Home maintenance is a lot of work. You need to pay attention to minor and major details that can mean the difference between cheap DIY repair and costlier professional repair work. The idea of home maintenance is to prevent things from falling apart earlier than they should. Remember, as that cliché goes, prevention is always better than any kind of cure.
When it comes to plumbing, however, a lot of things can go wrong with your taps, toilets, sinks, drains and water heater. To prevent emergencies from happening, here are some useful plumbing preventive maintenance tips:
- Look for signs of rust or corrosion – rust is never a good thing where plumbing is concerned. Rust can often lead to bad leaks and contaminated water. Check your pipes and fittings for signs of rust every month or so.
- Check for signs of leaks – If there are leaks, you could be having trouble with rust as well. Leaks can be caused by a lot of things, like a rusty pipe or fitting, a dislodged pipe, or even a cracked pipe. When water freezes inside the pipe, water expands outward. Pipes’ integrity is put to the test when water expands until it is no longer able to sustain the frozen water.
- Check for sink integrity and drainage speed – You can do this as a 2-in-1 preventive measure. Checking for your sink’s integrity can also determine how fast it drains. A clogged drain will mean that drainage takes longer and may cause leaks if the clogs are not removed. This goes for sinks in bathrooms and kitchens.
- Water pressure check – Leaks and frozen water are two of the main causes of low water pressure.
- Inspect the toilet – Toilets are our home’s plumbing lifeline, flushing down filth and waste effectively. Parts, however, will eventually malfunction and you may begin to see leaks. If you want to test for signs of leaks, add coloured dye to your toilet’s tank and flush the toilet. If coloured water runs out on the base of the toilet, the you have a leak.
It doesn’t take a lot of work to follow these plumbing preventive maintenance tips. The goal here is to spot problems long before they become worse.
