Tools for plumbing work: varieties, professional, list of necessary, kit, optional

This is how a modern apartment or house is arranged, that you have to pay for comfort with selective repairs communications or, at a minimum, inspection and periodic maintenance of pipes, connections, fittings, taps, eyeliner. Therefore, a set of tools for plumbing work should always be at hand or at least within reach.

Calling a specialist is more expensive, and even at the time of the arrival of the master, the damage from a leaky faucet or eyeliner in the bathroom can be huge.

What tasks do plumbing tools solve?

Few of the homeowners assume emergency situations with plumbing, heating or sewer pipes. New faucets and plumbing give hope that they will work properly for decades.

In fact, pipe communications require regular maintenance, periodic repairs or replacement of parts for two reasons:

1. Fitting, connections, taps can be defective or delivered by an unscrupulous master plumber, in violation of the installation technology.
2. Plastic, silicone and rubber, aluminum and brass in the bathroom age over time, become unusable under the influence of water, air, heat.

Most manufacturers of pipes and plumbing consciously include a certain resource of work in their products. It would be possible to make a sewer or water pipe with thicker walls, a larger diameter, a faucet - from a high-quality brass alloy. But such plumbing fittings can last more than 50 years, thereby depriving the manufacturing company of profits from the sale of new batches of products.

Therefore, each faucet or fitting has its own resource. Plumbing tools and fixtures allow you to maintain and repair them, extending the life of your most expensive plumbing fixtures. Cheap and disposable components are simply replaced with new ones.

In addition to repairs, a set of plumbing tools will be required to solve current problems associated with the operation of plumbing. They occur in any case, regardless of the service life and quality of pipes, valves, valves, bellows.

Standard problems

Most masters involved in plumbing work keep no more than a dozen different kinds of tools and fixtures in their workbox. Skills and experience gained are enough to fix plumbing in the bathroom with pliers and an adjustable wrench.

Moreover, most of them do not know specifically what tools they use for plumbing work. Everyone in the process of work uses what is more accustomed to.

But this is not entirely correct. It is easier for an ordinary person, far from plumbing work, to fix the problem with a special device or a key, and with a high quality result. You can buy a ready-made kit for plumbing work, but it is better to assemble it yourself without buying extra and unnecessary parts.

Therefore, tools are collected in a home kit for solving simple plumbing maintenance tasks.

List of common bathroom problems:

• clogging of the drain of sewer pipes - this type of plumbing work is most common;
• water leakage at the junctions of sewerage sections or on a flexible piping;
• failure of the mixer cartridge;
• breakage of the hand shower hose;
• wear of the plumbing gasket on the valve or faucet;
• wiring problems;
• breakage of the switch or ceiling light.

To summarize, for plumbing work you need a set of:

• several keys with different types of clamping jaws;
• universal screwdriver;
• Lantern;
• gun or tube with plumbing sealant;
• device for loosening old rusty screws;
• scissors;
• several types of consumables - gaskets, winding FUM tape, a set of metal worm-type clamps of different sizes.

To combat blockages, you need to buy or make a cable for deep cleaning of drain pipes, purchase a plunger.

Features of plumbing pipes

In most cases, the layout of the apartment is such that the bathroom is located between the kitchen and the bathroom. This makes it easier to plan sewer drains and plumbing. On the other hand, the sewerage in the bathroom always "suffers" from the influx of grease plugs from the side of the kitchen sink. The bellows and drain in the sink, shower or bath may not be able to handle the water draining into the sewer.

At the same time, the humid atmosphere of the kitchen, bathroom, and toilet has a bad effect on the metal parts of water pipes, and condensation periodically occurs.

Another nuance, most of the sewer plumbing is pipes, tees, turns - made of polypropylene or polyvinyl chloride. The sewage system itself is assembled from separate sections on rubber seal rings. If the plumbing seals are not installed correctly or the work order is violated, the joint between the sections may leak. You have to disassemble the pipe and fix the leak.

The situation is slightly simpler if the pipes are cast iron. Plumbing work, as with a polypropylene pipe, is less, lasts 2-3 times longer, but clogs more often. If the room is properly ventilated, then cast iron is practically not subject to corrosion.

The water supply can leak on the threaded coupling, at the installation sites of the tees for mounting the flexible connection to the plumbing. Soldered polypropylene water pipes do not flow. Metal-plastic can sweat out at the fittings. They are more capricious and require constant monitoring, periodic inspection - even on the water supply, even on the heating system.

Constant fight against blockages

For this type of plumbing work, there should be three types of tools in the home kit:

1. Metal cable in a case, with a spiral tip and a revolving handle.
2. Plunger. You can use the usual one in the form of a hemisphere on a wooden handle or a modern pneumatic one with a reduced size rubber nozzle.
3. Universal screwdriver.

For the bath and shower you need a plunger and a screwdriver. With the help of the first tool, it is possible to break through the mud plugs and the old soap in the sink. Sometimes you can break through the accumulated debris in the bellows and drain of the shower or bath.

