Pro Handyman Blog

If your water pressure is too high, you can use this handyman trick to reduce it. You can add a pressure regulator to the water supply, and then adjust it for your needs.

You can test your water pressure by using a water pressure gauge. You can buy these at any home center and attach it to a hose bib. Turn the water on and the gauge tells you the pressure. The water pressure should be between 40-80 psi. There is a device on top of the valve that allows you to increase or decrease the water pressure.

Some incoming water pressure is excessive, above 100 psi. You can intercept the incoming water line and add a pressure regulator. Most of these preset to 50 psi but are adjustable from 25-75psi.

You will need to install the valve on the incoming supply pipe. You can solder one on to the copper piping, or use a compression fitting. Just make sure the direction of flow is correct. There is an arrow stamped onto the valve’s housing that shows the direction of flow. Once you have the new valve installed, you can adjust the pressure to fit your needs.

If you have low water pressure, you might also check your neighborhood. It may be that the entire neighborhood has low water pressure. Ask a neighbor if you can compare the pressure to yours. If everyone has low pressure, you might consider calling the water company to see about your options.

If you are going to solder copper plumbing pipes, there are steps that must be taken to guarantee a leak-free joint. When soldering copper (also called “sweating”), you first need to clean the surfaces to be joined.

If you have any leaks, they will usually be located where a fitting meets a pipe. If you take the necessary steps, you can avoid these problems. Start by cleaning the surfaces to be joined. Use sand cloth and hold it to the end of the pipe with your thumb and forefinger. Rotate them around the end of the pipe until the copper looks like a shiny new penny. Next you want to clean the inside of the fitting. You can do this with a wire brush, sized for the diameter of pipe you are using. Place it in the fitting and rotate it to get the inside of the fitting shiny. Do not touch the areas you have just cleaned! Oils from your fingers can impede the flow of solder and flux and give you leaks.

Now comes the flux. Flux is an acidic etching paste that etches the surfaces of the copper. Flux removes oxides and allows the solder to flow. You can use a flux brush and wipe on an even amount on both the outside of the pipe and the inside of the fitting. Push the pipe into the fitting until seated and wipe off any excess flux.

Here are some details on soldering copper pipe.

Our Las Vegas handyman service fixes lots of things. Leaks seem to be at the top of the list. A very common leak repair is under the sink. Plastic drain piping gets bumped around and will leak. Many of the sink drain leaks I find are where pipes are connected. For example, there will be a leak where the trap connects to the tailpiece. It is usually in the area of the slip fitting.

Most commonly we find that a slip washer is cracked or that the connection is loose. It’s funny, you don’t need any adhesive or Teflon tape for a leak-free joint here, but you would be amazed at the number of people that use it. The drain pipes are not under pressure, rather they are simply a vehicle to carry the waste to the sewer.

The slip washer is prone to cracking. It is triangular shaped and as the tailpiece enters the P-trap, the slip washer fills the tiny gap between the two. The slip nut gets screwed onto the threads of the trap and holds the slip washer in place so that there won’t be any leaks.

You can first try to tighten the slip nut to see if that fixes the leak. After that, remove the nut and disassemble the connection. Goose the slip washer up and check it for damage. A new one costs under a dollar and the assembly goes back together in a few minutes.

If you are working on a nice carpentry project and you are attaching pieces with screws (and probably glue), you should consider countersinking the screws.

When you countersink a screw, the screw actually continues beneath the surface of the wood. This allows the unsightly screw head to be hidden from view. You can use molding to hide fasteners, but to hide a screw head, countersink it and then fill in the hole.

You can use a countersinking bit to the correct size of the screw. This bit will pre-drill a hole for the shank and then bore out a hole for the screw head to reside once it has been installed. Once the screw is installed, you can cover the hole with a wood plug.

You can buy or make you own wood plugs. Some plugs that you buy can either be flush with the surface or have a button type finish that stands proud of the surface.

You can cut your own plugs with a plug cutting bit chucked into a drill press or even a hand-held drill.

Once the plug is in the hole, you can stain it or paint over it. If you plan on staining it, the grain will stand out, orient the grain in the same direction as the surface. If you want to get really fancy, cut the plug from the same piece of wood that your project is made from and try to line up the grain so that the plug disappears when finished.

At some point, you will have a cabinet door that will sag and look like it’s ready to fall off of the cabinet. You can lift it up and it will fall right back down. Here are a few ideas on how you can repair this.

Cabinets these days are not made with the finest of materials. For the most part, only the frames of the doors and boxes are solid…the rest of the material is fiberboard or a close cousin of it.

If a cabinet door is sagging, the reason will be at the hinges. Although the hinges may be damaged, the wood that the hinges are attached to are most likely the culprit. I would first look at the hinges just to make sure they are straight. If they are warped, remove them and either replace them or hammer them back into shape.

