pipe. Or, a hot water pipe might be created differently than a cold water pipe in order to withstand higher temperatures. Don’t automatically assume that just because two plumbing pipes are exactly the same size, that they must go together. When plumbers discover these DIY problems they’re often horrified and humored at the same time.
