Who hasn’t felt invigorated after watching three consecutive YouTube videos about fixing seemingly intractable plumbing problems? That frustrating leak under the kitchen sink now looks resolvable with nothing but PTFE tape and an adjustable spanner. And after perhaps half an hour of careful DIY surgery, it seems your time and initiative have saved you the costly callout charge of a plumber who would have charged hundreds for just turning up, even if they fixed the job in five minutes at no extra cost.
In the majority of cases, this DIY fix is actually just the start of something far worse.
The risk when dealing with plumbing is distinct from most other home improvements (such as decorating). When you decorate, any small mistake in technique – such as forgetting to use primer when repainting over vinyl silk wallpaper – might leave a poor finish, but will not end up costing thousands in the long run. With plumbing work, however, the margin between satisfactory and disastrous results is much narrower.
One reason is the unique nature of water itself: as soon as it sees an opportunity, it flows rapidly along the path of least resistance. This means that even if your fix works for now, there could be a disaster waiting in the walls that is not at all immediately clear. So, even though it appears as though the problem has been solved, this satisfaction might just be illusory because you simply can’t see into the wall or under the floor. It could be days or weeks before this becomes apparent; by that stage, the damage done is likely to be large. For an Emergency Plumber Gloucester, visit https://www.hprservicesltd.com/emergency-plumber-gloucester
Often, the most damaging DIY error is overtightening everything in sight. Your logical brain tells you that if a little tightness is good, then surely a lot is better. But the fact that plumbers have deliberately designed every single bit of a joint to work within narrow tolerances for a reason is often ignored at our peril. Tapping on a pipe so hard it won’t fit in the recess of a compression joint or over-torquing plastic couplers or unions so they compress too much into the seal of a push-fit connection: each of these actions will actually be counterproductive to the intention. Instead of improving a joint that was leaking slowly, for instance, you’ll end up ruining the olive inside the fitting and ensuring the joint leaks just as fast, if not faster, than ever before.