Chapter 10
Solving Pipe Problems
In This Chapter
• Quickly stopping a pipe leak until the plumber shows up
• Defrosting a frozen pipe, and preventing it from happening in the future
• Winterizing an outside faucet
• Quieting noisy pipes
• Keeping drain pipes free from obstructions
• How to rescue what falls in the sink trap
Problems with your home’s system of water delivery and waste disposal fall into two general categories: supply flow and drainage. If clean water’s not flowing properly, or waste water’s not discharging, sooner or later you’ll have water or waste (yuck) where it’s not supposed to be.
This chapter will help you tackle the minor disruptions to flow and disposal, and also provide some guidance for maintenance to keep things moving along as they should.
Small Leaks: Emergency Fix
Copper—the most common material used for supply lines—and other metal pipes last many years, but occasionally, one of your pipes will spring a leak. You’ll have to stop the spray until the plumber shows up. The kind of repair described next—using a clamp and gasket material—will often hold for quite a while, but don’t be overconfident. Call in the plumber as soon as you can to replace the leaking section of pipe.
Where the leak happens will determine how you first shut off the water, and then do a temporary fix on the leak. If the pipe is leaking between a supply stop and an appliance, simply shut off the water at the supply stop. Of course, you won’t be able to use that appliance until you’ve done the repair.
If the leak is in one of the supply lines running from the main shutoff to somewhere else in the house, and there is no interim supply stop between the leak and the main valve, you’ll need to shut the water off at the main. (See Chapter 4 for locating/ shutting off directions.)
If you’ve stocked your supply closet with emergency supplies as discussed in Chapter 3, you’ll be glad you have them now!
To stop a small leak, you’ll need the following:
□ Scissors
□ Rubber gasket material
□ Hose clamp
□ Screwdriver
□ Bucket
□ Mop or sponge
1. Shut off the water supply at the closest supply stop, or at the main.
2. Wearing safety goggles, cut out a small piece of rubber gasket material, of sufficient size to wrap the pipe, cover the leak and provide about ½" of material on either side of the leaking spot. Wrap it around the pipe at the site of the leak.
Emergency leak repair.
3. Unstrap the hose clamp, wrap it around the gasket material at the leak site, and thread the strap end through the end that has the screw mounted on it. Make the strap fit snugly around the gasket repair.
4. Tighten the clamp screw with the screwdriver.
5. Clean up the area around the leak with the bucket and mop (if it was leaking for awhile), or sponge (if you caught it quickly).
6. Turn on the water supply. Sometimes the repaired area will drip briefly; if the dripping continues, you can tighten the clamp/gasket. And call the plumber! Even a really good repair won’t hold indefinitely.
What Pros Know
Small ruptures or splits in supply pipe are rare, but they happen. To make an emergency fix, you’ll need a different kind of metal clamp, called a sleeve clamp. This does what it says: wraps around the pipe and gasket material like a tight metal sleeve. Like the hose clamp, it closes with screws. You can make the repair as above, with this exception: use a metal file to smooth any roughness or sharpness around the pipe rupture, so that the leaky spot doesn’t cut the gasket material.
Thawing Frozen Pipes
You know there’s a frozen pipe when you turn on a faucet and no water comes out, or if it barely drips, and the weather’s been very cold.
One bitter January evening, we had our first pipe freeze-up at the kitchen sink of our New York house. It was some kind of a record cold snap, -15˚F. outside, and we’d just gotten home from work in the city to discover that the water wasn’t moving. Of course, we hadn’t made dinner yet, so we were hungry, too!
Fortunately, the freeze-up wasn’t significant. We got the water moving again with a hair dryer aimed at the supply pipes under the sink. We kept the under-sink cabinet doors open on all subzero nights after that, and, just to be safe, let the water drip all night whenever a deep freeze was predicted. It sounds wasteful, but a little drip will waste far less water than a burst, spurting supply pipe! And it certainly won’t damage the house the way a burst pipe can.
