Pro Handyman Blog

A handyman in Las Vegas works in pretty extreme heat. If you are planting your landscape, your plants can struggle with just one missed day of watering. When you are laying out your landscape irrigation, it’s a good idea to install 2 drip emitters per plant rather than just one. The reason is simple, emitters get clogged and not deliver water to the plant. In the summer heat the plant will die.

From the main drip line, which is usually either ½” or ¾”, you will run a microtube from it to the individual plants. Instead of installing a drip emitter on the end of this line, install a “T” fitting and run 2 separate drip lines, each with its own drip emitter, to the plant. If you would normally install a 2 gallon per hour emitter on one line, instead install a separate 1 gallon per hour emitter on each line. In this way, the plant’s watering needs will still be met, although from 2 separate emitters instead of one.

The benefit here is that if one of the drip emitters gets clogged, the plant will still receive some water to survive. When you notice the plant struggling, you determine which one of the emitters needs to be cleaned out so that the plant gets the necessary water.

If you turn on the water at your kitchen faucet and the pressure is low, you can do a couple things to diagnose the problem You probably have the tools in your garage and it won’t take you much time at all. By the way, if you have really bad pressure throughout the house, and not just at the kitchen faucet, these tips won’t help you much.

The first thing I do with low pressure at faucets is to unscrew the aerator at the end of the faucet. You can probably use your fingers, but may need pliers. Wrap the aerator with cloth or something to prevent scratching it if you need to use tools. With the aerator removed, look into the aerator and see if it has a bunch of debris in it. If it does, clean it out with whatever is at hand. Screw it back on the faucet and turn the water back on.

If the pressure is still poor, go under the sink and make sure the valves controlling the water are fully open. If you still have poor water pressure at this point it will require some more digging. If you have a single handled faucet, you can replace the mechanism inside (either a cartridge or springs and washers), or try removing the water supply lines from the faucet . Turn the water off, remove the supply lines and point them in a bucket and turn the water back on. You want to make sure you are getting good pressure from the water supply. If you are, then you know the problem is with the faucet and you can choose to repair it or replace it.

As a Las Vegas handyman, I get asked a lot of questions about houses. A customer recently asked me about stains on her granite countertop.

The stain on her countertop was right around her soap dispenser, and it was a good sized stain…probably a foot or so in diameter. I asked her if she ever sealed her granite. She said “What?”. Every time she washed her hands and went to pump soap she would drip water on the granite. The water was absorbing into the stone. Once she stopped doing that, the stain disappeared after about 10 days. So the message her was to seal the countertop.

The first thing to do is to clean the countertop. There are products made for both cleaning and sealing granite, and both can be found any most home centers. The packaging will give detailed instructions, but generally both are spray-on and wipe-off products.

Once you have cleaned the granite, you should apply 2 coats of the sealer. Again, you spray this on, let it sit for a period of time, and wipe it off. Then repeat. You know if the granite is sealed if you can drip water on it and it beads up like water on a freshly waxed car. There isn’t a lot of elbow grease involved which makes it nice.

You usually will need to seal the granite once or twice per year, but check on the bottle for recommendations.

If you are tired of people leaving the lights on in a room, you can call your handyman for some help. You can replace your standard wall switch with a timer switch or a motion switch. These are easy to install and should only take a few minutes to do.

A timer switch will activate the light when someone turns the timer on. This style switch works just like an egg timer. Turn it on and the light comes on. It will count down from wherever you turned it, from an hour to a few minutes. When it reaches zero, the light turns off.

A motion switch works similarly except that the switch must sense motion for it to turn on. I like these switches for energy savings, but occasionally the light will turn off prematurely. In that event you have to wave your hand in front of the switch or move in front of it for the light to turn back on.

Wiring them is the same. Turn the power off and connect the wires in the same manner they were connected to the old wall switch. Typically, the black wires get connected to the terminals (although some switches have small wires that you will need to connect with wire nuts), and connect the ground. Turn the power back on and test the switch.

I see a lot of home inspections calling for a repair on the water heater TPR (temperature & pressure relief) drain line. The issue that the home inspector generally calls out is that the drain line is trapped, or has an uphill rise in it. This can be a dangerous situation because when the TPR valve opens it is either due to high pressure or high water temperatures. If the water and steam blowing from this valve finds resistance from the drain line, it may result in severe damage to the tank and anyone near it. For this reason the drain line cannot have any rise in it.

The biggest challenge is when the point where the drain line exits the tank is lower that the point where it enters the wall (in many cases the drain is run through the wall to the exterior of the house). This will mean you will have to either raise the tank (not likely), or lower the drain line in the wall. You will have to open the wall and lower the point where it meets the drain.

