Within the walls, floors, and ceilings of your home or business, a few vital systems are working hard to keep your space comfortable and functional. One of those systems is your plumbing system, and it’s hard to understate just how important it is.
Indoor plumbing has been around since the 1800s while municipal sewers and drains have been around for even longer, though they went missing in many societies for a bit back in the so-called “Dark Ages.”
These are familiar old things, but they require modern care to stay effective and safe. Without proper maintenance and repair work, your plumbing system could stop working.
Worse yet, you could end up dealing with backflow or another type of plumbing disaster, which could lead to water damage and bio-hazardous situations on your property.
You need to fix your plumbing problems and get out ahead of future issues. And, as the old saying goes, a smart person learns from their mistakes — but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Let’s take a look at a few ways not to fix your plumbing problems so that you can avoid the agony of a bad plumbing “solution.”
The DIY disaster
So you’re handy around the house. But be very, very careful when you consider taking on a plumbing repair or maintenance project without the help of a trained professional.
It’s one thing to mess up the paint job in the living room, and quite another to flood your basement with human waste.
We’re not saying that there aren’t plumbing repairs and maintenance tasks that virtually anyone can handle.
You’re more than welcome to replace that toilet chain yourself, and it really should be you who plunges your toilet. But when you start shutting off valves and taking pipe fittings off, you’re entering risky territory.
Overtighten a connection or make another common DIY plumbing mistake, and you could turn your home into a disaster zone.
The drain cleaner damage
Clog in the pipes? Plunger not working? Well, time to dump a bunch of drain cleaners down there.
No, not right, we’re afraid. Drain cleaner is not, generally speaking, really good stuff. It’s corrosive and dangerous, and when it fails to clear a drain, it can back up and create a situation that is hazardous to the person who is going to fix the problem.
Plus, drain cleaners can make rubber gaskets brittle, which ruins drain stoppers and causes leaks. Drain cleaners can even damage your pipes themselves. Put it all together, and you have a lot of reasons to avoid liquid drain cleaner.
The Johnny-come-lately
Calling the plumber can be a chore. You know that you’ll need to deal with plumbing work on your property and pay the plumber whatever it takes to fix the problem. It’s natural to want to put it off and call later — but this is a serious mistake.
One of the worst plumbing mistakes that people make is to wait too long to call for help, say the pros at IFixPipe, a plumbing contracting company. The problem, of course, is that plumbing disasters don’t get better on their own — they only get worse.
And worse problems are, logically enough, more expensive to fix than smaller and less serious ones. It all makes sense, but it’s a hard thing to remember when you’re looking at that plumber’s phone number! Trust us.
Bite the bullet, call now, pay up, and schedule visits for routine preventative maintenance so that you don’t have to deal with such obnoxious repairs in the future. Relying on the pros early and often will help you avoid a plumbing disaster.
