DIY or Call a Plumber? Here's How To Decide

Are you or your spouse big DIYers? Or are you the first one to call a pro when something goes wrong? Sometimes trying to DIY basic home repairs is a good idea, because you can save yourself a ton of money and hassle. But in many cases, unless someone in your house IS a plumber, you’ll save more money and time in the long run if you just call a plumber in the first place.

Why? Well, for starters, old homes and northern winters (or freak climate-change-fueled temperature changes, like polar vortexes freezing the southern U.S.) are a recipe for disaster when it comes to leaking or frozen pipes. But you also need to account for local ordinances and regulations, which can make certain kinds of repairs a lot more complicated than you’d ever imagine. The pros know the rules and how to follow them to the letter, whereas you may not even know such rules exist!

I’ve written elsewhere on when to DIY or call a pro on other kinds of home maintenance projects, but this post will focus more specifically on plumbing repairs, and when it’s time to call a plumber and let the pros handle your plumbing challenge.

Times When Maybe You Can DIY Your Plumbing Repair:

Simple faucet obstruction

Having problems with the water not coming out of your kitchen or bathroom faucet like it should? (Especially if it used to flow freely?)

At the end of your faucet, there should be a little filter that screws off. Try unscrewing it and see if there’s something clogging it on the other side. This is especially likely if you live somewhere with well-fed water, as does my mama. Every so often, the little filter holes get clogged with sand, and she has to unscrew the end of the faucets and clean out the sand particles with a pin.

Once you’ve done that, be sure to screw it all back together tightly enough that you don’t have a leak spraying all over!

The same is true for shower heads. You can try cleaning out clogs with a pin. Or you can attach a plastic bag containing a mix of hot water and vinegar tightly over your shower head (think strong rubber bands or a tight tape job) and let it sit for awhile; the steam and vinegar can help clean out some of the residue that builds up over time.

Problems in the toilet tank

Toilet not flushing right, or continuing to run after you flush it? Take the lid off the tank and see what’s going on in there. Often, it’s just a simple chain tangle, or maybe the flap at the bottom of the tank got stuck open. A quick glance will often tell you what you need to know to diagnose and fix the problem manually.

If your flap keeps getting stuck open because it’s old and worn out, or the chain breaks, it needs replacing. Though I’ve never tried this, both my husband and my mama have replaced the innards of toilet tanks many times, and both of them would rate this as a not terribly complex repair.

You’ll need to turn off the water that enters the tank first; there should be a valve with a handle down behind the toilet that you can twist for this. Then just turn it back on again when you’re done. For more help, search online for tutorials.

Basic drain or toilet clogs (and how NOT to deal with them!)

DON’T do this:

First up, what you DON’T want to do with a clog is pour caustic chemicals down your pipes! These may help in the short run, but at the expense of keeping your pipes intact over the long run.

What to do instead:

It’s helpful, too, to know what kind of clog you’re dealing with before you start. For bathroom sinks and shower/tub drains, the likely culprits are hair and shampoo/soap residue. The sooner you deal with these, the easier (in other words, DON’T wait until the drain is completely blocked!) A simple plastic drain snake strip is the easiest way to deal with these clogs.

Unscrew the sink stopper or drain screen, carefully run the snake up and down repeatedly, and have some paper towels handy to get the residue off the snake each time you pull it up. (After cleaning these, I like to put 1/2 cup baking soda down the drain, add 1/2 cup vinegar on top, wait a few minutes, then pour several cups of boiling water down the drain. This helps wash away any residue.)

For toilet clogs, you’ll want a toilet plunger – which is different from the sink plunger you’ll use for sink clogs. For really stubborn clogs in either one, you can try a 25-ft drain snake.

Prevention is key:

Once you’ve IDd the source of the clog, prevention is key for the future:

Everyone should be trained to put NOTHING down the toilet except what comes out of their bodies plus toilet paper (no toys, sanitary products, paper towels, etc.).
Garbage disposals are fine for most organic matter, but NOT leftover meat scraps or tough/fibrous things like onion peels, celery, and banana peels.
If you can, train your family to use less soap and esp. less shampoo/conditioner, and always finish their showers with a bit of hot water to wash those residues away.
Likewise, never pour fat down the drain, and always run the hot water a few seconds longer than the garbage disposal, to help wash away extra residue that could form clogs.

Times When You Definitely Want to Call a Pro

On the other hand, anything bigger or more complex than the basic maintenance I described above means you should call a plumber, so the job gets done right the FIRST time around, saving you unnecessary headaches and expense down the road.

