Important Things to Know about Walk-In Showers without Doors

When it comes to bathroom remodeling project, homeowners usually ask about making a doorless walk-in shower. The good thing about these types of showers is that they occupy less bathroom’s space since there are no door swings and frame to consider. Moreover, they can be complementary to your preferences in terms of lifestyle and décor.

Compared to traditional stalls, there are many benefits in using a doorless walk-in shower. The following are two major benefits:

Easy maintenance

Glass doors in your shower add much work in cleaning particularly sliding doors. A doorless shower requires less care and cleaning of surfaces.

Accessibility and safety

Threshold can be inconvenient and can make family members to stumble. This affects mobility especially for someone with difficulty using a confined shower. Sometimes glass slider doors stick or run off their glides and this could be potential obstacles. These concerns can be addressed by installing doorless walk-in showers installed with low or level thresholds.

Facts about walk-in showers without doors

·         Most of the times, doorless showers are custom designed.

Installation of doorless walk-in showers can be done in a corner or may replace a bathtub or current shower. Since the rest of the bathroom has an opening, there’s a need in designing the walls and flooring to contain water. Depending on the needs and preferences of the homeowners, usually the design is about custom tile work and partitions.

·         When selecting a base for a walk-in shower without doors consider the options.

There are a lot of available pre-fabricated showers and shower pans and majority are not suitable working with a doorless walk-in shower. Ideally, water should drain on the floor.

Consider making three major decisions about your walk-in shower bases in your project plan: These are the standard or custom base, the height of the threshold, and the surface materials.

·         Placement of showerheads is important.

Make sure that water is directed away from room’s lighting and other fixtures. When it comes to selecting fixtures, take into account the showerhead’s spray radius. To manage containing water, an overhead ceiling mounted showerhead can be used as well as adjustable handheld shower. For any plumbing concerns you may contact any plumbing services in Sydney.

For more information you may get in touch with us at info@youplumbing.com.au

Efficient Steps to Prevent Blocked Drains

Homeowners find a blocked drain to be a typical problem. It makes a drain inefficient and leads to leaks, flooding and undesirable odors. Prevention is better than cure. So, before getting more trouble removing blockages do several precautionary measures to avoid getting blocked drains. Read the following tips that may help you to avoid having blocked drains in your house.

Preventing Blocked Drains

You might think that preventing clogs and blockages is a tough job but actually it’s not. The following are simple things that you just need to remember.

• Avoid throwing grease down the drain for they are among the major reasons for blockages in your kitchen sinks.
• Don’t treat your toilet as if it’s a trash can by flushing things that are not supposed to be thrown there. Except from waste and toilet paper, cotton balls, personal wipes, paper towels, feminine hygiene products and all non-flushable things should be dispose in the trash can.
• Mesh screen can be put all over your drains to trap debris such as hair and food articles that are potential cause of clog. Keep the dirt out of your drains by a regular cleaning of the trash.
• Practice a proper way of garbage disposal. Several particular foods are discouraged to be in your garbage disposal because they cause blockages. These foods include potato and banana peels, pasta, bones, rice, peels, fats, coffee grounds and stringy vegetables.
• Pouring a mixture of vinegar and soda down your drains is a good way to unclog your blocked drain. When vinegar and baking soda combined, a foaming chemical reaction takes place taking away food particles and other possible debris. For maintenance of your drain, pour baking soda and then white vinegar monthly. For more concerns about your drain, contact any plumbing services in Sydney.

For more information visit us at info@youplumbing.com.au

The Disadvantages of Using Liquid Drain Cleaners

For clogged or slow drain, people often use commercial and cheaper liquid drain cleaner which is so easy to use. However, there are a lot of reasons not to do so. Read the following:

Mind the Pipes

Basically, majority of liquid drain cleaners operates through a chemical reaction which happens within the drain pipe and usually with the help of hydrochloric acid. The reactions produce heat which can cause unexpected damage to the pipe. This is even more damaging if the cleaner failed to complete the task of dissolving the clog. The liquid chemicals will only sit on top of the clog and the chemical reaction happened only on one small part of pipe.

