Your Bathroom and its Fixtures:
How to Care for and Maintain Your Bathroom’s Plumbing
What care and maintenance does your bathroom need and why is it important?
Most of us start and end our day in the bathroom. We brush our teeth before work and unwind in the shower afterward, often making stops in between. Keeping your bathroom running smoothly keeps your routine on track as well. While using your bathroom to take care of yourself, don’t forget to take care of your bathroom, too. Your faucets, sink, toilet, and drains require care and maintenance to extend their lives and continue working properly. What does this care and maintenance look like?
Preventing and Repairing Clogs
What are the most important fixtures in your bathroom? Most people would say your toilet or shower. Clogs in your toilet and shower drain stop them from being able to work properly. Preventing clogs doesn’t need to be difficult! Be mindful about what you attempt to flush or rinse down the drain and familiarize yourself with the signs of a clog forming.
In your sink and shower, place a drain strainer over or in your drain. Almost everyone has pulled a mess of hair from their shower drain or dealt with a slow drain caused by hair that cannot easily be pulled out. A shower strainer allows water to drain while catching any other items being rinsed off your body. Strainers are particularly helpful during warmer months when outdoor adventures leave you covered in mud, grass, or other debris.
Never flush any items besides waste and toilet paper down the toilet. It is a common misconception that tissues, napkins, and paper towels can be flushed since they’re paper products. Unlike toilet paper, these items aren’t meant to break down in the water. They stay intact and collect together inside your pipes until a clog forms. Menstrual products, floss, hair, and cotton swabs are other common culprits of toilet clogs. Children often flush items that cause clogging. Do not leave children unattended in the bathroom;utilize toilet lid locks and childproof bathroom doors to prevent this.
Despite our best efforts, clogs do still happen. How will you know a clog is forming? Sight, sound, and smell. Watch your drains when you run your sink or shower and your toilet bowl when you flush. A clog is going to prevent these drains from working efficiently. If water is draining slowly in your sink or shower, a clog is likely causing the drain to narrow. The same thing applies to your toilet. If a clog is forming or already has formed, not all the waste and toilet paper will exit the bowl on the first flush, and the bowl will take longer than usual to refill. Keep an ear out for any bubbling noises you hear before or after flushing or using a drain in your bathroom. Bubbling or gurgling noises indicate gas bubbles are unable to escape through the clog. You can also expect these gas bubbles to produce a rotten or sewer-like smell. Any unusual sights, sounds, or smells in your bathroom should be considered.
Some clogs need to be dislodged by a professional, but you can try to dislodge others at home. Avoid using Drano and similar products. Products like these clear clogs but corrode pipes causing more damage in the long run. Use a plunger with a flange to help create a tighter seal around the drain. Running the plunger under hot water softens the rubber and creates a tight seal. Push the plunger down slowly then pull back abruptly. You may need to try several times. Pay attention to how often clogs are occurring in your drains and toilets. Frequent clogs indicate a blockage deeper in your pipes that require professional help.
Recognizing and Preventing Hard Water Damage
Hard water is water with high levels of minerals in it. Minerals in hard water are deposited onto the surfaces it flows over, leaving behind residue. Areas like Monroe County have very hard water. This means our water is particularly high in things like calcium and lime. Over time, residue will build up and become visible after so much water flows over a surface. Spots found on dishes, faucets, and sinks are caused by small amounts of this residue. Those surfaces are washed frequently and don’t have time to allow the residue to build up. The same cannot be said for the insides of faucets and drains.
Take a look inside your faucets. You may see a white substance or flakes within the faucet. What you’re seeing is hard water build-up. It affects the taste and quality of your water. You can see the results in your faucets, but you cannot see the effects in your drains and pipes. Like plaque in an artery, build-up eventually gets too thick for water to pass through. Once this happens, the pipe or drain needs to be replaced. The effects of hard water in your bathroom don’t stop at your faucets and drains! Hard water build-up accumulates inside your toilet, preventing it from flushing properly. Take a look inside your toilet tank. Hard water build-up corrodes the pieces used to control your toilet flushing. When left unchecked, hard water build-up leads to needing an entirely new toilet.
A water softening system prevents this from happening. Water softening systems can be used where the water enters your home or on specific fixtures. A whole home water softening system will soften water as it flows through your main water line. Point-of-use softening systems can be placed in your bathroom to specifically target your bathroom fixtures.
Checking for Leaks
A water leak can waste nearly 10,000 gallons of water a year. Letting a leak in your bathroom go without intervention wastes water and drives up your water bill. Leaks can occur in your toilet, drains, and faucets. Check periodically for leaks in your bathroom.
Leaks can occur in your toilet, drains, and faucets. A water leak can waste nearly 10,000 gallons of water a year. Letting a leak in your bathroom go without intervention wastes water and drives up your water bill. Check periodically for leaks in your bathroom.
To check for leaks in your toilet, you can use a common household item, food coloring. Darker colors such as purple, red, or blue work best for this. Lift the lid on the toilet tank and drop 4 to 5 drops of food coloring into the water. After 15 to 20 minutes, look inside the toilet bowl. Is the color of the water tinted the same color as the food coloring? If it is, there is a leak in your flapper valve. The flapper valve is a rubber plug that controls water going into the bowl when you flush. A leak means the bowl is filling when it shouldn’t. While checking for leaks in the toilet, look behind and at the base of it. The average toilet will last up to 50 years with proper use and maintenance. Towards the end of that 50 years, or sooner, if the toilet hasn’t always been used properly or maintained, leaks can start where the toilet meets the floor. Contact a plumber to investigate if you find a leak in or around your toilet.
Faucet leaks average around 4 gallons of water wasted per day. Those small drips add up! Several things can cause a leaking faucet. When your faucet begins to leak, you may need to replace the entire faucet or just an O-ring, washer, valve, or cartridge. These pieces in the faucet keep the faucet in place and control water flow. Age and corrosion can wear these pieces down, preventing them from doing their job. As a result, the faucet begins to leak.
Leaks within drains may make themselves known through wet spots in ceilings or walls. You want to find them before this happens. Periodically take a look under your sink. Do you see any water dripping or wet spots? Leaks would cause this. In your shower, you may hear a noise similar to water trickling. Similar to in your faucets, age and sediment build-up cause holes and cracks in your pipes, leading to leaks. If you see or hear anything stranger under your sink or in your shower, call a plumber.
Your bathroom is one of the most important rooms in your home. Pride Plumbing is here to help keep it in tip-top shape. Early intervention can be key to preventing larger, more costly repairs. Be mindful of what you flush or rinse down drains, take preventative measures against hard water, and periodically look for leaks. When something seems off, don’t hesitate to call or reach out online!