Not sure where to start? One great strategy is to ask friends and neighbors for recommendations. Or you could also do a web search for “plumber” plus wherever it is you live. Read through their websites carefully to make sure the company you’re considering can handle whatever it is you need, both in the short term and down the road.

Example? In our area, many companies that handle heating/cooling as well as plumbing have service contract bundles. We had a fabulous independent plumber who passed away a few years ago. The first time after his death that we called our HVAC/”plumbing” service company on an emergency call, they told us that our plumbing emergency was actually beyond the scope of what they could handle! (We soon switched our service contract to a different company.)

Toilet replacement

Time for a new toilet? Just call the pros already.

Yes, there are a gazillion YouTube videos out there showing you how to replace a toilet. My husband has watched many of them. He has disassembled an entire toilet more than once, watching these videos.

He is not trained as a plumber. Therefore, this process takes him the entire day and then some; it would take me even longer. And occasionally, once he’s put everything back together, he has to take it all apart again because something is leaking onto the floor.

A pro (as I know from when I had all our toilets professionally replaced a few years ago) can do this job in a couple of hours. More importantly, the pro has access to professional discounts on quality replacement parts, AND will generally dispose of your old toilet for you for free.

Burst (frozen) pipes

If you should ever have to deal with a frozen/burst water line, this is going to create way more damage than you want to take on yourself, unless you’re a general contractor. Plus, this is the sort of accident that your homeowner’s insurance will likely cover – but not if you try to DIY the repairs. Additionally, this is also a repair that could involve lots of local codes and ordinances to put right again.

And again, prevention is key. With changing global weather patterns, it’s possible that a house built in a climate that never saw freezing temps 50 years ago may need extra pipe insulation to handle our volatile weather today. See if your plumber can help you diagnose why your pipes froze or burst, so you can avoid being in this situation again.

Water heater breakdown

Uh-oh – no hot water coming to your showers? Most likely, you have a water heater issue – been there, done that, on a Saturday night (of course!).

A professional plumber is your best bet for getting to the bottom of the problem quickly. If (as ours did) it turns out your water heater has exceeded its lifespan, a pro will again have access to the best deals on top-brand replacement appliances. If there are local laws regarding such work or replacements that need to be followed, a pro will already be on top of them. And finally, a pro will be able to get the job done in a matter of hours rather than days.

Sewer line clog

A few years ago, our kitchen sink decided not to drain (on, of course, a Saturday afternoon), and we noticed other drains in the house were also functioning worse than usual. Our late plumber had just replaced our garbage disposal the year before, not long before his untimely death, so we knew that was not the issue. We tried the plunger, the snake, baking soda and vinegar – nothing.

This was when we discovered our previous HVAC company’s “plumbing” services were actually quite minimal. Everyone I called correctly diagnosed the problem over the phone – a clog somewhere in the main sewer line running from our house to the municipal sewer system, most likely one that had been building up over our home’s nearly-40-year lifespan – but not all of them could handle the situation in a timely manner.

Our new plumbing company is the one that was able to send out someone to un-clog our line the following afternoon (Sunday) – something we never would have been able to do on our own.

Non-storm-related flooding

So you notice a leak or drip-drip-drip, or water pooling on the floor (or worse, in the ceiling) – and you’re not in the middle of a severe weather event outside.

Don’t even try to handle this yourself; just call a plumber.

My mother once had water pooling in her basement because a tree root had grown through the water pipe in her front yard near where the water was entering (!). In our previous home, the city sewer line backed up sewage into our basement (fun!) (not!).

In our current home, we’ve had leaks from our heat pump’s winter humidification system that flooded a corner of our basement. And worst of all, we had the $20,000+ of damage that took over four months to clean up (though I’ve still got boxes to unpack from that mess, waiting in our garage nearly a decade later), from when our basement flooded.

Not because of a storm, but because the previous owner of our home decided to DIY the installation of a water line to his new refrigerator. And because he didn’t know what he was doing, it created a slow leak that ultimately destroyed our kitchen floors, parts of the cabinet, all of our basement flooring, and many interior basement walls and ceilings.

Just don’t go there. Call a plumber for any and all of these scenarios.

Your turn:

What advice would you have for busy parents wondering whether or not they should call a plumber for their plumbing issues? Have you ever rocked a plumbing DIY, or had one go horribly wrong? Let us know in the comments!

If you enjoyed this post on when you should call a plumber, please share with others by pinning this image!

NOTE: This site contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission from any purchases made through affiliate links, at no additional cost to you. For more information, please read the full disclosure/privacy policy.