I have been plumbing for 19 years now and have done many different types of plumbing jobs. If you have ever called a plumber I hope you have asked for references and checked the company out before hiring that person or that company. There are many different things that can go wrong if you do not do this. Some of these examples are what I have seen either right after another plumber was on the job or years later.
Last week I was installing a kitchen sink, and to my amazement the drain lines were not all glued in place. I had asked the homeowner how old the house was, which was just over 20 years old. I could not believe that for 20 years this pipe did not leak.
Another interesting thing I have recently seen was a shower that the homeowner did the plumbing and tile work themselves. They called me because the shower was leaking into the main floor ceiling. The cause was the homeowners did not read anything on how to do this kind of installation and completely forgot to install a shower liner. Without a liner your shower will not go very long without leaking. The liner is a rubber like material that hooks up to the drain and contains the water from leaving the shower. This made for a very difficult and expensive repair. Sometimes shower plumbing jobs should be left to those that know what they are doing or at least to those that will learn prior to doing.
In the next house I was in the homeowner installed their own bathtub and shower. It looked great. The one thing that was wrong though was every time they turned on the bathtub to have a shower the water would come out of the spout and the shower head. This is a very common mistake and happens when you use pex pipe instead of copper on the spout. The spout cannot handle the lower flow rate and the water starts to come out of the head. Lucky for these people the bathtub was next to a staircase that was not finished underneath. I went in and replaced the pex with copper and everything worked great. This could have been a very costly shower repair, but turned out to be pretty easy.
Other problems I see quite frequently are pipe fittings installed upside down, no vents or clean outs, and wrong sized pipe.
If you are thinking of taking on a home improvement project of any kind why not hit your local hardware store and buy a book, or take one of the many different seminars most stores have every month?