Think of your Health First

Think of yourself before you think of your pipe. Drain chemical cleaners can do harm to you the way it does harm to your pipes. Using these products can give off fumes that are proven to cause nose, eyes, and throat and lung irritations.

Drain cleaners come in various formulas but some of them can cause burn if get contact with your skin and even worse if it gets contact in your eyes. It is a good safety precaution to wear safety goggles. Buy one from any plumbing shop in Australia.

Consider your Money’s worth

There’s no assurance that using a drain cleaner will be effective enough to solve your drain problem especially if the cause of the problem is quite serious. The best thing about hiring a licensed plumber in clearing a drain is the capacity to diagnose the real cause of the problem. Obviously, if a part of pipe is broken that let other material to push inside or in case the drainage system is the root cause of the problem, then depending on a liquid drain cleaner is just a waste of time and money.

For more information about this issue please visit us at info@youplumbing.com.au

All-Natural Cleaners for Healthy Cleaning

Homeowners do proper maintenance and diligent cleaning to protect the home, keep things clean, neat and in good working condition. Most of the times, people go directly to the store to buy some cleaning products. Unfortunately, many of these products have harmful and toxic chemicals that are both detrimental to human and environmental health.

Thanks to products that are made from all-natural ingredients and we can find a healthy alternative from these toxic chemicals. But in case you can find any of these products, you can create cleaning products form natural ingredients that you can just find right at your home. Check out the following list of several recipes to make all-natural cleaners.

1. Grapefruit and Salt Bathroom Cleaner

A pure clean bathroom is like a paradise where anyone wishes to stay every shower time. To treat your shower or your tub infected with much stubborn rust, you can use coarse kosher salt and grape. Slice a grapefruit into half and sprinkle some salt. Scrub it in your shower and tub and rinse the area to get rid of all the rust. You can use the same method for your toilets, sinks and tiles.

2. Vinegar, Baking Soda and Vegetable Oil Kitchen Surface Cleaner

The grease could be your number 1 in cleaning your kitchen after cooking. And it is even harder to clean it up after ignored for some time. Luckily, you can make use of your kitchen staples like vinegar, vegetable oil or baking soda to get rid of the grease. All you have to do is just to apply these kitchen staples generously on the surfaces with grease. Then after a few minutes, you can wipe it clean.

3. Green Carpet Cleaner

Carpets require frequent cleaning and you may hire for a cleaning service to do the job for you. If you want to do it by yourself, simply use borax, salt white vinegar, carpet steams cleaner and a vacuum. Start by vacuuming the carpet first, and then apply the mixture of white vinegar, salt and borax on the dirty areas. Finally, steam clean afterwards. 

4. Homemade DIY Natural Fabric Softeners

Commercial fabric softeners sometimes contain harsh chemicals that may harm our skin and cause skin allergies as well as the environment. You can avoid this by creating an environmentally-friendly fabric softener by using vinegar or baking soda.

Visit any plumbing shop in Australia to find these green alternatives or contact us at info@youplumbing.com.au

Why You Should Get a Good Drain Cleaning Now

Some household chores are pleasing, while others are not. Maybe you find household chores that way. Well, it’s like many would agree that watering the plants are much less exhausting than cleaning the drains in the bathroom or in the kitchen. And because cleaning the drains is being done after a long time, it’s now already dirty or backed up with gunk.

More often, you use the area for cooking and preparing food, take a bath or washing your hands while the filth and bacteria are thriving in the same place. You may depend on some drain cleaning chemicals to solve the problem but unfortunately, it’s not the answer. Calling a professional plumber will do the proper job to guarantee clean and clear drains. If you’re not yet convince, check the following reasons to clean the drains.

1. Breeding ground for mold

Molds love dark, wet or damp areas. And if you’re experiencing some symptoms such as runny nose, cough and fever, you what’s to blame. Mold. It’s hazardous to one’s health to breath in mold and it’s even more harmful to those with allergies and asthma.

2. Unwanted leaks

Leaks came from broken pipe or a plumbing fixture. Regardless of the size or types of leaks, they are capable of destroying the home’s interior. Calling a plumber to do drain cleaning should be done as soon as possible to prevent massive work for the entire house.

