The Toilet That Runs at Night, and Three Other Things You Can Fix Yourself

We would rather tell you how to fix something in ten minutes than take your money for driving out to do it. Here are four that are genuinely within reach of most people, and the point at which each one stops being a DIY job.

The toilet that runs. You hear it refilling in the night when nobody has touched it. Water is escaping from the tank into the bowl, and it is nearly always one of two parts. Take the lid off and look: the rubber flapper at the bottom, or the fill valve on the left. The simplest test is a few drops of food coloring in the tank. Do not flush, wait twenty minutes, and if color has appeared in the bowl the flapper is not sealing. Flappers wear out; they are inexpensive, sold everywhere, and swapping one is a two-minute job with the water off at the stop behind the toilet. If the color stays put but it still runs, the fill valve is overfilling past the overflow tube, and those are replaceable too. A running toilet wastes a startling amount of water, so it is worth the ten minutes.

The bathroom sink that drains slowly. Ninety percent of these are hair and soap on the pop-up stopper, not a blockage down the pipe. Underneath the sink at the back of the drain there is usually a small rod with a clip holding it to a strap. Unclip it, pull the stopper straight up, and brace yourself. Clean it, put it back, done. If it still drains slowly with the stopper out and clean, then you have something further down and that is worth a call.

The garbage disposal that hums but will not turn. Humming means it is getting power and the motor is jammed. Turn it off at the switch (properly off), then look on the underside of the unit for a hex socket in the center. There is usually a small Allen wrench clipped to the side of the disposal for exactly this. Work it back and forth to free whatever is wedged, then press the little red reset button on the bottom. If it is silent rather than humming, start with the reset button and then the breaker. Never put your hand in it, obviously.

The shower head that drips or has gone weak. If the flow has faded and the spray is scattered, it is our water. Mineral scale blocks the little holes. Unscrew the head, sit it in a bowl of white vinegar for a few hours, poke the holes through with a pin, rinse and refit with a wrap of thread tape. If the head drips for a minute or two after you turn it off, that is just the arm draining and it is normal. If it drips steadily for hours, that is the valve cartridge behind the wall, and that one is a job for us.

When to stop. Call somebody if you find water where it should not be rather than just a slow drain, if more than one fixture is affected at once, if a shut-off valve will not turn or will not seal again once turned, or if there is any smell of gas. Those are not DIY problems and the cost of getting them wrong is far more than the visit.

And if you try one of these and it does not work, call us and say what you tried. It genuinely narrows things down: knowing the flapper is new and it still runs tells us more than a description of the noise ever will. Fixtures and faucets, or drain cleaning if it turns out to be further down the line.