Plumbing tips

Almost always the flapper or the fill valve, and both are inexpensive parts. Lift the tank lid: if water is trickling over the top of the overflow tube, the fill valve is set too high or has failed. If the tank is slowly emptying into the bowl with no visible overflow, the flapper is not sealing. A running toilet can waste hundreds of gallons a day.

Treat it as a warning rather than an annoyance. Clear it while you still have use of the fixture. Avoid caustic drain chemicals — they rarely clear a real blockage, they damage older pipes, and they make the job hazardous for whoever eventually opens the line.

On a gas heater, check whether the pilot or igniter is lit and whether the gas supply valve is open. On an electric heater, check the breaker and the reset button on the upper thermostat. If the tank itself is leaking, no repair will hold — shut off the water supply to it now.

Find it today, not during a flood. It is usually where the supply enters the building — a crawlspace, a utility room, a garage wall, or a meter box near the street. Turn it off and on once so you know it works, and make sure everyone in the house knows where it is.

Insulate any pipe in an unheated space, crawlspace or exterior wall. On a hard freeze, let a trickle run from the fixture furthest from the meter and open cupboard doors under sinks on exterior walls. Disconnect garden hoses in the fall — a hose left attached is the most common cause of a burst hose bibb.

All of the Four Corners has hard water. It scales fixtures, leaves spotting, and shortens the life of a water heater by depositing sediment in the tank. Flushing the heater annually helps; a softener addresses the cause.