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Found 54 results for the keyword ‘Pipes’

  • Plumbing noises and Water Hammer

    Scott in Grand Falls, NF has a loud banging noise in his pipes every time he shuts off a faucet. In some plumbing systems when a faucet or an automatic valve like in a washing machine stops the water too fast, it tries to keep going and you get a banging sound throughout the house. The pipes are...
  • OVERVIEW: Frozen pipes: Tracing, thawing, preventing.

    As weather patterns change we are getting longer colder periods than traditionally in many areas of the country -- and with that, more and more complaints of water pipes freezing. Finding the frozen point can be difficult, thawing it can be problematic but if you have done those two, go one step ...
  • Softening water -- do electronic water softeners work?

    John from Halifax wrote in asking about replacing his salt based water softener with an electronic water softener to make it easier to water his lawn.   Note 2020: I originally wrote this article in 2004 and many products have come and gone since then.  I recently received several requests to l...
  • What temperature should a house be when you are gone for the winter?

    Jim from London, Ontario is wondering what temperature he should leave his thermostat while he migrates south for the winter. The short answer is 55 degrees F, or about 12 degrees C. That should keep the pipes from freezing, keep the humidity under control, keep the furniture from going through ...
  • Why do plumbing washers have letters and numbers on them?

    I don't really have an answer to the question, but I can help you to understand what they mean. We could find no plumber, nor plumbing manufacturer who could actually tell us the origin of the plumbing code for rubber washers. My guess is that it probably had something to do with the inside diam...
  • Getting hot water to a remote sink -- fast

    Here is one that I answered one year , and found a better answer a year later.   GETTING THE HEATER CLOSER TO THE FAUCET In 2003 a viewer asked me about how to get hot water to that back bedroom because they have to run the water for two or three minutes before the hot water arrives from the b...
  • Stopping Plumbing Floods & Flood Alarms

    I like to look at history and tell stories, but if you are not the type that likes to read a lot and all you want is to control your water flow – jump down to the best plumbing flow control systems to date:  my experience with AquaTrip (from Australia and no longer available in Canada) and the ne...
  • The low flush toilet controversy & MaP toilet testing

    (This is a real good example of a living history. I wrote the first part of this entry in 2001. With a book you would have to wait for the next edition for developments. With a bulletin board you would have to read a lot of old entries. What I love about my web site is that I can change, adapt an...
  • Does your soldering job leak? Why is lead-free solder hard to work with? And new products to make life easier.

    They took the lead out... Several years ago, throughout North America lead was removed from the solder used for making joints in copper pipes intended for carrying drinking water, just as before that we had removed lead from paint. Lead based solder is still available in stores for other tasks, ...
  • How do you solder copper pipes?

    There are three key steps to making leak proof copper pipe joints.     Clean off both the inside of the elbow and the outside of the pipe with steel wool or a special cleaner tool.     Apply a soldering flux to both cleaned surfaces. The cleaning gets rid of contaminates and oxidation o...