Now look at the wood. Most likely, the screw holes are reamed out and may no longer be able to hold a screw. There are a couple of things you can do here. Try using a larger screw. You want to get into some undamaged wood. You can use a longer screw (pre-drill it first to avoid splitting the wood), or you can use a fatter screw with larger threads. Either of these methods will allow the screw to bite into new wood.

Your other option is to fill the damaged hole and reinstall the same screw. You can use several toothpicks or a wood golf tee for this. Smaller holes like these are perfect for a few toothpicks. Slather up the toothpicks with glue and stuff them into the hole. Wait for the glue to dry and then reinstall the hinge and screws.

Unclogging your toilet can be messy. Most people think of nasty toilet augers, or at the very least a plunger, and how dirty their hands will get. Well before you start putting on the gloves, you might try the old bucket trick.

A five gallon bucket works well because it can hold plenty of water. If all you have is a small household bucket, give it a shot. I usually fill the 5-gallon bucket about half full and hold it at waist level. The higher you hold it, the more force the water will exert into the bowl. Also, this works best if the water in the bowl is at a low level. If the water is near the rim of the bowl, don’t do it. Ideally, you want as little water remaining in the toilet bowl as possible.

The trick here is to dump a large volume of water into the trap of the toilet. This will hopefully push the clog through the trap and into the drain to the sewer. The higher you hold the bucket, the more force you get, but also the less accurate you will be. If it works, you will see the level in the bowl rise and then everything will go down the drain. Use your best judgment, if you see the level in the bowl approaching the rim, stop pouring.

You want a sudden rush of water to enter the trap, so don’t gently pour it. Dump the water accurately into the trap and cross your fingers. If it doesn’t work, you can put on the gloves and use the plunger or snake.

A handyman runs into this all the time. If you are doing some light electrical work, you may find the need to properly strip the ends of the wires. Solid wire is used to connect light fixtures, ceiling fans, etc. and if you are connecting a fixture for the first time, you will find that the wires have all been cut to the same length, flush with the insulation.

After you check to make sure the power is off, separate the wires and get ready to strip them. You can buy a wire stripping tool with various holes in it for various gauges of wire. The most common for fixtures will be either 12 or 14 gauge. Place the wire in the tool and close the jaws of the tool around the wire. If you have selected to correct hole, the tool should cleanly cut through the insulation, but leave the copper wire. You can them pull the insulation off of the wire.

You can also use wire cutters (or lineman’s pliers). They usually have a notch near the base of the tool for stripping wire. You will have to guess though how far to squeeze the tool as the gauge of your wire may not match the notch in the tool, so you risk cutting into the copper if the gauge is larger than the notch. I generally strip away the minimum amount of insulation necessary for the job. Depending on the application you are working on, 3/8”-½” should be sufficient.

If you constantly wrestle with a drain cover that pops out, you can fix it pretty quickly. The shower drain cover is designed to be removed to clear any clogs in the drain, etc. The cover has holes in it so that the water can drain but so that the holes can catch hair before it flows into and possibly clogs the drain.

Occasionally, the cover won’t stay in place and you may fight with it when showering. So here are some ideas to get it to stay.

Some drain assemblies are plastic and some are metal. I would start with a good cleaning of the surfaces. Some of the covers snap into place but if there is a lot of crud built up into the surfaces, it may not be able to stay in place. Metal covers can be held in place by screws that recede into the surface so that you won’t cut your feet during a shower. For these get replacement screws. Metal covers may also snap or twist back into the assembly.

You can always use a small bead of clear silicone and place it around the perimeter of the lip of the assembly. Then just set the cover into the drain and let the silicone hold it in place. When you need to snake the drain, the cover will be easy to remove.

If you are installing a hanging light fixture, you may have the need to have your handyman lengthen the fixture’s chain. This isn’t difficult to do provided there is enough wire to do it.

The goal here is to avoid splicing the electrical wiring or re-wiring the fixture to do this. If you are looking to lengthen the chain be a few inches, you should be fine. There is more wire coming out of the ceiling cover than you need, and you should be able to move this our of that area and into the chain area.

You will likely have to buy some matching links for the chain and then disconnect the last chain where it meets the ceiling cover. You can then feed the extra wire down into the chain link area. To span the gap, you need to add a few new links of chain. The links will have a separation in one side, but don’t pull them away from each other. Instead, twist the link horizontally so that the gap will open and you will be able to add a few links in this manner. By twisting the link, you avoid distorting the oval shape of the link.

When you have added enough links to bridge the gap, simply twist the links back into their original position. Make sure the ends of the links are aligned and you will be ready to hang the fixture.