1. Don’t pour grease down the drain. Save pickle jars. Grease goes in the pickle jar. Pickle jar goes under the sink. Repeat until almost full or there is another empty pickle jar. Throw away.
2. Periodically drain your hot water tank to remove the sludge at the bottom. Double the life of the unit, cut down the power bill. Go online and read the procedure
3. Flushable wipes, aren’t. Things that look like the flushable wipes your friend uses but don’t specifically say they are flushable wipes, aren’t. Also, Flushable cat litter? Isn’t.
Toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water, paper towels are designed to absorb and hold water. Don’t flush paper towels.
4. Know exactly where the main shut-off valve is for the entire house in case you develop a bad leak (or pipe rupture) and can’t find an intermediate shut-off valve to stop it.
Also test the shut off is working properly. Worked on many houses where the water didn’t turn off. Sometimes even the shut off at the street didn’t work. City had to come out and change the vavle. Luckily it wasn’t an emergency situation
5. The garbage disposal isn’t there to throw everything down the drain! The problems come in when you try to shove a lot of garbage down them. Scrape your dinner plates into the trash can, but when that occasional food scrap gets caught and goes down the drain, then use the disposal.
6. Don’t put anything solid into your toilet except for your feces.
7. Get hair catchers for your shower. You put it on the drain and it allows water in, keeps hair out. After a shower or two, throw out the hair that’s collected.
8. Never EVER flush your tampons/pads down the toilet. That shit absorbs ALOT of water and expands, creating a blockage.
9. Don’t use drano. Use a plunger or snake, but never chemicals. They poison the environment, damage your pipes and septic, run the risk of burning someone (often hours or days after being used) and rarely work anyway.
10. Do not use chlorine or bleach tablets in the tank. They make quick work of turning any soft rubber (the flapper, flush valve gasket, and tank bolt washers are prime examples) in your tank into a non-functioning mush.
11. Know where your sewer “clean-out” is. This can save you money if you ever have to call a plumber/drain cleaner.
12. Run the water about fifteen to thirty seconds after pouring anything down the drain. Dumped spoiled milk down the sink? Run the water for half a minute. There’s something called a P-trap that keeps the sewer gas from coming up. Liquids can stay there and coagulate and cause a stink, literally, as well as a clog. Run water during and after what you pour down, and you might just save a lot in a future bill.
13. The first curve under a sink (the P-trap) is generally where most sink clogs will be. If your sink is draining slow and you don’t have a garbage disposal hooked to it, unscrew it, empty it (use gloves), make sure the gasket or Teflon tape is still intact (or replace it), and screw it back on.
Also, never use tools on plastic under-sink fittings. Hand-tightening is all you need, unless you like breaking things and causing leaks.
14. If you are expecting sub zero temperatures at night leave all your faucets on at a slow drip to keep your pipes from freezing/bursting.
15. Got a crack running through your driveway asphalt? Your water main underneath it may have sprung a leak and is causing the ground to soften and sink causing that crack.