Making craft items at home is great fun, but what happens when you have issues on the home front and those free hours have to get allocated towards home repair? Well, not as much fun, of course. But, here are some strong tips to make sure you make the best moves for such situation.
For your home repairs and maintenance, you may feel tempted to disregard the high price and hire a professional repair contractor instead of going the DIY route. Most people feel that home maintenance is a complex task and is better left to professionals. Most of them fear that they might end up causing further damage while attempting to repair that leaking pipe or leaking faucet by themselves.
However, if you have a good home repair and maintenance plan in place, you can actually do most home repair project on your own. You don’t have to have to be trained or need a lot of money to do these repairs. We have put together a few, simple home repair and maintenance tips that can really help you with your DIY repair projects.
1. Toilets
Having a leak on your toilet tank will not only increase your monthly utility bills, but it can also cause a malfunction of your toilet and water damage to your toilet floor. To find out if your toilet tank has a leak, you can put little food color in the toilet tank and wait for a few minutes. If you find that the bowl water is colored, there is a leakage problem that needs to be replaced. Replacing the tank flapper will fix this issue.
2. Faucets
If your faucets are leaking, the reason could be worn out washers. Actually, the washers inside the faucet handles are usually made of rubber and wear out pretty quickly. To fix worn out washers, turn off the main water supply, unscrew the leaky handle, remove the older washes and replace them with new ones.
3. Dryer and Washing Machine
It’s important to regularly inspect the hoses that supply water to your washing machines for leaks. Leaky water supply lines can cause considerable water damage to your home so it’s recommended to check the hoses of your washing machine on an annual basis. If the lines are made of plastic, they should be replaced after three years. But you should replace the metal ends right away if they are rusty or discolored.
About the dryer goes, the lint screen should be cleaned on a regular basis. You need to remove the lint from the screen physically after every load of laundry. Wash the screen with dish detergent and warm water once per week to remove the residue of the fabric softener. This is essential in order to prevent fires. Besides this, cleaning the screen will also increase the lifespan of the heating element.
4. Water Heater
Nobody wants to turn on the hot water in the bathroom and instead receive cold water. You need to maintain your water heaters regularly to keep them working well and stand the test of time. In addition, regular maintenance of these appliances can prevent further damage which might require replacement.
Water usually has suspended sediment in it and over time, this dirt will accumulate at the tank bottom, damaging the floor of the water heater. Therefore, you need to drain your water heater at least once per year. To do so, turn off the water supply and power. Next, you should connect one end of the water hose to the fitting of the drain on the water tank bottom and then place the other on your driveway or any other place resistant to water damage.
Then, open all the faucets of hot water in your home and reopen the drain valve. Now, you should turn on the water supply to get rid of the built-up sediment in the water tank. And you are done.
5. Plumbing
Most homeowners experience pipe blockage at some time and you should know how to prevent before it happens. The following are simple tips to help you keep your water supply pipes free of blockage.
– Do not pour fats and oils in your home drains as their build-up can cause pipe blockage. This includes oils are liquid at room temperature. If you accidentally do it, you can run warm water and dishwasher liquid soap down the drain. This will emulsify the fats and dissolve the clog.
-If it’s hair that’s blocking the drain, you can use a hair strainer to unclog your home bathtub drain. This will remove the strands of hair that gets into your drains after a shower.
-If you have blocked bathtub or toilet, you can use a tool like a drain snake to unblock the bathtub or toilet. If it’s your sink that is blocked, you can try to plunge it prior to snaking the drain. If it’s still blocker after doing that, call a professional (Alpharetta emergency plumber) for help.
So, with the above tips in mind, you can do many home repair projects on your own.