5 Clever Plumbing Tricks to Save You Money

here are five clever plumbing tricks that can save you money number five on our list is a set of smart leak detectors these are super handy in avoiding disasters especially things that happen while you're away from home one of the most costly things about plumbing is if water starts leaking and we're not aware of it and meanwhile there's all kinds of damage being caused so that's where disaster cleanup companies help out but it does cost a lot to have these sorts of things taken care of so with these you can put a little device in places that are most likely to cause some sort of leak like behind toilets under sinks etc or even around your water heaters and things like that and this will make sure that none of those things go unnoticed if a leak does develop i've been using these in my house for years and it's just given me that peace of mind knowing that if something does go wrong then i can be notified right away now these smart ones like this i picked up this set today in fact i ordered it and it was delivered to my house from amazon three hours later which is nuts but this actually came with three different detectors and then a little hub or a gateway that connects to my wi-fi and lets me know wherever i am via notification on my phone exactly what's going on you can also get a simpler and less expensive option which is just one that makes an alarm it makes a loud noise and lets you know if anything is going wrong kind of like a smoke detector or smoke alarm for water leaks these are super handy and can save you tons of money in potential disaster number four on our list is the garbage disposal adjustments that you can do yourself there's a good chance you've run into this issue where you turn on your garbage disposal and you hear all that metal clanking and something just sounds completely off what happens is sometimes the blades inside there get out of sync for any number of reasons uh yeah out of sync i just realized that very funny right no pun intended but anyways those get out of mesh and they just start clinking and hitting each other and causing damage not something that you want to leave that way for long because it puts extra stress on the motor and can cause a lot of issues down the road so there's an easy fix in most cases if you look at the bottom of your garbage disposal a lot of times you'll see a little double-ended allen key in there and then in the center of the bottom there's a little adjustment area so you can actually just insert the allen key right in there and then give that a couple of turns but in my experience a few turns with that usually takes care of the issue now if you've tried that and it's still not working you've got a couple of options one you can of course call a plumber and have them come out and take a look and it doesn't actually cost that much to replace it and it's not that hard to do it yourself in fact i've got a video that you can check out that i'll put a link to in the description for how you can replace that yourself with really just minimal effort and just honestly it takes an hour or two to do and can save you tons of money in the long run that said i'd highly recommend that you always try that little trick first and see if you can adjust the blade timing on that and see if that takes care of the issue number three on our list is to conserve both water and money by using a brick this is an old one that's been around for a long time and there's a couple of variations with this so you can use a brick and put this in your toilet tank and all this does is consume some of the volume within your tank so that when your water level gets up to the right amount then this is taking up some of that water and less water goes into your toilet and less water is wasted now if you having problems with the amount of water coming out not being enough obviously this isn't going to apply in that case there's a little device here called the float arm and that just tells the level that the float ball needs to get to before the water turns off and your tank is considered full if you just bend that down a little bit then that will lessen and if you bend it up it will increase the amount of water that's going down in each flush if you do have a float arm then rather than using a brick like this you can just adjust that float arm to get the same effect without anything in your toilet if you do decide to put a brick in your toilet tank just make sure to place it strategically where it's completely out of the way of all moving parts and if you're looking for a brick believe it or not i went to home depot and they didn't sell bricks anymore this was the closest thing i could get to a traditional brick but on the bright side this cost one dollar and seven cents so very inexpensive but most likely you can find one around maybe even at a construction site or something like that that's been discarded so take a look there and save yourself some money with every flush did you know that we've got merch to cover all of your needs as a diyer i mean obviously sometimes you can just diy instead of buy it for a little bit more and a little bit more time and hopefully with videos like this you can actually save money and save time and not use the joke that i've got on my shirt here but i've also got t-shirts like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this as well as mugs and other cool stuff so be sure to check out those items on display underneath the video here or click the link in the description if you'd like to purchase something for yourself or for someone else that you know number two on our list are sink plungers a lot of people aren't aware that plungers aren't just for toilets they make specific brands in specific models that are specifically specific i'm saying specific a lot okay we're probably all pretty aware of toilet plungers but there are plungers like these that are made specifically for sinks and other drains and not