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Frost Proof SillCock? Maybe!

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IMG_2417So everyone is intrigued with the frost proof sillcock, WHY?  I know,I know, I’m just a grumpy old time plumber who’s not open to the new modern way of doing things. That’s somewhat true, but the fact still remains if these frost proof valves are not installed correctly, you still run the risk of  BURST water line due to a FREEZE UP. How? Well, the bottom line is this. If you don’t pitch them downward away from the water source, the water will remain inside the cavity and at the first sub-freezing temperatures will cause them to fail! I’ve been installing outside hose lines longer than I care to remember and  I’ve been doing it successfully without using expensive frost proof sill-cocks. I guess there is a place for them to be used in commercial applications,but for the average homeowner, I don’t think you need them.

The key to installing an outside hose line is this, Install a good quality ball type shut-off valve inside the house just before the water line exits the home and  pitch them downward away from the waters source. When winter time rolls around, shut off the ball valve and open the outside faucet to drain out the remaining water inside the line. Pretty simple! But wait, what if the line is pitched backward towards the water source? It happens all the time here in New York City and when it does I simply install another hose bib inside the home to drain the water out of the line. Again when winter time rolls around I shut off the inside ball valve and open both the inside and out hose bib’s ensuring there is no more water sitting in the line.

An aid in helping the water drain successfully out of the line is to use a shut-off valve with a side inlet air vent port which will relieve any vacuum. I personally don’t use them, but they are available should you want them. The key to successfully preventing an outside hose line from an annual freeze up is to  shut them off in the first place! I get called in every year from the same customers who simply forgot to shut off the water supply to their outside hose lines and I even equip them with BIG ORANGE GLOW TAGS with the words SHUT IN WINTER! Go figure! 

I was called in this past week because a customer  had a leak coming thru his foundation wall from his frost proof sillcock. He didn’t shut off the inside water supply valveIMG_2416 because he thought he was protected with his fancy frost-proof valve. What he didn’t realize was that the washer inside the valve failed and the entire valve was back pitched which allowed water to fill the valve cavity. Upon the first freezing temperatures, the valve body split open leaking water through the foundation wall into his basement.

Check out the video where I show you the exact valve I pulled out of his house and believe it or not he wanted an exact replacement! I reminded him he would be well advised to shut-off the inside water supply valve to prevent this from happening again. By the way, I tagged the valve, you think he’ll read it?  Anyway thanks as always for stopping by and  if you enjoy my videos please give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. Regards, HAPPY PLUMBING. Bob 

Replacing a Bathtub Nozzle

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Not very exciting Right? Well, exciting or not you may find yourself in a situation where you might have to, so I shot this short video to help you out! So I’ll get a call stating their’s water leaking down below their bathroom in line with the bathtub. My first question is usually, does it leak continually or only when you use the tub? Most times it’s the latter which indicates they have a drain pipe issue and isn’t as urgent because if they don’t use it, there is no leak.

If they tell me it leaks continually that indicates to me they have a water pipe leak and I’d better get over there a.s.a.p. What often happens is when I enter the bathroom, I’ll notice that the tub/shower valve is leaking into the bathtub. Now I’m saying to myself this could be a drain pipe leak but until I stop the faucet from leaking I really won’t be able to tell.

I repair the faucet and stop it from leaking, fill up the tub several times and let it drain off. NO LEAK? What’s going on? At this point, I get on my knees and take a peek under the tub nozzle and notice that it’s partially corroded underneath so I turn on the tub/shower valve and observe. What I see is the water streaming along the bottom of the nozzle toward the tile wall. About 10 minutes later I’ll see the leak showing in the ceiling below.

I remove the tub nozzle and notice that there is a huge void around the pipe that exits the wall and discover that the water is simply rolling back along the bottom of the nozzle and right back into the wall. A little silicone caulk or tile grout would have solved this problem, but the fact is in real life I find this situation all the time. The solution! Replace that corroded tub nozzle and thoroughly seal the void between the pipe exiting the wall with a high-quality silicone seal.

Back in the day, most of the pipes that accepted tub nozzles were I.P.S (iron pipe size) or screw type. You simply measured for the proper length nipple to exit the wall and screw on a new tub nozzle. Today we have a few more options and in this video, I’ll go over them and show you how to replace a tub nozzle in your home. So stick around, check out this video and if you have questions, please reach out to me at info@bobsplumbingvideos.com.

