If you own a house, apartment, or condo, the chances are good that you will run into a plumbing problem at some point. There are always great professional plumbing companies like WorksPlumbing that you can contact if that happens. However, maybe you’re the sort of person who would prefer to try some DIY plumbing solutions instead of calling in the pros.
How can you know whether you’re equipped to handle a plumbing issue on your own or whether you’re better off calling a plumber to do the job for you? We’ll explain how to answer that question in the following article.
What’s Your Background as It Relates to Plumbing?
The first thing you should ask yourself as a homeowner if you encounter a plumbing problem is what kind of background you have regarding plumbing and DIY projects. Maybe you come from a blue-collar background. You might have a plumber in the family or more than one. If that is the case, these individuals might have taught you some plumbing repair basics as you were growing up.
If that’s true, you’re probably better equipped to deal with the problem on your own than someone who has never tried to fix anything around the house. This is not to say that you can’t learn how to fix some minor plumbing issues on your own. However, if you already know a little bit about plumbing and how to correct some minor problems you might encounter, you’re probably in a better position than someone who has never attempted anything like this before.
How Big of a Problem Does This Seem to Be?
You might also decide whether to hire a plumber based on how large of a problem you’ve encountered. For instance, maybe all that’s happening is you have a leaky faucet in your kitchen or bathroom. If so, you might be able to correct the problem with a few simple turns of a wrench. Perhaps your toilet is clogged. Using a plunger or a snake to unclog it may take just a few moments of your time.
It makes sense to know how to unclog a backed-up toilet if you’re a homeowner. That’s the kind of DIY project you can often handle on your own, saving yourself the money you’d have to spend if you called a plumber. If you’re looking at a huge wet spot in the ceiling that’s spreading alarmingly fast, that’s something else again. Anything along those lines, and you’re better off calling a professional plumber with no delays.
You might take pride in your ability to handle DIY home repair or improvement projects, and that’s fine. Having a DIY mentality can save you some money, and if you watch a few YouTube videos, you can often pick up some practical skills that will get you far as a homeowner.
You need to know when it makes more sense to call someone in with professional training, though. There’s no shame in calling for help if you have a repair job on your hands that you can’t reasonably handle.
Has This Issue Ever Happened Before?
You might have an issue like a stopped-up toilet or a dripping faucet. These are the kinds of problems that you might feel okay trying to fix on your own. If you have the proper tools, watching a simple internet video might teach you everything that you ought to know, assuming you didn’t get lessons from a family member when you were younger.
However, maybe you’ve done what you can to fix these problems, but they keep recurring. Perhaps you’re getting to the point where you have to keep unstopping the toilet every couple of days, or that persistent drip from your kitchen faucet doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
If so, that’s another time when you’re better off swallowing your pride and calling a plumber. You might want to save money, but if you’ve done what you can to fix the problem, and it doesn’t seem to be working, getting someone with more experience to come take a look is the next logical move.
How Much Money Do You Have?
How much money you have available is one final consideration when trying to determine whether or not to call a plumber. If you have unlimited financial resources and you’re not a DIY sort of person, you might contact the pros whenever you see anything wrong happening with your pipes. Most people are on a budget, though, and if you don’t have a ton of extra money right now, you might think about trying to fix the problem yourself if it doesn’t seem all that challenging.
Again, this is a situation where you need to look at how serious the problem appears to be. If the issue seems minor, and you feel confident you can handle it on your own, you might do that for financial reasons. If your money is tight, you’ll probably want to call a professional as a last resort. Even if you don’t have a ton of excess money, though, if you’ve run into a plumbing problem that’s obviously serious and too much for you to handle on your own, you’ll have little choice but to get some outside help. Regardless of how much it costs, if you’re dealing with something like a burst pipe, you can’t afford to wait.
If you’re experiencing a leaky faucet or clogged drain, you may want to consider hiring a professional plumber frisco to diagnose and fix the issue.
Some plumbing companies will cut you a break if you tell them that you don’t have a lot of money at the moment. Perhaps they will let you pay them back over a period of weeks or months. Failing that, maybe you can reach out to a relative. You might contact a bank or credit union for an emergency loan. You’ll need to factor in everything that we’ve mentioned if you run into a plumbing problem. Once you look at the situation objectively, you should be able to figure out whether contacting a plumber is the best move.