We had neighbors in Maine who had a four-season house that they used occasionally throughout the year. They didn’t have a caretaker, though. One miserable winter, when they didn’t visit, and the temperature dipped below zero for more than two weeks, the neighbors’ pipes froze. When the thaw finally arrived, a pipe burst in an interior wall. They hadn’t shut off their water at the main, and the damage was in multiple thousands of dollars. Plus, they had to pay the water company for 30,000 gallons of water that served no other purpose than the destruction of their walls, floors, furniture, and appliances!
Moral of this story: if your house will be unoccupied in the coldest weather months, shut off the water at the main. If you don’t drain the pipes, have someone check the house regularly.
Here are some basic rules for thawing pipes:
• Shut off the water supply at the main. This will ease the pressure at the freeze site (remember, water expands when it freezes).
• Open (turn on) the faucet closest to the freeze site. Once the water starts moving, it needs somewhere to go!
• In case there’s a leak or a burst of water when the pipe thaws, cover the surrounding area with plastic drop cloths, or position a bucket or two underneath the freeze site.
• Work from the open faucet toward the area of the freeze.
Hot Water Thaw
To thaw frozen pipes, try this simple method first. You’ll need the following:
□ Rags or old towels
□ Bucket
□ String or masking tape
1. Boil some water in a teakettle.
2. Wrap the frozen pipe in rags; secure the rags at each end with string or tape. Put the bucket under the pipe to catch the poured water.
3. Slowly and carefully pour the hot water over the rags.
Applied Heat Thaw: Beware!
You can try using a hair dryer to blow warm air on the frozen pipe; you can also wrap the pipe with heating tape plugged into a nearby outlet. However, remember that water and electricity do not mix! If the electric receptacle for the hair dryer or tape is not equipped with a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), you risk electrical shock if the appliance or heat tape comes into contact with water (for example, if the pipe bursts while you’re using the electrical device). You must be very careful.
def•i•ni•tion
A ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) is a device used in code-compliant electrical receptacles near water sources. The GFCI almost instantly cuts power to a circuit if it detects a leakage of electric current.
Preventing Frozen Pipes
To prevent pipes from freezing next time, remember these strategies:
• On very cold nights, open hot and cold faucets to a constant trickle.
• To allow warm air to circulate around pipes, open kitchen and bathroom sink cabinet doors in freezing weather; the ambient room temperature will keep them warmer.
• Before cold weather sets in, wrap insulating foam tubing around uninsulated pipes that run close or adjacent to exterior walls, under sinks, or anywhere the pipes are likely to freeze. This will also prevent the pipes from “sweating” in
hot, humid summer weather, and keep the hot water in hot water supply pipes warmer, longer—an energy saver.
Another Cold Subject: Winterizing an Outside Faucet
If you have exterior faucets for the garden hose on the exterior walls of your house, and you live in a freeze-prone zone of the country, you’ll want to shut off and bleed these faucets before the first frost.
Most exterior faucets have an inside supply stop, usually a ball-valve (turns off with a quarter-turn) or a gate valve (wheel-shaped, shuts off clockwise—for illustrations see Chapter 4).
This cutaway drawing shows the usual location of the inside shutoff for an exterior faucet, which is also referred to as a hose bib.
1. Turn off the water supply at the inside stops.
2. Go outside and turn on the faucet until the remaining water in the pipe drains out.
3. When the water drains out, turn off (close) the faucet.
You can buy foam faucet covers for exterior faucets; they provide an extra layer of protection from the freeze-burst scenario.
Pipe Down! Quieting Noisy Pipes
Pipes that bang and squeak are annoying. Usually, pipes are anchored every few feet along long horizontal and vertical runs. The vibration caused by water moving through the pipes can make them noisy, when they bang against a joist or wall. Tightening the straps, insulating the pipe, or installing more pipe straps should settle them down.
You’ll need a flashlight to do the detective work. Once you locate the source of the bangs or squeaks (squeaks come from hot water pipes, which expand from the hot water moving inside them), you can insulate between the pipe and strap with rubber gasket material, tighten loose strap screws, or install additional straps.