It happens that the blockage is very strong. It is not possible to break the cork in the sink with a plunger alone. In this case, before starting plumbing work, you need to pour a means for chemical cleaning of plumbing into the neck of the drain hole, try again after 1-2 hours. After completion of work, flush the sewer with plenty of water.

If a blockage has formed in the bellows of a washbasin or bathtub, then you can remove the dirt plug by disassembling the drain with a screwdriver. For preventive maintenance, it is necessary to unscrew the central screw holding the bellows body, disassemble it and remove the blockage.

When you need the whole arsenal

A more serious blockage problem can occur if:

1. There are old ones in the sewers cast iron pipes, which accumulated a lot of debris and dirt.
2. The assembly and installation of plastic sewer sections was done incorrectly, without a drain slope or with a “deflection” due to an insufficient number of support points.

A similar situation may arise if the master who carried out the installation work saved on plumbing gaskets and clamps.

What plumbing tools should be in every plumber's arsenal?

Approximately half of the work falls on the disassembly or assembly of connections. Sometimes it is necessary to simply tighten the sealing nut on the coupling in order to eliminate the leakage that has appeared on the plumbing gasket.

To repair pipes and plumbing connections, three types of special tools are used:

• coccygeal or gas keys;
• adjustable plumbing pliers;
• wrenches.

Ordinary open-end or box wrenches used in car repair work are useless for plumbing purposes. due to the large diameter of pipes or couplings, non-standard size and the great effort that must be applied when assembling the coupling connections.

Plumbing wrenches are used to loosen only metal couplings, pipe blanks and union nuts.

gas keys

The coccyx or coccygeal wrench are considered to be the largest tools in a plumber's arsenal. This type of plumbing tool is mainly used for twisting threaded couplings on steel pipes.

Thanks to the lever design of the handles, the gas wrench allows you to compress the steel coupling with great effort, unscrew the rusted nut without heating with a gas burner. The roller on the thread of one of the handles makes it possible to smoothly adjust the distance between the clamping jaws.

A gas wrench can be indispensable, for example, if during plumbing work it is necessary to firmly fix a steel water pipe and unscrew a brass tap or coupling.

Adjustable plumbing pliers

In fact, this is the same gas key, but of a simpler design. The plumbing tool consists of two halves that need to be squeezed with the hand. Instead of a roller on the thread, support slots are used to adjust the distance between the jaws.

To switch from a large diameter to a small one, you need to unscrew the nut on the hinge and rearrange one of the halves of the tongs into the next groove. Therefore, the tool is called adjustable.

Plumbing pliers are more convenient in working with pipes or nuts of small diameter. More often, old couplings and round union nuts are unscrewed with adjustable pliers. For example, the plumbing connection to the compact tank or the corrugated hose of the hand shower is twisted and unscrewed only by them.

You can also tighten a new nut with your hands, but after 10 years of work, the thread becomes overgrown with limescale, so plumbing pliers are indispensable.

adjustable wrench

All threaded connections on pipes that use hex sockets must be loosened and tightened with a wrench.

It is strictly forbidden to use gas wrenches and adjustable pliers to work with hex nuts. In the kitchen, in the bathroom, all hex nuts on plumbing connections are usually are made of brass, so if the tool is carelessly used, it is easy to deform or even crush.

You can use an open end wrench if it fits, but most plumbers prefer to use an adjustable wrench. The essence of the tool is that one of the jaws can move, so you can set the size for any nut.

Electrical tools

A bathroom, a bathroom are characterized by high humidity and air temperature, so electrical wiring is hidden in channels under plaster or tiles, and switches, cartridges for lighting bulbs are used only in a moisture-proof design.

In addition to servicing plumbing fittings, pipes, faucets, it is often necessary to check the operation of electrical wiring, contacts inside the cartridges. Therefore, it will be useful to add two devices to the master's arsenal of tools:

• multimeter with additional continuity function;
• probe or neon voltage indicator.

Via multimeter convenient to check the operation of the wiring. Often you have to measure the voltage in the lamp socket or check the operation of the power supply (driver) of the LED lamp. With an indicator (neon) you can determine the phase wire in the outlet if you need to find a “contact” or current leakage.

Measuring and control devices

In the arsenal of tools, there must be a building bubble level and an ordinary metal locksmith ruler. Both tools are used to work with plastic sewer pipes.

With the help of a level and a ruler, any plumber can easily determine the presence of a deflection at the junction or a change in the drain slope. All this needs to be corrected in time by installing additional clamps. Otherwise, the work of the sewer will be unstable.

Also in the plumber's tool kit there should be a caliper - with its help they measure or control the outer and inner diameter of the pipes.

Tools used when installing underfloor heating

Before laying pipes in the bathroom, it is necessary to carry out preparatory work, remove tiles or laminate, remove glue, insulation. Clean up everything that remains on the concrete floor with a grinder. Any heating system based on a film, cable or water pipes is laid on a heat-insulating substrate made of polyethylene foam with an aluminum reflective surface.

