Best Plumbing Tools

Every homeowner knows that along with the joys of owning a home come the dreaded horrors of plumbing upkeep and repair in your home.  While hiring the professional for certain household repairs would probably be the wisest move, some of you prefer to be do-it-yourselfers.  That said, you need to have your arsenal of tools up to par.  Particular tasks, such as plumbing, require some specific tools.

 

Get the right wrenches!  Depending on the date of building of your house or place of business, the type of piping in your walls may vary.  If perchance you have copper piping, a regular wrench will twist and destroy the pipes, and you will have more work on your hands than you originally planned.  You will need two wrenches, both with super strong grips, such as a self-adjusting crescent wrench and telescoping basin wrench.  When you get ready to loosen a nut, one goes on the nut and the other on the threaded end of the pipe.  Loosen the nut while countering the force with the other wrench so that the piping doesn’t take the strain.  Then, you’re golden!

 

Pipe and tubing cutters are a must!  Let’s say you have a nut and pipe situation where you are replacing some piping, but your new piece is too long.  You need pipe cutters to cut the pipe to size.  Different options are available to you at your local hardware stores, such as pipe shears or the compact, crescent-shaped cutters that work on copper and PVC.

 

Arm yourself with a plunger.  Let’s have a “duh” moment for a bit.  A plunger is one of the most fundamental tools to have in your plumbing arsenal.  Sometimes a plunger will be the only thing you need to unclog that toilet or drain.  You may as well get a good one with excellent suction power for those blockages that are doozies!

 

Invest in a hand grabbing tool.  No, a hand grabbing tool doesn’t grab your hand!  It acts as an extension of your arm and hand to reach down into those nasty, narrow places that your hands will not fit into (think down in the toilet neck or deep into the shower drain).  If your toddler flushes your keys down the toilet, a hand grabbing tool just might be able to get those bad boys out of there without you having to get your own real hands nasty.

 

Iron Pipe Wrenches make life easier.  Not all piping in your home is fragile like copper piping.  Some pipes are made of stout iron and will not be easily loosened or tightened securely without lots of muscle power.  In these cases, you will need the sturdy iron pipe wrench to give you a bit more leverage and muscle to loosen or secure those pipes well.

 

Many other plumbing tools line the shelves of your local hardware store awaiting your desperate need for them.  For starters, the above-listed tools should get help for those projects that the handy do-it-yourselfer wants to tackle.