The most common repairs.

 

Your phone rings. You can see from the caller ID that it is your tenant.  You start to sweat.  Your fingers and chest start to tingle.  Wait you think.  Maybe, just maybe, they won the lottery and want to pay you three times what the house is worth.  Maybe they struck oil in the backyard like the Beverly Hillbillies. Don’t hold your breath.  I honestly cannot remember a call that just made my day from a tenant.  But, this is what you do as a landlord.  Fix things.  In twenty plus years of doing this I have seen most of the repairs tenants can generate.  There are some recurring themes.  Run of the mill calls that you, as a landlord, can fix and save yourself some bucks. I have been reluctant to name product manufacturers by name but let me make an exception. Readers Digest has a book called New Fix-It-Yourself Manual.  This is a very well written, easily understandable book.  It will explain all those little things I may miss.  Buy a copy.

 

Number one problem will be garbage dispose all.  For some reason tenants think you can put anything down there. Let me tell you how to fix one from beginning to end.  They are simple machines and only a few things can go wrong with them. Unless they are all together dead. First try to turn it on. Listen carefully.  If it sounds like someone putting a pit-bull through a leaf shredder there is something in there.  TURN IT OFF (sorry I am from the South and some of us have to be told everything) reach in carefully, it might be sharp, and pull it out.  If it makes a faint humming sound then something has jammed it completely.  This is slightly safer.  Again turn it off and get a broom handle or a stick and try to turn the plate at the bottom of the unit.  What you are trying to do is wedge your stick against one of the teeth and free up or rotate the plate.  This is the inside of a garbage disposal.  See the two things that look like space ships.  Those are the grinding teeth.  Most commonly something will be wedged between the plate at the bottom and the housing.  The housing is the ring with the gaps running around the edge.

So if you tried all this and still nothing it is probably dead.  Do yourself a favor.  If you replace a disposal try to use the same brand.  It will make the job far more simple.  And remember to remove the plug if you will be hooking up your dishwasher drain to the unit.  There will be a plug made of plastic inside the dishwasher connection.  Break it out with a hammer and screwdriver.  Your dishwasher will not drain unless you do this.  

ALL ABOUT PLUMBING

 

Alright everyone this is the part we all hate.  It is one of the jobs that can literally be described as crappy. The old plumbers saying is “sh*t runs downhill and don’t bite your nails” truly applies to this area. That being said basic plumbing is a fairly strait forward affair.  There are not too many rules unless you want to be a real plumber for a living. Do not take it lightly, the average plumber makes a good living for a good reason.  It takes a long time to be a GOOD plumber and there is a lot to learn.  It takes very little time to learn to be a fair plumber and I will try to spell out all the little things that make you competent to fix your minor problems.  Let me admit to a small issue here I have with most over the counter drain openers.  Most I have seen work poorly if at all.  Maybe they work on the drain issues for some but I have been called out and had tenants tell me “I put 4 bottles of stuff in there and it’s still clogged up” more times than I care to think about.  If it is still in the drain lines you will get it on you and it can hurt you.  When I have to resort to a drain opening chemical I will only use the strongest stuff that is very hard to find.  It comes in a plastic bottle sealed in a clear plastic bag. This is serious stuff and you MUST follow the directions TO THE LETTER.  It will bubble back up the line, sometimes violently.  It will stain all matter of brass, copper, and stainless steel.  So if you use this stuff please BE CAREFUL.

 

Your toilet is your friend.  Especially if you are a man in your 50’s .  Your tenant’s toilet is the enemy.  You may or may not wish to fight this battle yourself.  Like all generals you must decide if this is below your paygrade.  You may wish to hire mercinaries to handle this.  Like I said I always wanted to save the money so I put myself in harms way for the cause.  Ok, sorry about all of that but this is the worst part of this job if you do it yourself.  It is one of the worst parts of this business if you pay someone else.  Honestly they don’t really want to do it either.  Most problems with stopped up toilets will be handled with a plunger.  The regular old fashioned plunger.  Most of the time your tenant will have tried this and gotten nowhere.  Thus the call to you.  I certainly try again with a plunger before anything else.  Ok allow me to digress and disagree with the experts again.  I have talked to several plumbers, one a master plumber from New York City, who told me the purpose of a plunger is to get whatever is clogging the toilet back up the line and into the bowl.  I don’t know about you, but even if it is mine I don’t really want it back. By the way he said the whole alligators in the sewers was crap.  Well if that fails your next best step is a tool called a CLOSET AUGER. 

 

Then you will insert this into the toilet.  The sleeve keeps the snake from staining or damaging your toilet bowl

Ok now all you have to do is slowly feed the snake extension into the toilet while cranking the handle.  I have seen plumbers really crank these things hard but do use some caution as breaking your toilet will not solve the problem.