How to stop a leak until the plumber arrives

Waking up in the middle of the night to water running when it shouldn’t or coming home after work to find that your bathroom has been flooded is scary. When this happens, you will likely immediately be on the phone with a plumbing company to ask for someone to leak repair in Colombes.

But what if they can’t go out for a few hours or maybe even until the next morning? What do you do when you have a leak but the plumber won’t be there for a while? Here are some tips to stop the leak until a plumber can repair your pipe.

Close the main water valve

This one is the most obvious, but during a plumbing emergency, you may not think about it even though there is a lot of water leaking in your house. So if possible, turn off the water.

Although this means you won’t be able to use other faucets, you may be able to avoid further damage, especially if it’s a large leak. It’s important to know how to turn off the water in your home, so before it becomes a problem, you need to familiarize yourself with water shutoffs in your home.

Get a Pipe Wrap to Fix a Leaking Pipe

Pipe wraps are not a permanent solution if you have a leaking pipe, but they can help prevent water from causing further damage to your home until a plumber can arrive and provide a solution. permed.

You can purchase pipe tape at your local home improvement store. These wraps are suitable for both leaks at pipe joints and leaks in the middle of pipes. The casing is made of fiberglass, which is wrapped tightly around the pipe.

Then, when the pipe gets wet, the wrap will shrink and harden to the pipe as it dries, causing the leak to stop. These wraps can last a few days, up to a few weeks if necessary. But again, they are not meant to be a permanent solution.

Use epoxy

Epoxy is a very strong glue that can help stop a leak. Keeping plumber’s epoxy in your home repair kit, especially if you don’t have a pipe wrap, is always a great idea. To use, simply turn off the water and wipe down the area of ​​the pipe around the leak.

Then mix the two-part epoxy and apply it to the area. If you have plumber’s tape around your house, you can wrap it over the epoxy for good measure.

It can take up to 24 hours for the epoxy to fully cure, so it’s a good idea to leave the water off for a while just to make sure the glue is completely dry and the water doesn’t won’t flow around it.

Using Plumbing Tape on Water Pipes

Plumbing tape is made of silicone and can be particularly useful if the leak is at the joint of two pipes. If you are using repair tape, you must first turn off the water and wipe down the pipe to make sure the tape sticks to it.

If the leak is small, like a pinhole, you can wrap several layers around the area. If it is a joint, you will need to wrap the joint on both sides to make sure you have covered the area.

Repair tape will only last a few days, so it is only recommended to use it if you know for sure that a plumber is arriving on a certain day, otherwise you may end up with water leaking through tape.

It is important to remember that all of these solutions are really just temporary solutions and you need to call a master plumber to fix the leak permanently so as not to cause more damage to your home in the long term.

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