for toilets these usually have a little bit of a smaller opening they're a little bit more shallow and they're a little bit easier to work with especially these accordion style small ones that can be used for just about any sink whether that's a bathroom or a kitchen sink and they're easy to stow underneath the sink if you want and keep out of the way now the purpose that these serve is pretty simple these are used to force air down through your system and remove and by force essentially any blockages that are in your system these work really well just like a traditional plunger for certain circumstances now that leads us to our number one trick which is great if you want to use a plunger for example to remove excess water before fully working on a clogged drain we're going to talk about how you can do that for little to no money using a variety of methods easily one of the most common calls that plumbers get is to resolve a drain clog whether that's in your toilet your sink your bathtub or elsewhere getting rid of those drain clogs can be a major hassle but i'm going to show you several ways that you can do that for a lot less money and definitely some steps that you might want to take yourself before making that call to a plumber the first method i want to show you is usually either free or super inexpensive and that is using a custom drain clogger tool and so there's a couple of ways you can do this i'm going to show you with one of these zip ties so i picked these up the other day at harbor freight these are 15 inch cable ties or zip ties and then i also picked up some 24 inch heavy duty cable ties and these cost just a couple bucks each so they don't cost much at all so let's say you've got one that you think might be further down there or you're just not sure you can pick up one of these big guys and with a bit of prep work you can have this thing ready to go to remove especially those tricky clogs like hair getting all down your drains and stuff like that i don't know about you but i have a wife and three daughters plus my son at home and that equals a lot of hair and i have to do this method pretty regularly so the easiest way is to take something like this and then you just cut little zigzags in it basically kind of like little lightning bolts and what you're looking for is to create easy ways for hair and other debris to catch on here so you want to make some a series of little teeth for those to catch on to you can also use some wire cutters like this and there we go with that i've got all these little places for the hairs and different things to get snagged on and they'll pull it right up and this will do a pretty great job at catching anything down that drain so that's one cheap and easy option for drain clog removal especially if you already have zip ties handy at home a second one which is the one i'd recommend is actually using what's called a zip it or even better i just discovered this one here this is called the python so the python drain tool and it says never touch clogged gunk again with python which is a pretty uh great claim if you're someone like me who's removed a lot of this stuff before it smells just absolutely disgusting we're talking make you throw up on the spot kind of nastiness so if you're going to do this i recommend a couple of things number one put a mask on that's going to block a lot of that scent number two use some rubber gloves or something if you feel that's helpful but definitely put a mask on because you don't want to smell this stuff now this python company they came up with a pretty cool way to avoid all of that basically you insert the tool in here through the little head and then that's got a plastic bag that you fix and hold onto the drain so as you're pulling everything out you're essentially trapping it in that plastic bag and then you end up with all of it captive inside there hopefully the smell included another super low budget or most likely free option that you can use here is just a clothing hanger you can take a metal clothing hanger put a little hook on the end of it that has to be fairly small and fairly tight but that should be pretty easy to do especially if you use some pliers to help you out with that and then you can insert that into the drain twist it around plug your nose prepare to be disgusted and pull out whatever you get it may take several tries on this to get the job done but if you've got nothing else handy then that's a great way to go now assuming none of those work or quite do the job the way you need it to you might have to bust out the big guns now this is a drain clog remover tool this is an auger and it might look a little intimidating but these actually can be really inexpensive this particular one is made by ridgid who i may happen to like a little bit rigid stuff and these this one here costs 37 bucks so not too bad still especially when you're needing this as a last resort after trying those other things and before paying potentially hundreds to have a plumbing company come in and take care of it now the way this works is really simple you've got this little snake end on the end here and it's got a little hook for grabbing on things and pulling them along the way and then if you engage the trigger here then the rod will come out further and further like so and get longer and longer and then you can feed it right down your drain so if you've got a clog way down there this one will be able to take care of that once you've got the auger as far as it'll go if you stop squeezing the trigger and just turn it's just going to wrap everything up around the end of that little hook and grab it around the auger and then you can squeeze the trigger and go in reverse and pull everything back on out of the drain yank it out and you're good to go

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 517,009

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy

Id: lrn2ldUgh1I

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022