Happy Plumbing,
Bob

Bobs Plumbing Tools for Homeowners

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In today’s blog post and video I’m going to show your the plumbing tools that I have in my plumbers toolbox.

Bob's Original Tool Bucket!
Bob’s Original Tool Bucket!
Everyone’s asking me, Bob what kind of tool bag is that your using? So to answer some of these questions I thought I’d put together this video showing you exactly what I use on a daily basis in my plumbing practice. Back in the day when I was a helper, the plumbing mechanic carried his tools in a home made wooden box. Bulky? Yes but it served it’s purpose. As time evolved we eventually graduated to a metal tool bucket which was more convenient, but most times the item you were looking for ended up in the bottom. We’d dump it out to find what we were looking for and threw everything back in the bucket and repeated the process. Eventually the five gallon plastic buckets replaced the metal ones and you could buy one of those liners with the individual pockets to organize your tools. I used these for quite a while, but inevitably would be looking for a small tool which caused me to dump the whole bucket. Enough!

Enter the Veto-ProPac line of tools bags. I found these online years ago and bought one for my personal use. At the time they only made a closed top version, but they were so well made that I thought how could I adapt these to use as my primary plumbing tool bag. Well lucky for me (and a whole group of professional tradesman) the company introduced their O.T. (open top) version of their original tool bags.The bag in this video was actually given to me years ago as a Christmas gift and I thought this could work as my primary tool bag. This is their O.T. (open top) X.L. (extra large) bag which I use as my primary everyday tools bag. These bags are so well made that these are the only tool bags I will use and I own approx nine different versions. Pricey? yes, but well worth the investment. I’ll leave a link at the end of this post.

My Old Tool Bag!
My Old Tool Bag!
As you can see in the video I manage to pack a lot of stuff into this bag, with the exception of myhacksaw which is clamped to the side of the bag. I’ve reached out to the company to possibly produce a bag specifically for plumbers and they’ve been very receptive to the idea. They do currently make a O.T. (open Top) X.X.L. (extra large) bag, but I can tell you these get very heavy to lug around, so make sure you really need all that stuff before you commit to purchasing one of these. As you can see on the bench, I fit quite a bit more that you can see initially when the bag is upright. This is my everyday plumbing service bag, and for me it works. Do you as a homeowner need all these tools to perform base home plumbing repair? Absolutely not!

I’ve laid out for you what I consider to be a bare basic list of tools you’ll need if you want to tackle basic home plumbing repairs. I like to call it Bob’s Basic Tools (BBT) for home plumbing repair. Now some may say it ‘s not enough while others say it’s to much, but after 35 plus years in the game of plumbing service and repair, I feel these are the basic tools you’re going to need to get the job done.Check out the entire video and tell me what you think! If you think I missed something or need to add something, I’d love to hear from you. You can always reach me at info@bobsplumbingvideos.com. I look forward to seeing you in my next video, until next time HAPPY PLUMBING!

Here’s the link to my Veto ProPac O.T.X.L. – http://amzn.to/1Dm1K99

The No Brainer Home Plumbing Inspection Checklist. (NBHPIC)

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If you’re new to BobsPlumbingVideos.com, you must be saying hey this guy hasn’t published any new content since march 2015. What’s up with that? Well, you would be correct so please let me explain. If you’re not aware, in addition to publishing “how to” plumbing videos I also own and operate my own one man plumbing company Robert Sessa Plumbing. A scaled-down version of the original plumbing company I founded in 1978 and sold to my employees in 2004.

shutterstock_148975631So while shooting videos is something I love to do, I’m often out in the field performing plumbing work for people just like you. But that’s not the only reason I’ve fallen behind on my video production. In my everyday plumbing practice I make my best effort to convince my customers to allow me to perform preventive maintenance at least once annually. This accomplishes two things, a. I locate small issues before they turn into plumbing disasters, b. I save them a boat load of money in doing so.

Now I must tell you that most homeowners don’t see the value preventive maintenance, they’ll say things like “I don’t have a problem” I’ll worry about it when it breaks! That’s ridiculous! But for the ones that let me do my thing for them every year, they have the peace of mind knowing that if there are issues brewing, I’ll find them and correct the problem before it gets out of hand. Now this annual inspection is a walk thru visual inspection of all the exposed plumbing in a typical one-family home. It includes the bathrooms, kitchens, laundry room, the water and waste system and finally the water heater.