3. Breaking/broken pipes

What happens every day and every night is that tiny food particles enter down the drain as dirty dishes are deposited in the sink. Then, over time, these food particles are built up into larger deposits that hinder the passage of water. To move water, the pipes have to work harder resulting to bursting. This is terrible on the part of the homeowner.

4. The longer you wait, the more it costs

Saving is important for homeowners. However, it will be a costly and bigger job to clean drains with huge amount of gunk and dirty deposit. More money is needed in doing your home repairs. That’s why it’s smarter to schedule a pipe cleaning every year with your plumber to avoid more expensive cleaning and repair services. If you still don’t have one you may contact any plumbing services in Sydney.

For more information contact us at info@youplumbing.com.au

The Truth about Sitting on a Public Toilet Seat

Stop worrying much when using a public toilet without toilet paper covering it. All you have to is to wash your hand after using the toilet. Perhaps, public bathrooms can be a haven for most bacteria since a lot of people are using it.

However, many experts agree to one thing: public bathrooms are not the dirtiest place on earth. According to assistant professor William DePaolo of immunology and microbiology at the University of Southern California (USC), sitting on a toilet cannot lead to infection and even the bacteria found in the toilet’s surfaces are not transmitted easily in your skin. He added that many of these bathroom bacteria successfully live in moist areas such as mucous membranes. Now, in case you sit on a toilet without covering it with toilet paper and you failed to do hand washing, then you are at risk of transmitting those bacteria that you are afraid of. Nonetheless, you should know that the skin serves as a protective layer against microbes.

Well, the truth is other things that can be found in the bathroom such as toilet paper roll is much filthier than the toilet itself getting more bacteria. For example, the dishwashing sponge can be a place of 200,000 times more bacteria in comparison to an average toilet seat. Other household things that have more bacteria are video game controllers, smartphones, and kitchen sinks. Don’t ignore your purses which of course taken in almost everywhere, dropped on the dirty ground to subway seat. So, are you so scared of toilet seats? Well, you should be shivering if you find out that your office desk is much filthier with some 16 million microbes just on your keyboard.

Nevertheless, you can still cover the toilets with toilet papers but always be reminded that washing your hands carefully using anti-microbial soap plus an alcohol could do a better job.

For more information about cleaning and maintaining your bathroom, you can go to any plumbing shop in Australia, kindly visit us at info@youplumbing.com.au

Things you should avoid flushing down your toilet

Are you a person who finds it convenient to flush almost anything down to the toilet? Well, think again because you can get serious plumbing problems with this practice. To avoid the risk of more plumbing issues, get these items away from the toilet.

Flushable Wipes

Believe it or not but even the so-called flushable wipes such as baby wipes are not for the toilet. 

Paper Towels 

Paper towels should be disposed in a wastepaper basket instead of being flush on the toilet. These are very thick and big to be flushed on the toilet.

Prophylactics

This item can cause serious toilet clogs, not to mention the embarrassment you can get when they back up into the bowl.

Kitty Litter 

Kitty litter when moistened clump up in the plumbing pipes and makes a clog, so don’t think to flush it on the toilet.

Cigarette Butts

First of all, chemicals are present in cigarette butts, and flushing them might contaminate the water supply. Moreover, they don’t decompose as many people think.

Dental Floss

You might say, this is just thin little string and there’s nothing to worry about. But take note – dental floss isn’t biodegradable and when they bunch up, they can create a clog.

Medication

Toilet is not a place to dispose your medicines. When you flush pills down the toilet, even your pets might have a dose of it. If you want the water supply clean for everyone, avoid flushing any kinds of medicines down your toilet.

Cotton Balls and Swabs

Don’t underestimate these small things because they can bind together inside the pipes over time and cause undesirable clogs.

Feminine Hygiene Products

Flushing these items, because it’s being said on the product’s boxes, is not advisable. The best way is to have a trashcan for each bathroom. You might not be using these items but your guests might.

Diapers

Diapers should be disposed because they stink but never in your toilet. In fact your toilet can’t just take this stuff.

Keep your toilet always in good condition or when clog already happened, call any plumbing services in Sydney right away or contact us at info@youplumbing.com.au