Lots of people are learning to do their own repairs and renovations at home. This is because people want to generally be more self-sufficient. They like the idea of repairing their home and taking care of their own issues. This can even help you save a bit of money on repair costs. It also teaches you useful skills that can be used to help friends and family members.
Unfortunately, it’s not exactly easy for someone to learn how to do everything themselves. There’s a reason why we hire professional plumbers, electricians and contractors to do work for us. It’s one of the safest ways to fix an issue in our home. If there’s a risk to our health, well-being or even our home, it’s generally safer to just leave it up to the professionals.
But what if you’re willing to learn? What if you have the time and drive to learn something difficult such as plumbing? Is it still worth trying to do it yourself?
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Certain plumbing tasks are fine to handle yourself
There are actually a number of plumbing fixes that you can do yourself. For example, you can easily repair or even replace faucets if you have the tools and are able to locate where your main water supply is. You can also fix leaks without much issue if you’re comfortable with pipes. You can even fix toilets and unclog bath drains if you’re willing to put in a bit of time and effort.
However, these are very simple fixes that almost anyone can do. As long as you have some basic tools and some instructions, you can generally take care of the most common plumbing-related tasks. It’s a great bit of knowledge to pick up and can save you some handyman call-out fees.
So is that it? Is it fine to tackle most of these plumbing concerns? Not quite.
A good argument for not doing your own plumbing
One of the big issues with plumbing problems is that they can generally happen at inopportune times. For example, maybe you’re about to leave for work but just realized that your shower isn’t working. In this case, you’re not exactly going to learn how to fix your shower before you head to work, so it’s better to just leave it and call an expert. There are plenty of trustworthy 24 hour plumbers for you to contact. They’ll be around your place as soon as possible and it’s a great way to get peace of mind especially during stressful hours where you just want things to work so you can get on with life.
There are also certain places where you don’t want to do your own plumbing. For example, one mistake with your pipework and you could be looking at low pressure all over the home or even burst pipes. You could even injure yourself if you’re not careful. This is why it’s incredibly important for you to be careful with certain DIY projects that can affect your home.
As such, we’d only recommend you tackle easy DIY plumbing jobs and leave the home-critical ones to a local plumber.
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I agree that smaller tasks would be good to learn how to do. I wouldn’t want to call a plumber for a simple clogged toilet. I could see how bigger tasks could be tricky to do yourself though, so I’ll have to call a plumber to help me out if I ever decide to add some new sinks to the house or something.
Hi Suzane, very nice blog and I am really impressed! I agree with you that lots of people learn to do their own repairs at home because they want to become more self-sufficient. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to learn everything by ourselves. Though smaller tasks can be done easily but bigger tasks are tricky and cannot be done by ourselves. So, in that case we need to call professional plumbers to do job for us. Thanks much, keep sharing!