Most Brooklyn Plumbing Problems Are Self-Inflicted

Tree roots get blamed. Old pipes get blamed. The century-old housing stock takes the rap for almost everything, and it deserves plenty of it. But the Plumber Brooklyn locals keep saved in their phone sees the same handful of habits on repeat, week after week, in apartments and row houses from Red Hook to Bergen Beach. Habits that cost nothing to change and hundreds not to. The house didn’t do most of this. The people in it did, a little at a time, usually with good intentions and a product from the hardware store.

The Bottle Under the Sink Is Eating the Pipes

Chemical drain cleaner is the most self-assured purchase in the plumbing section. Pour, wait, flush, done. Except it’s not marketing that doesn’t care. The stuff reacts, and the reaction generates heat, and if the clog doesn’t move, all of that remains in one place. It softens plastic, it pits old chrome traps, and it works at metal that has been worn away for ninety years. The original drum traps at Cobble Hill can complete the corrosion.

There’s a second problem nobody mentions on the label. When the clog wins, and a plumber shows up to snake the line, they’re now snaking a pipe full of caustic liquid that splashes. Every tech has a story about that.

The mesh strainer is to retain the most common cause of bathroom clogs. Hair, soap flakes, an occasional earring—three dollars, boring and effective.

“Flushable” Is a Marketing Word

Toilet paper is designed to break apart when exposed to water. Wipes are designed not to. It is the sole reason why the City continues to be removing congeals the size of delivery vans from the sewer system, and why the City has a large number of clogs in its main lines in Stuyvesant Heights, two families, that stem from a missing bathroom trash can.

When the toilet flush is applied, the wipe remains. It is the hundred-year-old house trap under the sidewalk, which it can never escape. All the above, including paper towels, dental floss, cotton pads, cat litter, etc. If it’s only one flush that clogs the toilet, the problem is the plunger. A whole house backup on laundry day is a sewer backup, and cost has a comma in it.

The toilet can only do 3 things. All other items come with a can.

The Running Toilet Nobody Hears

A worn flapper doesn’t make a noise. Tanks bleed into the bowls, fill up a bit, bleed again, all day long and all night long. That is enough to dribble through a couple hundred gallons an hour without a single leak for 24 hours, and in the two- and three-family houses around Gravesend and Bath Beach, that is reflected in one’s water bill, which suddenly shoots up for no apparent reason.

There is no charge for the test. If there is food coloring in the tank, wait 15 minutes; do not flush. If the bowl is coloured, the flapper is done. The fifteen-dollar part and the Saturday morning are the tools needed to repair the toilet at that time. It’s a quarterly bill, and a fill valve that goes on dying.

Overtightening, and Other Acts of Confidence

There is a direction in which DIY plumbing doesn’t work. Not too loose. Too tight. Crack nuts (from that 1 extra quarter turn). The metal fitting that was driven in crooked tore plastic threads away. You should put tape on the opposite side of the threads, which will fold inwards and unravel as the fitting seats, ensuring the drip it is meant to keep out.

Next, the valves that shut off the water. Salt air does the same slow work on fittings that are out by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, where they sit untouched for 20 years, set in place and snap when someone needs them, which is usually when the water is squirted out the faucet at 9 p.m.

It is not the fault of the alert amateur that some jobs pay for it. New showerhead, fill valves, flappers, and aerators. Some don’t. By law and common sense, anything with gas is not an option. Anything behind a completed wall; anything on the main; anything behind a valve which will not turn; anything behind the first step. The knowledge of what type of job a particular tool is designed for is more valuable than any tool in the toolbox.

The Hoses Everyone Forgets

One of the biggest problems in many Brooklyn houses is a washing machine hose that is broken. It is under full house pressure all day, is very flexible with every fill cycle, and ages in the dark behind the machine where no one is looking. It will not drip when released. It runs; it’s so wide open till someone comes home.

The price for braided stainless hoses is twenty dollars each pair, and you purchase years of margin. It’s such an obvious thing to do, except until a neighbor has a story about it for when you’re packing to go away in the summer. The dishwasher lines and ice maker lines are included on the same watch list: smaller water, same physics, and require a plumber’s mind during appliance installation.

Cheap Habits, Expensive Rescues

For virtually everything, there is a cheap counter-move. A strainer is located in the drain. A garbage bin next to the toilet. Dye in tank once a season. Hoses on a calendar. Valves are turned twice per year with gentle pressure so they are able to turn when needed.

The most important habit: calling a local plumber when you have a problem that you can do without getting excited about. The drip, the barely audible hissing noise, and the spot that wasn’t there a month ago. All of the borough’s kitchen flooding problems used to be these.

Brooklyn Plumbers, 300 Cadman Plz W, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201, (929) 441-6040