In addition to working with an angle grinder, when installing underfloor heating pipes, they use:

1. Cutter-scissors - with this tool we cut the edges of the pipes before joining with sleeve fittings.
2. Crimping tool - tongs or a hand press for working with sleeve couplings.
3. Manual stapler on the rod - used to fasten the pipe blank to the floor surface.

You can also perform installation work manually, but the stapler makes it possible to speed up the process - to do the work 3-4 times faster. If it is planned to assemble a warm floor from polypropylene pipes, then you additionally need to buy or rent a soldering iron for welding polypropylene joints.

Sealant gun

An essential tool for any plumber. Most of the elements of pipe fittings, threaded couplings, flexible pipes, sewer pipes are mounted on rubber gaskets. However, most craftsmen in the process of working prefer to treat the joint with plumbing sealant, especially if the joint is located in a hard-to-reach place in the room.

The gun is a rigid metal frame with a handle and a lever through which pressure is applied to the bottom of the tube with plumbing sealant. For its operation, you need to press the lever with your fingers. The pressure is transferred to the bottom of the tube and ensures a uniform exit of the plumbing mass from the spout. Working with a gun simplifies styling, especially if you need to lay the strip as evenly as possible. sealant at the junction between the sink or bathtub edge and the wall.

Perforator

An electric hammer drill is more often categorized as a construction tool than a plumbing tool. But sometimes you can't do without it. For example, when carrying out work to replace plumbing, wiring, heating systems laid in the floor or walls. A hammer drill makes hard work easier and faster, whether you need to gouge grooves, remove tiles from the floor or knock plaster off the walls.

Perforators are bought in the arsenal of tools once. If the model is chosen correctly, then it will last 20-25 years, no less. It is necessary to properly maintain and lubricate the mechanics of the gearbox, control the load and engine operation time.

Tools for metal-plastic pipes

To work with metal-plastic, you need only four types of tools:

1. Manual cutter - makes it possible to cut the edge of the pipe blank without a fringe of polyethylene film.
2. Press tongs - if the connection is made on sleeve fittings.
3. Adjustable and adjustable wrench - if a compression fitting with a threaded head is used.

To work in the bathroom, you will need a tape measure, a ruler, and sometimes a caliper. Plumbers always have these tools in their arsenal, regardless of the complexity and scope of work.

Tools for polypropylene pipes

For the bathroom, it is more often recommended to use polypropylene water pipes. PPR, and for the heating system they put a polypropylene pipe reinforced with aluminum foil.

The minimum set of plumbing tools for working with polypropylene pipes:

• scissors for cutting blanks;
• chamfering knife for removing polypropylene to the aluminum sublayer - this is a prerequisite for high-quality welding of fittings;
• electric soldering iron with a set of nozzles.

In addition, you will need a meter locksmith ruler with a division price of 1 mm, a tape measure and a caliper. All measurements of the length and diameter of the parts to be welded must be made to the nearest millimeter.

Any plumber tries to hide the plumbing and sewage in the bathroom behind a decorative finish, so mistakes in cutting blanks are unacceptable.

Pipe-cutting plumbing equipment

It is not difficult to cut pipe blanks - for each type of material, its own models of shears and cutters have been developed. Many plumbers use a hand saw with a metal blade. With its help, you can equally easily cut steel, metal-plastic and polypropylene, even inside the bathroom. You just need to buy a universal jig, with which you can cut workpieces at different angles.

For a major bathroom renovation, it is better to rent a desktop electric cutter. For one plumber, the purchase will be unreasonably expensive, because such a tool is bought for a team of craftsmen.

Optional plumbing tools

There is a whole list of tools that any plumber must have, but are used infrequently, therefore they are stored separately from the main arsenal. Depending on the condition of the bathroom, they may or may not be useful.

This includes:

• heavy hammer or sledgehammer;
• gas-burner;
• thread-cutting device;
• means for unwinding rusty threaded connections;
• measuring tool of non-standard shape;
• rechargeable lamps.

All of the above is used mainly for repairs in the bathroom, replacing old plumbing with a new one, or solving non-standard problems with laying communications. These tools are not in the plumber's drawer, but they are sure to be kept within the reach of the plumber.

Do not take too much to the place of work - this is one of the rules of all masters. Losing a good tool is easy, so most plumbers play it safe.

How do all plumbing tools require handling?

A professional plumber has an arsenal of fixtures, consumables and working tools that far exceeds real needs. Masters who have to repair plumbing in bathrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, prefer to have a supply of accessories.

Many of the tools can be used in the bathroom or kitchen every 3-4 years. For example, manual pliers for crimping fittings on a metal-plastic water pipe are needed once every 5 years for preventive crimping of sleeves.

Therefore, the requirements for a plumbing repair arsenal come down to storing tools in a specific system. So that at the right time the device can be easily found, used and returned to its place.

Repair and maintenance of plumbing in the bathroom will require quite an impressive set of tools. The entire arsenal must be properly stored and periodically checked in operation.

Tell us about your set of plumbing tools - what do you use most often, how do you store and use it? What is indispensable from the arsenal, and what is rarely used? Bookmark this article so you don't lose any useful information.