Top 5 Plumbing Tools Every Homeowner Should Own (Before You Call a Plumber.

These top five tools will save you both time, money, and frustration as a homeowner. Let's get into it. When I get a call and I got to do any sort of plumbing work, whether it's on my own house or another house or at work, these are what I always grab. These are what I always have on me that'll help me solve 99% of my problems. Whether you're doing brand new installs or just quick fixes, this is what we need. Let's get into it. Water pump pliers, whatever you want to call it. They have saved me more times than not on many different things. And the tighter that I squeeze, the better off it's going to grip. So, you open those bad boys up flush. Whether it's your can right here, here, you just grip it on and loosen it or you got to grab a connection. Loosen and tighten. Number one tool when it comes to plumbing. Let's move on to number two. >> [snorts] >> My number two tool when it comes to plumbing, adjustable wrenches. All different sizes of them. You can get this kit at Harbor Freight. Four different sizes of them. Anywhere from the big ass ones to the teeny tiny ones. When it comes to plumbing, I always seem to be grabbing the small adjustable. And I always keep adjustable on me all day anyways. Whether it's changing out welding bottles or tightening fittings underneath sinks or loose bolts somewhere on a piece of machinery, an adjustable will get me really far. I don't have to go back and forth to the toolbox to grab the correct socket or whatever I may need. And I always try to keep two of them on me. I always keep a little bitty one for welding bottles or or small little fittings like this. just get on there and turn. I don't really use the big one too often unless I know that I need it, so I keep it around, but I always try to keep either I keep the small one on me. And obviously this one, it's torn up. This is This has been the perfect size for about everything that I've done. So, adjustable wrenches is number two on the list. Let's check out number three. Number three on the list has got to be the miter box. You can do so much with this stuff. You can cut trim with it. You can cut PVC with it. Whatever you can fit in this miter box, you can basically cut. So, a little demonstration here. You're going to have your piece of PVC. This is just a little cut off that I have. And then you got bunch of different angles. Your 45s are your straight cut. So, basically, throw this in there where you want. Take your Sharpie and mark where you want to cut. Right now, I'm going to straighten up this crooked ass cut that I got. So, we're just going to throw a mark there. Put this in your miter box. Put a tight grip on it like [snorts] and then just cut. So, now that we got this piece cut, we're going to clean off the edges. You just take my fingers to it like this. You can take a you can take a knife if in there and just kind of scrape out your your shards even on the outside if you got some high spots like so. You ain't got to be too particular about it as PVC. That's our miter box. That's number three on the list. Number four tool on the list is a very unique tool not many people know about is your sink basin wrench. This allows you to grip bolts in weird places. So basically this can go up underneath a sink, put your jaws around the bolt and then tighten or loosen your water connections as needed. Same with getting into a wall at a fitting. put this on there and tighten it so when you're under a sink, you're not getting all pissed off. Sink basin wrench is my number four tool. Let's move on to number five. So, my number five tool, I think I'm kind of going to cheat a little bit here. You guys can blow me up in the comments. I really don't care, but I think I'm kind of going to cheat. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to throw a a few different tools at you that I kind of wrapped up into number five. You have your core four, your pliers, your adjustable, your sink base and wrench. Um, and then you have your other 10 tools that we've already gone through in this series, whether it's your drill, your screwdriver, or your tape measure. So, when you're cutting pipe, you grab your tape measure, mark it out. This is one of our tools that would work for plumbing, but we already used it. So, I'm going to add a couple tools to this number five category. My first one on the list is going to be a copper tubing cutter. This is going to come in handy as a homeowner if you have copper tubing. So, here we have our piece of copper tubing and our cutter, whether it's a big cutter or a little cutter. This is for tight spaces. This is for [snorts] much bigger spaces. Basically, you're going to open this up. You're going to put your piece of copper wherever you mark your line at. I don't have a line marked, but wherever you have your line marked at, put it in there. Now, the the main thing with cutting is that your big wheel is going to chase your little wheel. So, spin it around. And every spin, you just want to tighten this knob slowly. Not too much to where you're going to crush your copper, but just enough to where you can cut. See, I'm starting to cut that line right there. So, just keep on turning. Tighten. And there you have it, a perfectly cut piece of copper tubing. Now, right before you go to solder this copper tubing, you're going to want to clean it up a little bit. So, this is where your wire brush comes in or your your emeory cloth or your sandpaper. Basically, push this in there. This is a little piece of copper, so it's kind of difficult. And now you have clean on the inside, clean on the outside. Ice cream paint job, right? So now this is ready for either soldering or Sharkbite fittings or whatever other fittings that you're going to put on here. This would make this ready. And this is your PEX or PVC cutter. This can be used for a multitude of different things. Um whether you're cutting inch and a half PVC like so. these cutters come in handy and they're relatively cheap. Let's move on to our PVC. So, you have your PVC and you have your coupling. And this is going to be the same rules apply for whatever fittings that you have. Maybe you have a 90° elbow, or maybe you have a union, whatever you may have. I'm going to run you guys through how to glue up some PVC real quick. So, take your PVC pipe and your knife and just kind of clean out the inside of your pipe. Get rid of all those burrs. Make sure you ain't got nothing on the edges here. Kind of bring it across. Just clean it up, right? They make a deburring tool. They make everything else. You can take some light sandpaper to here and scuff it up. But this primer kind of makes this primer makes the plastic kind of soft. There's really no need. So, what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to get your fitting and your pipe, whether it's a 90 or a coupling, whatever it may be, and you're going to want to just put the primer on the outside of the pipe like so. Okay. Now, take your coupling and primer that. Dip your brush again. This glued, so you're going to want to This dried, so you're going to want to hit it again. Now, while the primer is still wet, take your glue and glue the inside of your pipe or of your coupling. Glue the inside or the glue the outside of your pipe. Take your two pieces that you glued and primerred. Press together. Press together. Quarter turn and hold for about 30 seconds. Make sure you apply pressure during that 30 seconds. You don't want it to pop off. Just like that. You're not going anywhere. Should be good. So, now let's do some thread tape. So, yellow is for your gas. And this is some shitty roll that I got off Amazon for like a shower head or something. But this your white right here. So, your yellow is for gas. White is for plumbing. So, here we have some black iron. And one trick that I like to do that might help you guys is whenever you're doing threads, hold it in your left hand. So, not facing you, hold it in your left hand and apply your tape clockwise. Hold it in the left hand and apply your tape clockwise. I usually do about three wraps. You don't need much. You don't need Some people You don't need that right? And then when you go to put this on, thread that on like so, take your slip joint like that. Tighten that up. So whether it's your slip joint pliers, your sink basin wrench for those tight areas up and under the countertops, your adjustable wrench for everyday running around tightening fixtures, your PEX cutter, your copper tubing cutter for those installs, your wire brush for cleaning up your copper, or your miter box for cutting PVC or crown molding. These are the top five that I carry with me daily in my tool bucket. So, if you guys want to see how any of these work in more in depth, like running a whole leg of PVC and gluing a bunch of stuff together or or maybe doing some copper, you know, brazing, soldering, whatever, um, drop that comment down in below and I'll do a separate video on it. I got no problem. I love doing that So, let me know. But anyways, those are my top five plumbing tools. They're quick and easy plumbing. There isn't much to it. It's a tube and a nut. A little bit of glue, a little bit of tape, threads together. You don't need much for it. So, anyways, I got to get out of here. I got to do. I'll catch you guys later. Peace.