The cost of hiring someone to do home repairs can really add up and whether it be for appliances or household necessities, most can be handled by yourself. One of the most common fixes that homeowners see involves plumbing. You cannot have a functioning home if your toilet is broken! Here is a list of tips to save money on plumbing repair.

Always Perform Routine Maintenance

The most important aspect of repair is to know how to avoid them in the first place. Most of your home fixes happen because you did not do the routine maintenance that is necessary. It is so easy to clean the pipes, tighten the hoses and take care of the little things. It is best to avoid the toilet bowl tablets, since they can cause damage to the parts. The best cleaner is a brush and liquid bleach. The same goes with a garbage disposal, which can clog and therefore she have routine cleaning and maintenance.

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If you find that a part needs to be replaced in the toilet, it is best to take all the broken parts to a hardware store. Sometimes parts look identical and you do not want to have to go back and forth. The parts are also not all alike and can be from different manufacturers, so you’ll want their advice on what you need. The people that work at the hardware store can also give advice for the future to keep your fixtures healthy.

Purchased Your Own Plumbing Tools and Equipment

This tip is important for anything you need to fix in your home. If you have never learned what each tool is, you may be in trouble. If you know you want to cut the cost of home maintenance then you should learn what purpose of each tool and have good quality ones available. The tools most used for plumbing repair are a wrench, pliers, pipe cutters, and sometimes more.

Schedule a Plumber in Advance

If you do need to schedule a plumber to come out to your home, you can do many things to avoid a high cost. The first tip is to make sure they are licensed. Also the plumber can charge you less if you recommend he use your tools. That one is not a guarantee, but it’s worth a shot. There could be extra cost avoided if you do some pre-appointment cleaning, like removing all toiletries from the sink and removing cleaning supplies from under your sink.

Although plumbing problems are inevitable for a homeowner, there are steps you can take to reduce the number of service calls to a plumbing company. The following are three tips to help you accomplish this.

Be careful what you put down your kitchen drain

Sometimes when you cook, you will find that you have a lot of oil or grease in a pan. When this happens, try to dispose of it into a container, and then after it cools down, throw it is in the trash. You have to take care to use a container that can handle the temperature of hot oil, because it is easier to get out of a pan while it is still hot and in liquid form. What you don’t want to do is wash it down the sink. Over time, this will cause a drain stoppage.

Run your water after using the garbage disposal

A garbage disposal is a great kitchen appliance, but over time, they can create drain problems. It is true that they do a good job of cutting up leftover food, but sometime the pieces are still large enough to get hung up on the sides of a drain pipe that already has small, soft materials that are stuck to the sides of the pipe. Large materials passing from the garbage disposal can contribute to the drain stopping up. The solution to this problem is to keep your water running in your sink for at least 30 seconds to a minute after you are finished with the garbage disposal. You want to give the waste you sent through your disposal a chance to make it to your main drain line where the chances of it creating a stoppage problem are slim.

Prevent water pipes from bursting

Water expands when frozen, and when this happens to a water pipe, the expansion can lead to cracks in the connections. You won’t know this has happened until the ice in the pipes melts, but when it does, you may need to place an emergency call to naperville plumbers due to a bursting pipe. The solution is to run water when the temperature drops below freezing. Although it takes time for your water pipes to freeze, if the water is not running, and the temperature gets cold enough, it will happen. The time this usually happens is while you are sleeping, because the water is not running for at least 8 hours. The same can be true in the daytime, but as long as someone is at home and using the water occasionally, this is less likely to be an issue.

Plumbing repairs can be expensive, and although there is no way to prevent them completely, the tips above will help you.