Helpful Advice To Successfully Completing Plumbing Projects
As fun as planning to do your own plumbing can seem, it is a very important reason to start learning how now. Another thing is that it can save you a lot of money in the future, so you can handle any issues yourself. These tips below can help you start.
When choosing a plumber make sure he is insured and licensed. This is very important. If there is a plumbing emergency, you want to make sure the plumber has met the training requirements of the state. If he is insured, this covers any accidental damage done while fixing your plumbing.
To avoid clogs, pay attention to what you flush. Sanitary napkins, thick toilet paper and baby wipes should never be flushed. These items can expand and cause a clog, or get caught on a pipe. Instead, dispose of them in a sanitary way that does not involve flushing them down the toilet.
One of the things that you can do to maximize the security of your home is to seal all of the cracks in your outdoor faucets. Even a tiny crack can intensify as the season progresses and lead to serious problems down the road. Reduce drips and leaks for optimal protection.
Check your gas water heater periodically to make sure the pilot flame is lit. The correct color for this flame should be blue. The tip of the flame should be yellow. If you find that you are only seeing a yellow flame, you may need to call a professional for safety reasons.
During the winter, preventing frozen pipes when you live in a small dwelling can be something good to know. Frozen pipes will not only stop your flow of water but can crack and damage pipes. By running a little water out of every faucet during the coldest parts of the day, you can avoid this.
Make sure that your tool box is ready for any project you are preparing to do. The last thing you want is to be knee deep in a job only to find that you are missing the one tool you need to finish. Be sure to have various sizes of pipe wrenches that can be used to complete any job.
To avoid freezing pipes in the winter, make sure to insulate any exposed pipes in you basement before winter comes. Pay extra attention to pipes near the outside walls. If you have had a problem with any particular pipe freezing in the past, apply some heat tape to insulate those pipes.
Sometimes kitchen sinks can be clogged up due to a slow accumulation of solidified grease. One quick fix for this is to try pouring very hot grease down the sink, which will liquefy the grease clogging the drain and carry it down. Water won't work, because grease will not dissolve in water.
Yes, plumbing is quite a subject in that it is completely subjective by it's very definition. No two people view plumbing the exact same way. What one finds useful to their system, the other may not. These tips should have given you some advice on how to start with your own plumbing.
Plumbing Advice That Anyone Should Have In Their Knowledge Arsenal
Plumbing needs to be done right! It can create more trouble and expense if it is not done properly! Not everyone is a plumber. If you are not up to the job, hire it out! If you can do-it-yourself, that is great! You will need the right tools and know how. Read this article for some handy tips and tricks!
On very cold winter nights, allow your faucets to trickle slightly, especially if your pipes are located in a crawlspace. The running water prevents the pipes from freezing as quickly as they would otherwise. You can catch the water and use it for other household needs to prevent wasting it.
You should drain all of the water out of the tank of your hot water heater at least once every three to six months. Draining all of the water out of the tank helps to prevent sediment build-up at the bottom of the tank. This sediment can cause the tank to bang or to heat less efficiently.
Avoiding frozen pies is easy if you ensure no area of your house ever falls below freezing and that any pipes which are exposed to such temperatures are protected with insulation. But, be advised that your pipes may freeze if the surrounding temperature near those pipes is less than freezing. In the very least, you could lose running water inside while waiting for the pipes to unfreeze. The other option is the pipes may burst, which would result in significant repair costs and a mess to clean up.
Do not put cooking oils, fat, or grease, down your drain. These fats cause clogs by solidifying in pipes. To properly dispose of fats, put them in a bowl with a lid that you can dispose of. Once it gets hard, throw it in the trash or compost bin.
Find a better way to discard of cooking oil instead of pouring it down the drain where it can easily clog your pipes. Keep a coffee can or other metal container handy to pour grease into after cooking. Place the can in the freezer to harden the grease and when it's full, discard it with the trash.
