Plumbing Maintenance Tips From Your Local Experts
Taking a little extra care to look after your home’s plumbing and pipes could help you to avoid serious issues and reduce the cost of maintaining your plumbing in the long run.
If your toilets, showers, baths, and sinks stop working as they should – or if your drains get blocked or clogged – this can be difficult to repair yourself and also poses damage to your property if left to get worse. Look after your home with our plumbing maintenance tips, but remember to call a plumbing professional if you notice a leak or a fault that you can’t repair.
1. Check What You Flush
If we could only give our customers one piece of advice, it would be to only flush flushable items. Despite numerous public information campaigns and advice from all professional plumbers, many people across Australia still flush a huge amount of non-flushable disposable items down the toilet including sanitary products, cotton swabs, cardboard, and plastic.
Toilets are not built to flush these items and they can build up in your pipes and cause serious blockages that require professional repairs. Check what you flush – and what your family flushes – down the toilet to prevent costly blockages from occurring in the first place.
2. Keep Your Shower Heads Clean
Over time, mineral deposits can build up on shower heads and cause complete blockages if you don’t keep your shower heads clean. Remove the shower head from the shower and soak it in vinegar for 24 hours every 6 to 12 months to prevent a build-up of limescale and mineral deposits. If you can’t clean it by doing this, you may have to replace your shower head.
3. Monitor Leaks Proactively
Monitor pipes and appliances around your home for leaks on a regular basis. Leaks can be hard to spot, but the sooner you notice them and have them repaired the less damage they can cause to your plumbing system and your home.
If you suspect that water may be leaking from your toilet’s tank into the toilet bowl, you can check this by adding bright food colouring to the toilet tank. If there’s a leak, the coloured water will seep into the bowl. Replacing toilet tanks with leaks prevents water loss and keeps your water bills down.
4. Use Mesh Covers On Drains
Monitor pipes and appliances around your home for leaks on a regular basis. Leaks can be hard to spot, but the sooner you notice them and have them repaired the less damage they can cause to your plumbing system and your home.
If you suspect that water may be leaking from your toilet’s tank into the toilet bowl, you can check this by adding bright food colouring to the toilet tank. If there’s a leak, the coloured water will seep into the bowl. Replacing toilet tanks with leaks prevents water loss and keeps your water bills down.
5. Avoid Toilet Overflows
If your toilet is overflowing, which is what happens when you flush it and the water level rises, this indicates that there’s a blockage or some kind of plumbing fault in your toilet. To prevent your toilet from overflowing while you attempt to trace and resolve the issue, open up the tank of your toilet and push the flush valve down. This prevents the water from rising while you identify what’s going on.
Get In Touch
Taking steps to maintain your home’s plumbing can help you to reduce the cost of repairing faults later on and ensures that your plumbing is running smoothly all year round. If you do identify a fault – and it’s one that you can’t fix yourself – calling out professional plumbers is the only way to prevent damage from spreading or causing further issues elsewhere in the system.
If you need plumbing advice, repairs, and maintenance services in Darwin, call us today at Nightcliff Plumbing and Gas on (08) 8985 5200 .
