- Know how to turn your water and gas off – in an emergency like a burst tap, before you call us, turn off the water at the mains. This will stop you from drowning while you call a plumber.
- Clean your shower head – when your water pressure in the shower is really weak, it is often due to a buildup of lines ale. Buy some cheap vinegar, put it in a plastic bag, then wrap around your shower head. Leave it on overnight, then give it a clean in the morning and run it to remove any remaining vinegar.
- Don’t pour oil from your frying pan down the kitchen sink – it can clog your drain.
- Buy some strainers for showers and/or baths if you have people with long hair living with you. No one likes cleaning out hair from the shower, but it’s a lot cheaper if you clean it out once a week or so from the strainer than calling us to unclog a clump of hair from deep in the pipes.
- Don’t flush anything except for toilet paper down the toilet. Baby wipes, “flushable” wipes, pads, tampons, nappies (yes, really), cotton balls – these are all items we’ve had to retrieve from pipes after the toilet has been blocked.
- If your pipes sound loud when you turn the water on, you’ve probably got a problem called “water hammer”. This happens when the water hits a valve that’s closed after being turned off, and it vibrates the pipes, producing noise. A plumber will need to look into it, either with some sort of shock absorber like a water hammer arrestor or liquid foam, or tighten the pipes or connectors.
- You can check if you’ve got a leak in your toilet by putting some food colouring into the tank. Check your toilet bowl about 15 minutes later – if the water is coloured, you’ve got a leak, and will probably need to give us a call.
- Noisy hot water system? It either needs a service, or if it’s over ten years old, it probably needs replacing. There are lots of moving parts in your HWS and it pays to get it looked at regularly to stop it from breaking down.
- Don’t over tighten taps – it can wreck the thread, destroy seals, and break nuts. If you feel that you need to really tighten a tap to stop a drip, the washer probably needs replacing instead.
- Tossing up between instantaneous or storage hot water? Instant is good but expensive to run; storage is a cheaper, tried and tested method.
- If you have a roof leak, clean your gutters – that’s usually the source of the problem.
- Get mini-stops installed on your outlets. They enable us to be able to turn off individual supply lines while leaving the mains on, which means it’s not the whole water service that’s disturbed if there’s a problem with one outlet.
- Get leaks attended to quickly. Leaving it can make it more expensive in the long run, with potential for mould, high water bills, and cracked pipes.
- Know what, and where, your IS, ORG and STORMY are:
I.S.: The inspection shaft of your sewer. It’s installed in the form of a riser with a concrete or steel lid, just after the connection to the sewer main. If there’s ever a blockage, we may need to locate the I.S. to see the extent of it and to unblock from this point.
STORMY: Stormwater overflow – your home may or may not have one of these. Usually installed just after the connection to council stormwater mains, these act an inspection point for your stormwater. If you ever have any blockages, flooding, or slow drainage, we’ll need to access this point to determine the cause. Should be a riser with a grated lid.
ORG: The overflow relief gully is exactly that, overflow relief. The point of it is, if the sewer main ever blocks up, the sewage that backs up will come out of here (on the outside of your home) as opposed to through your sink or shower. If you notice it overflowing at any time or there’s often dampness around the area, call a plumber because that’s a sure sign of a problem. It looks like a concrete mound with a grated lid.
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Do you need help with problems like these? Give our team a call on 0424 862 615 or request a quote.