Not every project goes as well as planned. We would be happy to spend a few minutes answering your questions.
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If you have landscaping at your house, you will likely have the opportunity to work with landscape plumbing issues, namely PVC piping and fittings. Working with PVC is easy as it cuts and glues quickly. But don’t forget the primer.
When connecting PVC, you want a nice square cut. Once you have the length measured out use a PVC cutting tool or a hacksaw to quickly cut the pipe. If you use a hacksaw, clean off the burrs left by the blade. Use primer to clean the exterior surface of the pipe and the interior surface of the fitting. Primer is colored (often purple) so that you can see if you have complete coverage on the mating surfaces, as well as a point of differentiation with the color of the PVC glue. Primer (and glue) are very flammable and dry quickly. Once you prime the piping, it will dry to a tacky feel.
Apply the glue using a dauber in the can. Go for complete coverage at the same areas where you previously primed. Use too much glue rather than too little. Push the pipe into the fitting with a gently twist and hold it still until it sets up (probably 30 seconds on a summer day). Once everything is assembled and dried you can slowly turn the water back on to test for leaks.
You flush the toilet like normal but something is wrong. Instead of flushing, it makes a weird sound and the water starts rising in the bowl. Now you get worried, will it stop? The water keeps rising and rising until finally it is just about at the lip of the toilet bowl. What should you do?
If the toilet gods are smiling upon you, maybe it will stop before the waste overflows onto your floor. This is one of the many panic calls we get. You can stop the toilet from continuing to fill up by simply turning off the water. Under the toilet tank is a hose that connects from the tank to the wall. If you follow this line down to the wall you will see a valve that controls the water. Turn this valve clockwise until the water shuts off. This will stop any additional water from entering the toilet, which will stop the rising toilet bowl water.
If you have PEX or other plastic piping, you will need to go find your manibloc box that houses all of your isolation valves. Use the key supplied and turn off the valve that controls the water to that particular toilet. In a pinch you can shut off the water to the entire house. Once you have the immediate crisis solved, you can troubleshoot how to clear your clogged toilet.
Take it from a handyman: breaking up concrete is tough work. For the most part, with new homeowners they are looking to get rid of the small 3 foot pad at the back door so they can put in a larger pad, or some stone work. Even a small pad is tough and you will be surprised by the amount of debris it creates.
First of all, make sure you work safely. That means eye, ear, and breathing protection (particularly if you will be sawing the pad), as well as heavy gloves.
You can certainly rent a jackhammer, but for most of us a small pad isn’t worth it. That leaves a sledgehammer or a concrete saw for your choices. For a small pad, I would go with the sledgehammer. For this size pad, you can nibble away at the edges breaking up the concrete into manageable sized pieces. You are going to have to repeatedly hit the same spot a few times to get the concrete to crack and break apart (the small pads typically don’t have rebar in them). Also, once you start to break apart pieces, you can use a lever and slightly lift the edge of the pad up and then hit it. In this manner, the pad will break in only one or two strikes.
Garage door weather-stripping is important for several reasons. It will seal out not only the weather, such as rain and wind, but it will also provide a barrier against insects and will even minimize outside noise. This is pretty beefy weather-stripping. It is generally a large oval shape which is hollow inside. When your garage door lowers to contact the floor, this weather-stripping compresses and creates the seal.
Installing this type of weather-stripping is simple. Depending on what type of garage door you have, you will either nail it or screw it to the bottom of the door. Some doors have a channel that the new weather-stripping will slide into.
The kit you buy will include a roll of the weather-stripping and several styles of fasteners. Set the weather-stripping in the sun to warm up and it will be easier to install along the bottom of the door. If you have a wood door, you can use the nail option. Secure the weather-stripping every six inches along the base of the door. You can also screw it to the bottom, but make sure the heads of the screws are flush with the surface of the door.
If you have a metal sectional door, you can use self-tapping screws to secure the weather-stripping or you may choose to slide the strip along the channel, if your door allows for that style.
At a customer’s house today, she was complaining of her toilet handle sticking as she would flush the toilet. I removed the toilet tank lid and the handle was not normal. From the outside, the handle looked like every other handle in a 10 mile radius, but on the inside of the tank, it was plastic and was bent towards the tank. So, when she would flush the toilet, the handle would scrape the inside of the tank and get caught in the full open position. This allowed the water to continually run down the drain and the tank would never refill unless she manually pushed the handle back into position. This naturally was a source of frustration to her.
There are a couple of solutions here. The first, and cheapest, is to modify the handle inside the tank. Since it was plastic, I picked up the weapon of choice (a hacksaw) and cut off the part that was rubbing on the tank. This shortened the lever, but left a few holes to choose from to reinstall the chain leading to the flapper. The lever was still long enough to be positioned over the flapper and so it worked naturally with little extra effort.
The other option was to replace the handle. Here is an article on a toilet repair on how to replace a toilet handle.
Lots of us consider playing handyman for the weekend. If you are looking to replace your carpeting with a different flooring material, for example, ceramic tile, vinyl, etc. you are first going to have to remove the carpet. Here’s how to do it.
I generally start at a corner of the room and pull up the corner of the carpet. It will lift easily from the tack strip. Continue lifting the carpet around the perimeter of the room until you get to an obstacle (like a door). If the hallway, for example, will remain carpeted, use a utility knife and cut the carpet inside the room you are removing. It is imperative that you leave enough carpet to make repairs to the threshold. Don’t cut right up to the threshold, instead leave 6-8 inches to play with. Once you have the problem areas cut and the perimeter lifted, you can fold the carpet over and cut the backing. This will cut easily and allow you to roll it up and remove it from the room.