To insulate a noisy pipe, you’ll need the following:
□ Scissors
□ Rubber gasket material
□ Screwdriver (standard or Phillips, depending on strap screws)
You can cushion a noisy pipe (or squeaky hot water pipe) with the same gasket material that you use to stop a leak in an emergency. Just cut the right amount of gasket to fit around the pipe between the pipe and the strap, as shown in the following illustration. Then loosen the straps with the screwdriver, wrap the pipe with the gasket material, and tighten the straps.
Insulate a noisy pipe with rubber gasket material.
Preventing Drainage Disasters
Clogged sinks, showers, and toilets are usually the unpleasant consequence of inappropriate items finding their way into your waste disposal (sewage) system. When my daughter lost the top to a bottle of shampoo down the toilet, our septic system balked. Within a couple of days, the system was backflowing into the lowest drain in the house—the first floor bathroom shower. It was a stinky mess, and no job for the DIY 101-er. I called our septic system guy, who repaired the problem in a couple of hours.
The following rules really help keep your drainage system intact if you follow them:
• Once a month, boil water and pour a kettleful down each drain in your house: sinks, tubs, shower. This is the most carefree way to keep them flowing. Of course, be careful when you’re carrying/pouring the boiling water. You don’t want to scald yourself.
• Keep the stopper in the sink when you are brushing your hair/shaving/ applying makeup/giving yourself a facial, even if you’re not using the water. Dropped stuff and drain pluggers like hair, bottle tops, and makeup brushes will stay in the sink bowl. You can politely remove them/wipe out the bowl when you’re finished with grooming activities.
• Keep the toilet lid closed when you’re not using this fixture. If men live in your house, you know already that this will never happen. But you can try; tell them my septic repair bill for the shampoo cap was $400; maybe that will be an effective deterrent. Maybe not.
• I know it’s not the most pleasant task, but take a moment to remove hair from the drain right after you shower. Hair and ordinary gunk that goes down the drain will create a nearly impenetrable clog in a pretty short time if you neglect to remove the hair after every shower.
• Do not throw anything more fibrous than a few sheets of toilet or facial tissue in the toilet and try to flush it away. Contrary to urban legend, household drain pipes will not accommodate full-grown alligators. I am always amazed at what people think will flow away to the municipal sewage system or the septic field: disposable diapers, huge wads of paper towels, even rags. Don’t make this expensive mistake.
• Grease is the enemy of kitchen drains; letting grease ooze down the sink drain is the equivalent of pouring glue into the pipes. Everything will stick to the grease, and soon you’ll have a nasty old clog. Pour leftover cooking oil, bacon grease, and other slimy stuff in a coffee can and dispose of it in the trash.
Unclogging a Sink
What’s done is done. The water in the sink won’t drain. You can first try pouring a kettle of boiling water into the drain. But if the water doesn’t start to move, you’ll need stronger measures.
Chemical Reactions
Using commercial liquid or powdered drain openers in a drain that’s already clogged can be a problem. The chemicals are highly caustic and toxic, and if water is already backing into the sink, you may splash the chemicals on yourself if you later have to plunge the drain. Many of these concoctions are also toxic to the bacteria that keep your septic system (if you have one) flowing. If you must use a commercial drain declogger , follow the package directions to the letter. If you want to try to create a harmless chemical reaction that just might work, use this nontoxic household remedy. It reminds me of my childhood days making “volcanoes.” Pour a half-cup of vinegar and a half-cup of baking soda down the drain; stuff a rag in the stopper opening. The chemical reaction may be enough to loosen the clog’s grip on your pipes. If not, try mechanical means.
Ounce of Prevention
Keep commercial drain decloggers out of reach of children or pets—they’re deadly!
Taking the Plunge
There are two kinds of plungers. Plungers used for clearing toilets usually have a second, ball-shaped cup inside the outside cup. The plunger used for sink, shower, and tub drains is the single-cup model shown in Chapter 3.
You’ll need the following:
□ Plunger (the plunger cup should be large enough to fully cover the drain opening)
□ Rag
1. Remove the sink stopper. If you’re working on a bathroom sink, find the overflow hole and stuff the rag into it; the overflow hole is usually positioned high up on the basin on the side of the bowl opposite the faucets. Feel under the lip of the sink if you can’t find it.