If this is my very first inspection in a customer’s home, I always locate multiple problems they weren’t even aware of. The result, they save a boat load of money by avoiding a potential emergency. So I said to myself, what if I could record a series of videos to show homeowners the value in preventive maintenance and walk them thru the exact procedure I use when performing these inspections.Not only will they save money by locating small problems before they go bad, but they’ll also save the cost of the annual inspection which is a $300.00 value. The No Brainer Home Plumbing Inspection Checklist was born!

So I set out on a mission to create this video series which is a combination of a keynote presentation, video demonstrations, screencast demonstrations and PDF’s. Between the all four along with the editing required to put it all together, it’s taken me just about eight months to produce (hey I’m Plumber, not a videographer). So my regular video production has taken a back seat. Oh and yes all the while trying to operate my small little one-man plumbing business. Well, the No Brainer Home Plumbing Inspection Checklist is finally complete and as a matter of fact I’m currently running a series of Face-Book ads whereby you can download the five module video series for FREE before it goes on sale. All I’m asking in return is for your honest review and testimonial of the product.

flooded.lounge.12.08.2015I would love for 20 of you to download and give me your honest opinion, review and or critique of the No Brainer Home Plumbing Inspection Checklist before I launch it for sale. As my way of saying thanks, you’ll automatically gain access into my private facebook group and also receive lifetime updates as I refine the process. All you need to do is e-mail me privately and enter into the subject line “NBHPIC” and I’ll forward you a link where you can gain access to all five modules. As of this writing, I haven’t set a selling price for the “NBHPIC” but I can tell you this. You won’t spend $300.00 to have me come out to your home and perform this inspection. Heck, you won’t even spend $100 for the five video modules! The “NBHPIC” will cost you less than a weeks worth of your favorite latte’s from those fancy coffee boutiques.

Well there you have it, that’s what I’ve been up to and now it”s time to start cranking out some more valuable content so you can keep the plumber out of your life! Up next a look into my personal tool bag. A lot of you have been asking about the tools I carry on a daily basis, so I recorded the video and show you exactly what I lug around day in and day out. I also give you my thoughts on what you as a homeowner should have on hand if you want to do you own minor plumbing repairs. I call it Bob’s Basic Tools or (BBT) for short. I look forward to hearing your review of the “NBHPIC” and until next time, HAPPY PLUMBING!

How not to hire a plumber!

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Ok so maybe you’ve decided that being your own plumber is not for you and you would just like to call a pro and get it taken care of. Great!

So you open up your local yellow pages or do an Internet search of your local area and are overwhelmed with the choices you have. “How do I know which one to choose, are they expensive, do they know what they’re doing, will they come back if there is a problem?”

These are key questions that need to be addressed, but unfortunately you won’t really know unless you pull the trigger and call one right? Maybe if you like to gamble!

In my 30 plus years experience, it is my opinion that the worst sources for finding qualified trade people are the yellow pages or the Internet.
Unfortunately, anyone can produce a print ad or have a website and truthfully, you as a consumer have no way of knowing whether what is printed or published is fact or fiction.
Unfortunately, most yellow page publications and or web developers do very little to verify ad content and just go with whatever they’re told.

Back before the Internet became huge, the yellow pages was the primary source for plumbers and drain cleaners to get their message out there. Even though they were supposed to verify trade licenses from the local buildings department before printing their books, they rarely followed through and the proof was seen when the books were published.

There were pages of unlicensed contractors and the public really had no way of knowing who they were hiring.

Your best bet when looking for qualified trade people is to always to ask friends, family or neighbors for referrals. Ask how they were treated, did the job go as planned, did they stand behind their work, did they quote you a firm flat rate before proceeding with the work? If you like the answers you get, then the next step is to interview the company and ask for referrals of satisfied customers they have recently serviced.

A well qualified company will gladly give you referrals and if they don’t, then it’s time to move on and find one who will. Keep in mind that all plumbers are required by law to be licensed by your local buildings department. They are required to carry mandatory liability insurance and if they have employees, workers compensation and disability insurance as well. I’m in the New York City area and because I perform minor renovations in addition to my plumbing services, I’m also required to carry and to hold a current Home Improvement Contractors license issued by the department of consumer affairs.

If you do decide it’s time to hire a plumber, make sure they are LICENSED. It’s your only recourse if things go wrong! Trust me the last thing I want is to get a call from my local buildings department regarding a consumer complaint!

If you still have questions about hiring a plumber, please drop me a line at www.bobsplumbingvideos.com, I’ll be glad to steer you in the right direction!

Happy Plumbing!