The carpet pad is next to go. This is usually glued down to the wood sub floor or concrete pad and will easily lift off. Once you remove that from the room, you will need to get rid of the tack strip. Use heavy gloves and eye protection and slide a pry bar under the nail heads. Hit the pry bar with a hammer and lift the tack strip from the floor. It tends to break into many pieces so be careful. You will need to go around the room and remove nail heads from the floor that you missed. When everything has been removed, scrape, sweep and vacuum up the debris to leave a clean surface for your new floor installation.
Shower faucets and sink faucets that use separate handles for the hot and cold use a stem and a seat. The stem rotates as the handle is turned and a rubber washer on the bottom of the stem presses down against the seat to stop the flow of water. The flow of water is started when the stem lifts off of the seat to allow the flow of water. When a leak develops, it is usually the case that the washer at the bottom of the stem needs to be replaced, and the seat in the faucet body needs to be replaced.
After shutting off the water to the house, the stem can be removed and serviced by unscrewing it. The seat however can be a problem. You can remove it using a seat wrench but there are times when it seems the seat is welded in place.
Your other option is to resurface the seat. You can buy a resurfacing tool and place it into the valve body until it contacts the seat. By hand you can rotate the tool to smooth the surface of the seat. It will abrade the tiny pits on the surface so the stem washer and the seat will seal out any plumbing leaks.
Dressing up a window by installing cornice boxes can turn a drab window into a real piece of art. You can buy a cornice box or make one yourself. Here is some information on how to make a cornice box. Once you have the cornice box ready, installing it is not difficult and will probably take 30 minutes or less.
The easiest way to install cornice boxes is with "L" brackets. These are brackets shaped like the letter L. One leg of the bracket will attach to the wall and the other leg will attach to the underside of the top of the cornice box. The bracket will be mounted upside down so that the leg extends off of the top of the bracket rather than the bottom. In this manner, the bracket is completely hidden by the cornice box.
Draw a level line above the window on the wall. This will be the line that will dictate where you install the brackets, so you will need to play with the height of the line to get the height of the cornice box correct. It's a good idea to have a helper hold the box up and you can tell him to raise or lower the box to get the look you are looking for. When you have the height right, mark your line and screw the brackets to the wall. Make sure you install the brackets into wall studs. If you have a small window you may only need 2 brackets, but for safety and to prevent bowing of the cornice box, installing a bracket on each stud that spans the window is a good choice. You will likely find a solid header above the window if you are mounting the cornice box low to the top of the window. Try a bracket every 2 feet in this case and look for and bowing or deflection in the box. The general rule is the more brackets the better.
Once you have the brackets installed to the wall, you can set the cornice box on top of the brackets and insert screws from the underside , through the brackets and into the top of the cornice boxes header. The screws shouldn't penetrate through the top of the box, as their purpose is just to hold the cornice box in place.
One of the challenges of mounting a shower grab bar is finding wall studs to mount it to. This can be particularly challenging if you have, for example, ceramic tile that covers the entire wall. Sometimes you will find that the shower enclosure material will not go all the way to the ceiling, which makes it easy to find the location of the studs. In this case you can use a stud finder and run it across the top of the drywall that is not covered by the shower surround surface. Mark a line and follow it vertically down until you get to the area where you want to mount the grab bar. Note that you may need to mount the grab bar diagonally so that each end is secured to a wall stud.
If your shower surround covers the entire wall, you can hunt and peck for a wall stud. If you have an interior wall on the other side of the shower, you can remove the baseboard and measure the distance from the edge of the wall to a wall stud and then transfer the distance to the shower side of the wall. You can also do this by looking at wall outlets since one side of them is generally secured to a wall stud.
As a last resort, you can drill small holes in the grout lines horizontally until you contact a stud. These small holes can be filled in later with matching grout.
Once you have the locations of the wall studs you can install the shower grab bar. Here is some information on a shower grab bar installation.
Loose toilets are a part of my everyday life. The fix for a loose toilet is typically a replacement of the wax ring and bolts. Specifically, one or both of the bolts that hold the toilet to the floor will corrode and break causing the toilet to move under the right conditions. Occasionally, we will find that the toilet flange that holds and conceals the bolts will crack and consequently not be able to hold the toilet to the floor. That means a loose toilet.
The toilet flange has a series of slots and holes in it that allow the toilet bolt heads to be inserted and moved into the correct location. The drain is located in the middle of the flange. These slots and holes will corrode and crack and the flange or ring will need to be replaced. It is much easier to use a reinforcement ring, aka repair ring, to secure the flange and ultimately the toilet in place.
A reinforcement ring bolts right over the top of the old flange, but get the toilet out of the way and clean off the old wax. If the flange is mounted to the concrete slab, you can screw the ring into the slab using concrete anchors. Depending on the concrete anchor you choose, you may need to cut off any part of the threaded bolt so it doesn't obstruct the re-seating of the toilet. You can also try a tapcon bolt after pre-drilling the hole for it. If you are installing into a wood sub-floor, you can use wood screws to bite into the wood. Screw the ring into place after lining it up over the broken flange. Then you can work on your toilet replacement for a secure installation.
