Twenty useful plumbing tips for an Indian home, from the people who fix the leaks

Short, practical, and learned the hard way. Each one is something a plumber on TheHire has told a customer more than once. Save this; most of it costs nothing.

Emergencies

1. Find the valves before you need them. The angle valve under each fitting, the isolation valve for each bathroom, the tank outlet on the roof. Turn each one once a year so it does not seize. If a fitting has no angle valve, one is ₹200 plus ₹150–₹600 for the valve, and it is the best plumbing money in the house.
2. A sprayed tap is the angle valve, not the tank. Reach under, turn it off, and the emergency is over. Climbing to the roof to close the tank is for when there is no valve.
3. Do not flush a blocked toilet twice. The second flush is the water on the floor. Plunge it with a proper seal. If that fails, it is ₹600 and the plumber brings an auger.
4. Switch the geyser off at the wall before touching its pipes. A weep at the inlet is ₹400 to remake; a shock from a geyser with bad earthing is the electrician's emergency, and water running on it is how the two meet.
5. A damp patch below is the overnight test first. Every tap closed, tank level marked at night, read in the morning. A drop is the supply side and the plumber finds it at ₹1,500; no drop is the drain or the waterproofing, and nobody needs to break a tile yet.

Money

6. Group the small jobs. A tap, a flush and a slow drain in one call is cheaper than three calls. One ₹250 visit charge, usually waived, and a discount from the fourth item.
7. Repair before replace. A dripping tap is a ₹200 cartridge, not a ₹250 tap. A running flush is a ₹350 valve, not a ₹700 cistern. Ask what the smaller fix would be.
8. Buy brass, by weight. A brass tap or angle valve is noticeably heavy in the hand; a zinc one is not. The zinc one pits through in hard water in a few years.
9. Carry the trap distance. The gap from the wall to the centre of the WC outlet, usually about 4, 8.5 or 12 inches. Buy a WC that matches and the ₹1,500 job is a morning; buy one that does not and it is an offset connector and a weak flush forever.
10. Replace GI by the metre, not by the joint. Every joint on old galvanised pipe crumbles when touched. ₹120 per metre exposed, once, is cheaper than ₹450 every few months.
11. Ask for the material bill. It tells you the brand and the class of what is in the wall, and it is what a warranty claim and a matching cartridge need.
12. Clean the tank twice a year. ₹1,200 for up to a thousand litres, before and after the monsoon. The sediment in the tank is what blocks aerators, sticks floats and scales the geyser; the clean is cheaper than all three.

Daily life

13. Pour a mug of water into every floor trap after a trip. A dry trap is why the bathroom smells when you come back. It seals again at once.
14. Unscrew and rinse the tap aerators once a month in tanker season. Weak flow from one tap is almost always scale in the aerator, and the fix is free.
15. Nothing but water and paper down the WC. Wipes, sanitary products and hair are the ₹600 call. A small bin by every WC costs less than one visit.
16. Keep grease out of the kitchen sink. Wipe pans before washing. The bottle trap under the sink unscrews by hand for cleaning; a plumber's visit for a greased trap is ₹400.
17. Close taps gently. A tap snapped shut on a long run is the bang in the wall, and the bang loosens a joint over years.
18. Lift the floor-trap grating when you clean the bathroom. Hair out, grating back. It takes a minute and it is the ₹450 call avoided.
19. Photograph the inside of the cistern once. The plumber on the phone can see which valve you have and bring the right one.
20. Label the valves. A marker on the wall beside each isolation valve: "bathroom 1", "kitchen", "geyser". The next midnight emergency is a ten-second job.

Four for people who own the house

21. Fit an isolation valve on every bathroom line. One bathroom shut for a repair instead of the whole house dry for the afternoon. A small job on an exposed line; ask for it at the next visit.
22. Insist on the pressure test before tiles. For any concealed line or new bathroom, the plumber fills the line, puts a gauge on it, and holds it for the afternoon with you watching. A ₹12,000 bathroom without this is a leak with a date on it.
23. Get the inspection report before you buy or rent. ₹700 for a plumber to test every fitting, the pressure, the drains and the overnight loss and write it down. It is the cheapest thing in the transaction.
24. Book the annual visit in April. Tank cleaned, valves turned, traps cleared, joints checked, chamber lifted, the overnight test done. Houses that have this done do not call in the rains.

Four for the top floor

25. Weak shower? Check the aerator and the angle valve before buying a pump. Both are free. The pump is ₹900 on the water side plus the electrician's point.
26. If a pump goes in, check the geyser's bar rating. A pump raises the pressure on everything; a 6 bar geyser on a pumped line weeps at the inlet. 8 bar is the rating for a pumped or high-rise line.
27. Raise the tank before pumping it. Another metre of stand is another metre of head to every floor, needs no power and makes no noise. The plumber will say whether the slab can take it.
28. The relief valve drip is normal; a stream is not. A few drops from the geyser's small outlet while heating is the water expanding. A steady stream means the inlet pressure is above the rating and a pressure-reducing valve is needed.

Related tips you might want next

The borewell and the sump are the borewell contractor's: the pump, the yield, the silt. What happens past the inspection chamber is the septic and drain service's. The tanker that fills the sump in summer is its own trade, with its own guide. And the geyser is half electrical: the point, the earthing and the element. The guides for those four trades pick up where these tips stop.