Water torture and your house
One home maintenance subject that strikes terror in many people is that involving the plumbing system, specifically the water end of it. Like most everything else in life, your plumbing system will have problems when you least expect it, and as a result, can cost you an expensive trip from a plumbing repair service. Not to mention the inconvenience of changing your plans and wasting your time.
Performing a regular inspection of what you can see, as well as doing a few simple tasks during the year can put you in position to know before there is a problem. We are all at the mercy of what we cannot see inside our walls or under the concrete slab. To be honest, there simply is not much that can go wrong there unless there was some installation error or some special condition.
So, what can we look at? Here is a short list of things to do.
- Find your main house shut off valve, usually located somewhere in the front yard. It will be a pipe coming up from the ground and entering the house. Each year you need to close and re-open the valve to make sure it operates properly. I can tell you that when I remodel any house, there is about a 50% chance that the water shut off will not work, causing us to resort to closing the valve at the water meter. Most utility companies don’t like you to touch this at all, and people usually do not have the proper tool to do this anyway. Theres nothing like having a large leak in your house with no way to shut it off easily. If you do need a replacement, I recommend a ball valve, it is by far the easiest to operate.
- Look under all sink faucets for the hot and cold shut off valves. Each year you will want to do the same thing, shut and re-open them to make sure they function. While you are down there, take notice of any signs of water drips from the valves or faucet. It is easy to find indications of this. If you are in need of replacing any of the flexible lines from the valve to the faucet, I recommend using a stainless steel braided flex line. Replacing these lines are fairly easy for any homeowner to do, if a valve needs to be replaced, although harder to do, it still can be done by any handy person. Same holds true with an old faucet. Look, not only is this good for your plumbing, but it’s not a bad idea to clear all of that junk and expired stuff from under your sink once in a while.
- Don’t forget the washing machine and refrigerator. Same needs to be done with these valves. From personal experience I can tell you that you do not want your washing machine supply hose to burst open in the middle of the night That is probably when it will happen, unless you are on vacation of course, then your chances really go up then. My recommendation for both washers and refrigerators is to replace the supply lines with stainless steel flex lines regardless of how they may look. I know it is a hassle to move the refrigerator, but you can clean those dust bunnies and dead bugs while doing this.
By doing this each year you can get to know where everything is located should there be a problem in the future, and know everything is in working order. Get your kids involved with this, it doesn’t hurt to get them up to speed in case anything happens while you are away. Water torture is not only reserved for special operatives trying to gather information, you can keep your water system from torturing you by doing some simple tasks.
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