Pro Handyman Blog

If you have a drip system for your landscape, invariably you will have to make repairs to it. Sprinkler repair for drip lines is not complicated as you don’t need pipe glue at all. It is all held in place with barbed fittings which works due to a pressure reducer at the beginning of the system.

Most of the repairs you will see will be when a drip line blows off of the larger hose. If the drip emitter or line has blown off of the hose, the hole is likely frayed and I wouldn’t use it again. Instead, use a goof plug to plug the hole and poke a new hole into the tube and reinstall the drip line.

If a drip emitter has blown off of a micro tube, you may be able to push the emitter back in, or if the tube is stretched out a bit, you may have to trim the tube slightly before pushing the emitter back in.

Occasionally, a ½” fitting will separate and leak. I see this with “T” fittings more often than straight fittings. The barbed sleeve will separate from the fitting and leak. I would replace the fitting. You will need to remove the broken fitting from the tubing by pulling as you twist it off of the pipe. There really isn’t a lot of options here as there is not much play in the tubing for you to cut it and hope that it will still be long enough to connect.

Many refrigerators with an automatic icemaker (or even ice and water in the door) have a filter for the water. As a handyman, I replace some foul water filters. The premium units usually have a cartridge inside the refrigerator compartment that just unscrews. For the rest of us, you will have to pull the refrigerator away from the wall to access the filter.

This in-line filter sits in between the valve at the wall and the refrigerator itself. Depending on the manufacturer, the cartridge will intercept the line so that water passes through it to be filtered on its way to the icemaker or water dispenser. These are easy to replace. Make sure you have the correct replacement by checking the model number on the existing cartridge.

Turn the water off at the wall valve and relieve the pressure by pressing the water dispenser in the door. If you don’t have this feature, disconnect the filter on the side closest to the refrigerator and allow any water to drain into a container. Then disconnect the other side of the filter cartridge.

The new cartridge will either screw on or there will be a fastening system that holds the cartridge in place. This will usually have a receptacle that the cartridge nipple slides into with a slide that holds it in place.

Connect the side closest to the wall valve first and place the filter in a bucket. Turn on the water and let the water flush out the filter cartridge. Turn the water back off and connect the other side of the cartridge. Turn the water back on and gently push the refrigerator back into place.

Most of us have a florescent light fixture. Okay, they are a little big, but they do put out a lot of light and they are inexpensive. Replacing the light bulbs are easy, but what about replacing the plastic light lens cover? It is easy if you don’t have to trim it to fit. Most come in a 2’x4’ piece. That is great if your fixture happens to be 2’x4’. Cutting them can be a pain.

The diffuser lenses are very brittle. Some have a pattern to them, like diamonds, that make them sparkle as light passes through them. That also makes them more difficult to cut. I have found that a new razor blade in a utility knife is the right tool. Lay the plastic lens cover on a hard surface (a soft surface will cause it to crack when you place weight on it). Mark out where you need to cut and use a straightedge along this line. Take successive light passes along the straightedge until you start to form a groove in the plastic. When the groove has been cut deeply enough, you will notice the blade will push through the other side in many places. At this point you should be able to bend the piece and it will snap at the groove.

If you have an electric water heater and it has stopped producing hot water, there are many things that could be the problem. Before you start leafing through the yellow pages for a plumber, try this quick fix first.

Electric water heaters have 2 heating elements, one in the upper part of the tank and one in the lower part of the tank. Sometimes these heating elements will stop working and need to be replaced.

In addition to the heating elements, there are thermostats that tell the elements to turn on and off to heat the water to the desired temperature. If the system gets overloaded, it will shut off and stop heating water. This situation might be a one-time problem, or it may be indicative of a larger underlying problem. The first thing to do is to push the reset button.

These are under a metal coverings on the outside wall of the tank. Remove the covers and you may need to push away some insulation to get to the reset button. When you press the button you should feel a little resistance and maybe even hear it “click” and it restarts. If all goes well, you should have hot water in about an hour.

A kitchen faucet gets abused on a daily basis. People hit the handle up to turn the water on, and then slam their hand back down on it to shut the water off. It’s no wonder then that faucet handles take a beating and can get a little sloppy.

You mainly see this with a single handled faucet, but the same can occur with two handled faucets as well. After repeated abuse, the handles will either become loose or damaged to the point that if they can’t be tightened, they have to be replaced.

Generally, there is a decorative cap to lift up. Pry a small standard screwdriver under this cap and pop it off. You will typically see a screw in the center holding the handle to the cartridge or stem. Tighten it down until snug. This should make it so the handle engages immediately rather than waiting for it to move 2 inches and finally engaging. It is seldom that the hole in the handle becomes out-of-round do to force. The handle is metal but the parts it mates to are plastic, and typically the plastic will break before the metal will.