Sometimes it is an easy fix though. Many times the installer will use a long flexible copper line, and it is so long that he is forced to bend it every which way to get it to fit. If any of these bends reduce the size of the drain line, or cause it to have an uphill rise, it is a potentially dangerous situation. However, this can usually be repaired by turning the flexible copper line in such a way so that there is no rise in the line.

Many of the handyman jobs we do require touch up paint of some kind. The act of painting is easy. Getting a good match on the paint however, can be tough. Even if the original paint is at the property, applying it to the wall may not match. Some painted walls get sunlight exposure and some do not. If the home has smokers in it, that can certainly make it so the paint won’t match. So don’t be surprised when you take paint out of the can and it doesn’t exactly match.

You can certainly take a sample from the wall and have it computer matched at a paint store. It may not exactly match but should be awfully close. In an inconspicuous area, you can barely cut through the painted drywall paper and peel up a piece at least the size of a quarter. When you get the paint matched, fill in the void with joint compound, texture and paint it.

Probably the best way to do touch up painting is to paint the entire surface from wall to wall. Dabbing paint over problem areas is always noticeable, but if you paint the entire surface, the problem will go away. Most people won’t notice a slight color variation at the corner or edge of a wall.

A repeat customer called this handyman to ask for help in troubleshooting his half hot outlet. These are outlets that have power in the bottom plug all the time, while the top half of the plug receives power only when a wall switch is turned on. These are perfect for controlling a table lamp or floor lamp.

Both of the plugs on this particular outlet had power to it all the time. The homeowner was upgrading all of his outlets and switches to a more modern style for the appearance. He swore that her replaced each wire exactly where it had been on the old outlet. And he had.

He forgot a simple step when wiring a half hot outlet. He forgot to break out the tab that connects the top hot side to the bottom hot side. Without doing this, both halves receive power all the time. When you remove the tab, the top will only receive power when the switch is turned on. You can use needle nose pliers, or regular pliers for this. Grab the tab and give it a few back-and-forth moves and it will break free. You will want to turn the power off before you touch the outlet though. After you break out the tab, screw the outlet to the junction box, install the cover plate, and turn the power back on. The light should illuminate only when switched on.

This is a fairly simple handyman job if you have the right tools. When a stair spindle comes loose, you hope it isn’t broken and that it can slip back into place.

Whether or not the spindle is on a level surface or an incline (like going up the stairs), the repair is pretty much the same. The hope is that the spindle can be reused. If not, you may have to find another one or have one turned on a lathe. In most cases, the spindle is held in place by inserting the top into a hole in the underside of the wood hand rail and then pinned in place at the bottom.

You can clean up the end of the spindle with a light sanding, and remove any glue from the hole in the hand rail with soldering brush and some sandpaper. Don’t ream it out so much though, that it becomes sloppy when inserting the spindle.

You can spread a light coat of glue on the end of the spindle and insert it into the underside of the hand rail. Swing the bottom into place against the surface and use a pneumatic nailer and squeeze off a nail or brad to hold it in place. Install another nail or brad in the opposite side to hold it in place. You may consider filling the divot with wood filler and painting it, but the nail holes will be small enough where you probably won’t notice.

We are a North Las Vegas handyman service helping homeowners every day. The other day, a homeowner called for help with his garage door installation. He was attempting to install a new opener and was having trouble aligning everything on his ceiling.

When you buy a new garage door opener at a home center, the kit comes with metal straps to hang the unit from the ceiling with. I have used these straps before and they will work, however there is a lot of guesswork with them. By that , I mean you have to bend the straps to fit the installation. You have to find the joists (which you would with any method), use lag bolts to secure the straps to the ceiling, and then bend the straps to meet the motor unit. Like I said, this works but I prefer angle iron.

Angle iron is stiff and stout, and you can cut it to any length you need. I find the joists in the ceiling and install a length of it so span the joists above the opener. Then it is a matter of cutting 2 short lengths of angle iron to hold the opener to the ceiling. This method doesn’t flinch either. With the straps, the torque of the motor turning can make the opener move as the straps flex. No so with angle iron. It doesn’t budge.

As a Handyman, sliding glass door handles are a chief complaint that we get. Maybe they are loose, or maybe its that they just don’t lock the door. You can give your door a little TLC just by paying attention to the handle.

Sometimes the door becomes more difficult to slide, which requires you to push harder on the handle itself. It’s not the handles fault, it’s just the nearest point of contact for you to close the door.

It’s a good idea to make sure the door locks into the jamb. There are several different mechanisms for this, but generally you will have a lever that you flip on the door handle and it secures a latch from the handle into the jamb. The catch on the jamb is adjustable to that the handle latch can mate up with it to lock the door. Simply loosen the screws that hold the catch to the jamb and adjust it until the door locks.

With all of the pushing and pulling, you may need to tighten the handle. There are usually two screws that hold the handle to the door. Tighten these down so that the handle doesn’t move.

Finally, you may want to clean the track and lubricate the rollers so that the door slides easily.