What to check before you call a plumber

Some plumbing problems are genuinely five minute fixes with a flashlight and a pair of hands. Others get considerably more expensive the longer they are experimented with. Knowing which is which saves you money, and it also means that when you do call, you can describe the problem well enough that the right parts arrive on the first visit.

Find your shutoffs before anything is wrong

This is the one thing on this page to do today, while nothing is leaking. Find your main water shutoff and make sure it will actually turn. Then find the local shutoffs: under each sink, behind the toilet, on the cold feed to the water heater. Label them if they are not obvious. The difference between a wet floor and a ruined ceiling is usually how long it took someone to find the valve, and hunting for it in the dark with water running is the worst possible time to learn where it is.

A toilet that keeps running

Take the lid off the cistern and watch it. If water is trickling over the top of the overflow tube, the fill valve is not shutting off and the float or the valve needs adjusting or replacing. If the water level is fine but you can hear a slow hiss, the flapper at the bottom is not sealing, often because it has gone hard or picked up mineral deposit. Both are common, cheap parts and a reasonable homeowner job.

A quick test if you are not sure the flapper seals: a few drops of food colouring in the cistern, then leave it half an hour without flushing. Colour in the bowl means the flapper is passing water.

One slow drain, or all of them

This distinction tells you more than anything else you can observe. One slow fixture is almost always a local blockage in that trap or branch: hair in a bathroom sink, grease in a kitchen line. That is often clearable.

Several fixtures draining slowly at once, or a toilet that bubbles when the washing machine empties, points at the main line rather than any one fixture, and that is not a plunger problem. It could be root intrusion, a collapsed section, or a partial blockage further out. Video inspection of sewers exists precisely so nobody has to dig based on a guess, and it is work we do.

No hot water at all

Check the obvious first, because it is embarrassingly often the answer. On a gas heater, look at whether the pilot or igniter is lit and whether the gas valve is on. On an electric one, check the breaker. If a breaker has tripped, you can reset it once. If it trips again, stop and call, because a breaker tripping repeatedly is reporting a fault, not being fussy.

Low pressure at one tap

Unscrew the aerator on the end of the spout and look at the screen. If it is furred with mineral deposit, soaking it in vinegar and rinsing it often restores the flow completely. Low pressure everywhere in the house is a different and bigger question, and worth a call.

Where to stop

• Water coming from a wall, ceiling or the base of a water heater. Shut off and call.
• Any smell of gas near a gas appliance. Leave it alone entirely.
• A relief valve that keeps discharging. It is a safety device and it is telling you something.
• Sewage backing up into the house.
• Anything you would need to cut into a finished wall or floor to reach.
• Repeated chemical drain cleaner on a blockage that keeps coming back. It rarely clears the real cause and it makes the eventual job unpleasant and sometimes harder.

How to make the call useful

Tell us what it is doing, when it started, whether it is one fixture or several, and what you have already tried. If you can, have a rough idea of the age of the house and whether anything was worked on recently. That is usually enough for us to bring the right parts.

We repair all brands and models, and after forty five years in the same service area we have opened most of what is behind the walls around here at least once. We also correct code violations left by earlier work rather than building on top of them. Call the office, ask for Kelly, and we will come back to you within two hours. Estimates are free.