You typically won’t have to replace the handle as it would likely have to be special ordered, and by the time you spent the money on it, you can just as easily buy a new builder grade faucet to install.

When you run your dishwasher, does it drain on top of your counter? If so, there are a few things you can do to troubleshoot and fix the problem. The first question I usually ask is if the homeowner recently had a new garbage disposal installed. If so, then it is likely the installer forgot to remove the knock-out plug that allows the dishwasher to drain. If the knock-out plug has not been removed, the water will back up to the air gap on top of your counter and run all over the counter. The fix here is to remove the rubber discharge hose and tap out the plug, then reinstall the hose.

If the plug has been removed, it is likely that the discharge hose is plugged up with debris from the dishwasher (you know, the food that you didn’t wash off of your plate before you loaded the dishwasher). With the discharge hose removed from the garbage disposal, use a long screwdriver or other implement to try to pull out the debris. You can place this hose in a bucket and run the dishwasher on “rinse and drain” to push out any remaining debris.

Reassemble it and test. If you still get water draining out of the air gap, check to see if the hose has a kink in it. If it does, you may need to trim a little off of the length to remove the kink. As a last resort, you may need to replace the air gap.

If your gas water heater was manufactured after 2003, the chances are good that it has a FVIR (Flammable Vapor Ignition Resistance) feature. These are water heaters with a flame arrestor and filter screen that increase the safety of the unit. They have a sealed burner that differs from the older water heaters. FVIR water heaters have an ignitor button to light the pilot, whereas the older style allowed you to light a match and place it into the burner assembly to manually light the pilot.

Water heater pilots sometimes go out. Instructions for re-lighting them are posted on the side of the tank, but if the pilot continues to go out, you need to do some troubleshooting.

You may end up replacing the burner assembly or even the gas control, but cleaning the filter might just do the trick. You will need a long wire brush (preferably with plastic bristles), and a vacuum cleaner with an upholstery attachment (the long skinny one). Turn the water heater off and let it cool down for 15 minutes or so.

At the very bottom of the water heater will be an opening or two about an inch tall. These openings are covered by a screen. Remove this screen and vacuum it or wash it with soap and water. Removing this screen will give you access to the filter. The filter is located on the underside of the burner area. If this filter is clogged with lint or dirt, it will prohibit air from entering the burner chamber and consequently the burner won’t be able to heat the water. You may find that there is enough air passing to allow the pilot to stay lit, but when the demand increases to fire the burner, it will go out.

Stick the wire brush into the opening and rub the underside of the burner chamber at the center of the water heater. Rub it a few times and pull it out to inspect. You will probably see lint and dust that the brush has picked up. Vacuum this off of the brush and stick it back into the opening. Repeat this several times until the brush comes out clean and then vacuum the entire area including the area under the burner chamber. Replace the screen and follow the directions on re-lighting the pilot.

Installing ceramic tile can be challenging. For a novice, spacing the tiles can be difficult, but of course there are tools to help with this. You can buy plastic tile spacers that cover the gambit from very small spacing to very large. The choice is yours but there are issues to note.

First off, if you are installing typical 4 ¼” square countertop or shower wall tiles, they have built-in lugs so that the spacing is pre-set. There is no guessing on this one…you just butt the tiles until the lugs touch and you have the correct spacing. But what about if you are using tiles without built-in lugs? Then you get to make choices.

Floor tiles come in lots of different sizes and it really comes down to what look you prefer. Large tiles can certainly accommodate large grout lines without looking like the spacing is too large. You wouldn’t want to install 6” floor tiles with ½” grout lines as the grout line spacing would really dominate the appearance. Plus, wider grout lines have a tendency to crack, but they also give you a little more wiggle room when laying the tile. You could choose to use large tiles with very small grout lines. This is a great look and makes the floor look more continuous instead of broken up by grout lines.

I would suggest laying out a handful of tiles on the floor and then adjusting the spacing until you find the look that you like.

If you have plumbing leaks coming from your shower head, determine whether the leak occurs when the shower valve is on or when it is off. That will give you direction on how to go about repairing it.

If your shower head leaks when the water is on , that is you have turned the water on to the shower, it is probably leaking at the connection at the shower arm. The shower arm is threaded at the end where is connects to the female fitting of the shower head. Unscrew the shower head at this connection and re-tape it. Wrap the threads three times with Teflon tape and screw the shower head back on.

If the shower head dribbles out of the end when the water is on, try removing the shower head and soaking it in some “CLR” or other product that dissolves minerals and scale. Otherwise, replace the shower head with a new one.

If your shower head leaks when the shower valves are off, you need to replace the shower cartridge, or stem and seats. This is a common job that will have to be repeated every few years depending on use and water hardness. Here is an article on  shower cartridge replacement.