Basic problems with toilets can be a quick fix for even the rawest amateur plumber and is worth attempting if you can take the time to research the problem. Seek out the necessary part or parts from your local hardware store and ask for support in how to properly install them.
Your water heater works more during the fall and winter so make sure that you eliminate all sediment buildup around this piece of equipment. Flushing this device can lead to increased longevity so that you do not face plumbing problems during the winter. This precaution will save time, money and effort.
The most important plumbing tip you need to know is click here -- how to turn off your home's main water supply. Once the water is shut off, you can investigate problems and figure out how to resolve them. Walk the family through the house and show them where all the water shut-off valves are, and how to use them.
Stay away from drain cleaners if possible. The chemicals in those kinds of drain cleaners can be corrosive and might damage pipes if you keep using them. If you discover that you have a blocked drain, the best course of action is to hire a professional to call by and examine it for you.
Fair enough, you're not going to become an expert overnight - but there are surely one or two pieces of advice here that you can use. Every job that you do yourself is one less job that you have to pay someone else to do!
Can the AC filter in your home, office or local mall protect you from Covid-19?
When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week that malls in New York could not reopen until they installed high-efficiency particulate air filters capable of trapping the virus that causes Covid-19, Harvard environmental health researcher Joseph Gardner Allen was thrilled.
"I've been writing consistently since early February about how healthy buildings should be the first line of defense against the novel coronavirus," said Allen, who directs the Healthy Buildings program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"I'm really grateful that we have a leader in the country -- somewhere -- who was finally talking about healthy buildings, ventilation and filtration," Allen said. "That hasn't happened before. It just hasn't happened."
A push to action
Allen was one of 239 scientists who wrote an open letter to the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies, asking for a change in their guidance to the public on how the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, can spread.
Current guidance only focuses on "hand washing, maintaining social distancing, and droplet precautions," according to the letter, published Monday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The health agencies are ignoring the tiny droplets of virus that sputter and spray from our mouths, become aerosolized and then float away into the air, the scientists said, as a likely means of transmission.
"They don't want to talk about airborne transmission because that is going to make people afraid," co-author Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, told CNN in a prior interview.
"The best vaccine against fear is knowledge and empowering people to take care of themselves," Milton said. "Why wearing a mask is important is because it blocks the aerosols at their source, when it is easy to block them."
MERV ratings
In his edict to New York mall owners, Cuomo was talking about HEPA filters, which have the highest MERV ratings, between 17 and 20.
What's MERV? It stands for "minimum efficiency reporting value," and it's how filters are rated in their ability to trap tiny particles. The MERV ratings go from one to 20: Filters with higher MERV ratings are more effective than filters with lower ratings.
At the highest end, HEPA filters are used by hospitals to create sterile rooms for surgeries and to control infectious diseases, and are able to remove 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria and other airborne particles with a size as small as 0.3 microns. For comparison, Covid-19 is thought to be between 0.06 to 1.4 microns.
"Filters are rated at their worst performance, so 99.97% is the worst it will do," Allen said. "And that's rated for a particle size of 0.3 microns, but smaller and larger it actually does better. So the point is that it's capturing nearly all particles."
Unfortunately, most businesses and home owners may find it difficult to retrofit their existing system to accommodate a HEPA filter, or any filter higher than the rating recommended by the system's manufacturer.
Doing so can actually impair the system's performance: Smaller pores in HEPA air filters make it more difficult for it to push air. Using denser filters can affect the efficiency of the unit and strain the fan, while decreasing indoor air quality -- the opposite of what you desire.
"HEPA filtration is not always going to be feasible or practical," Allen said. "But there are other filters that can do the job. What is recommended now by the standard setting body for HVAC is a MERV 13 filter."
High-efficiency filters in the 13-to-16 MERV range are often used in hospitals, nursing homes, research labs and other places where filtration is important.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lsY92_nmCH1u72gjMYI4ZChOCJLeKAXLe9ieG5qDeR4/edit?usp=sharing