If you’re working on a kitchen sink, there will be no overflow hole. However, if your kitchen sink has two basins, you’ll need to plug one of them with a rag. Otherwise, you’ll divert the drain water into the second sink, rather than clearing the clog.
2. Fill the sink with enough water to nearly submerge the plunger cup; this will provide added pressure as you plunge.
3. Position the plunger cup over the drain hole so that the drain is completely covered.
4. Holding the plunger upright, pump the handle up and down forcefully, fifteen to twenty times; make sure the plunger cup is sealed over the drain. Then check to see if the water drains. If not, try again. Try plunging for three or four rounds of fifteen to twenty strokes each before you give up. (Most people quit too soon.)
Plunge a sink.
If plunging doesn’t work, it’s time to meet the trap.
Meet the Sink Trap
The trap—a piece of bent pipe in the shape of a “P” resting on its side—was invented about 150 years ago, and made the wonders of indoor plumbing possible. Because of its shape, it always holds some water, which effectively seals off the waste line and prevents noxious gases from leaking up into the house. Its use as a clog-maker and holder of valuable objects is only a side benefit.
Back to your clog. The trap’s shape also makes it a great place for grease and gunk to collect. A big enough build-up has gotten you to the point where the waste water has no escape and is backing into the sink. Plunging hasn’t improved things, so now you’ve got to move to the trap.
Clearing the Trap
This is easy to do; the gunk and the gunk’s odor make it somewhat unpleasant.
Clear the trap.
You’ll need the following:
□ Pipe wrench or slip-jointed pliers
□ Painter’s or masking tape
□ Bucket
□ Lubricating spray
A pipe wrench or slip-jointed pliers have jaws large enough to get a grip on plumbing pipes.
1. Turn off the faucets; don’t run any water.
2. Tape the jaws of your pipe wrench or slip-jointed pliers with painter’s or masking tape so they don’t mar the nuts you’ll be loosening or scratch the pipe’s metal finish.
3. Position the bucket under the trap.
4. If the trap under your sink has a cleanout plug (like the one in the earlier illustration; not all traps do), loosen the plug and let the water/debris fall into the bucket. If there’s no cleanout plug, go to Step 5.
5. Using the wrench/pliers, give each slip nut a half-turn counterclockwise, then loosen them the rest of the way by hand.
6. Remove the trap pipe. Don’t lose track of the slip nuts and washers. Use lubricating spray if the nuts are stubborn.
7. Wearing rubber gloves, empty any debris inside the trap into the bucket.
8. Examine the trap pipe, the slip nuts, and washers. If any of these parts look worn, now is the time to take them to the hardware and purchase an exact replacement.
9. Using a flashlight, examine the pipe beyond the trap piece where the sink drain leads out to the larger drain system. Clear any obvious blockages you can see.
10. Replace the cleaned (or the replacement) pipe and washers, and tighten the nuts. Don’t forget to replace the cleanout plug, if there is one. Turn the water supply back on with the supply stops. If the water runs freely down the drain and there’s no leak at the trap, you’re done. Remove and clean out the bucket. Put the gunk in the trash, not back in the drain!
When Valuables Go Down the Drain
If a piece of jewelry or other valuable object goes down the drain, immediately turn off the water and plug the drain hole with the sink stopper. Then, using the same tools and materials as in previous directions, follow Steps 2-7. Go through all the gunk that falls into the bucket. If your valuable isn’t there, there is still a chance it may be in the pipe between the drain hole in the sink and the trap. Leave the bucket under the open trap and run the water briefly. Examine the pipe section with the flashlight and check the debris. If the jewelry or valuable isn’t there, it’s gone. But you did your best.
Replace the trap as in Step 10 above.
The Least You Need to Know
• A hose clamp and gasket material can stop a small leak; it’s an easy repair, so keep these supplies around.
• Insulate pipes that are vulnerable to freezing—near exterior walls, in unheated parts of the house—with foam sleeves. When you insulate the hot water pipes, the sleeves will also save on water heating costs.
• Putting masking/painter’s tape around the jaws of your pipe wrench or pliers will prevent the tools from marring your metal pipe and parts.
• Quick action is necessary if something valuable goes down the drain; turn off the water immediately.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.