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Home inspectors might find more hack repairs when it comes to plumbing projects than anything else - mostly because it's easy to  do a plumbing project wrong, but still have the drains work.   Sort of.

I have about a million photos of hack plumbing repairs, but that's not the point of this post.  Today I'm going to give a list of some common plumbing products sold at home improvement stores and hardware stores in Minnesota that probably shouldn't be purchased.  Whatever you plan to do with these products is most likely going to be a violation of the Minnesota State Plumbing Code.

S-Traps

First and foremost comes my favorite; the drain tube meant for an S-trap or washing machine drain.  I love the photo below because the packaging encourages you to be your own plumber... which is exactly what the ambitious-looking square on the cover has decided to be, unfortunately.  He's installing an S-trap, which is illegal in Minnesota (4715.0960), and as far as I know, everywhere else in the country.  While the packaging also says that this 1-1/2" drain tube can be used for a washing machine drain, the minimum size allowed for a washing machine drain, also known as a standpipe, is 2" (4715.2300).

bottom note: what's with the suggestion to be your own plumber? Has this clever marketing piece ever actually encouraged someone to 'be their own plumber' ? By the time you've wandered in to the plumbing repair aisle at the home improvement store, there's a good chance that you've already made the decision to be your own plumber.

S-traps are usually found at sinks, and are often accompanied by several other plumbing defects.

There is no simple solution to an "S" trap, but they're usually not a major problem.

Bottle Traps

Another illegal plumbing trap is any type that relies on concealed partitions to create a trap - such as a bottle trap (4715.0960).  They come in several varieties.

The proper and prudent product to purchase in these particular cases is a P-trap.

Corrugated / flexible traps

Corrugated drains have to be one of the most common 'handyman' plumbing repairs that home inspectors find.

These things violate a basic plumbing principal of the Minnesota State Plumbing Code - section F, which states

"F. The drainage system shall be designed, constructed, and maintained to conduct the waste water with velocities which will prevent fouling, deposition of solids, and clogging."  (4715.0200)

All of those little corrugations allow for fouling, deposition of solids, and clogging.  When changes in direction need to happen, it should be done with proper fittings that have smooth interiors.

Needle valves / saddle valves

Saddle valves are usually used for whole house humidifiers, which I'm not a fan of to start with, and ice-makers.  They work by piercing a hole in your water pipe, and they're prone to leaking.  They're also not allowed in Minnesota.

Instead of using a saddle valve, have a proper valve installed.

Clamshell toilet fill valves

Toilet fill valves are supposed to be installed with the critical level line at least 1" above the top of the overflow tube in the toilet tank.  One of the more common types of fill valves are the ones made by Fluidmaster.  The diagram below comes from their installation instructions, and it shows what a fill valve should look like.

The toilet fill valves that sit in the bottom of your toilet tank are often referred to as 'clamshell' fill valves, and they're not allowed in Minnesota, because they create a potential cross-connection between the water in the toilet tank and the potable water supply. Don't put these in.  See 4715.2150 - flush tanks.

Instead of buying a 'clamshell' style fill valve, get the adjustable 400A valve made by Fluidmaster.  These are sold everywhere.

Rubber fittings

Rubber fittings used on drains or vents like the one shown below can sag or collapse.  They're always a no-no.

If you can't figure out how to make your drains work without the use of rubber fittings, call a plumber. The one exception to this for above-ground drain and vent piping is a rubber coupler with a stainless steel metal band or sleave surrounding it.  The stainless steel band gives it rigidity, which prevents what's happening to the un-banded connector in the photo below.

These un-banded couplers are sometimes allowed or even required on high-efficiency furnace vents, and they're allowed to be installed on their side when buried in dirt, but the other 99% of the ones you'll see are wrong.  The photo below shows a proper steel-banded connector.  Check out the fine print that says "2" CI, PL, or ST to 2" CI, PL, or ST".  This tells you the different materials that this connector is designed for.  These types of connectors are usually the right ones to buy.

Slang terms: Note the brand on the coupler shown above - "Fernco".  When you hear people refer to "Fernco" couplings, they're usually referring to couplings without metal bands, but Fernco obviously makes both.  When you hear people mention "Mission" couplings, they're usually referring to banded couplings... but Mission makes both as well.  For quick proof of this, do a google image search for "mission coupling", and do another for "fernco coupling".

Flexible connectors

Flexible connectors aren't allowed at water heaters or water softeners in Minnesota.  I've heard that these are actually a good thing to use in parts of the country that are subject to earthquakes, but not here.  The state plumbing code doesn't allow these flexible connectors, because they reduce the water pipe diameter - the minimum allowable pipe diameter is 3/4".  I know of one manufacturer that offers a connector with a .72" inside diameter, but they're still not allowed in Minnesota.

I have these connectors installed at my own water heater because that's what was there when I bought my house.  I could personally care less if they're there or not, because I've never noticed any difference in water flow at homes that have these... but they're still a plumbing code violation in Minnesota.

If you have a Truth-In-Sale of Housing Evaluation performed at your home in Minneapolis and the water heater is less than three years old, these flexible connectors would be a required repair item.

Mechanical vents

Mechanical vents are not allowed in Minnesota.  These are often referred to as cheater vents, and they come in two varieties - an air admittance valve and a check vent.  A discussion of the different types is a moot point for Minnesota, because neither is allowed.  If you're curious though, check out this post by Seattle Home Inspector Charles Buell on check vents vs. air admittance valves.

The photo below shows a check valve installed on a lav vent inside a cabinet.  On a proper installation, the vent would have been run inside the wall, connected to other vents for the bathroom, and eventually terminated above the roof.

The purpose of a mechanical vent is to allow drains to suck air without admitting sewer gas in to the home.  I've heard that air admittance valves actually work quite well, but they're still a code violation here in Minnesota.

Conclusion

Just because they sell it doesn't mean it's legal.  I often hear homeowners say "If these things aren't allowed in Minnesota, why'd the guy at the store sell it to me?"  The answer is usually that they didn't know any better.  You shouldn't expect the person working in the plumbing department at a home improvement store to be up-to-date on the latest plumbing codes.  Plumbers need a lot of training and experience - that's why they charge what they do.

Now go hug your plumber.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections

As a home inspector, I often take shut-off valves for granted and assume everyone knows what they are, how they work, and what can go wrong with them.  I recently had a client share a story with me regarding some problems he ran in to with the shut-off valves at his house - we'll call him Sir Walter Raleigh.  Walter thought that some of the problems he ran in to while replacing his water heater were things that most homeowners don't think about or know about, and would make for good blog fodder.  I agreed.

Gate Valves

Walter's woes began when he tried to shut off the water to his water heater.  All water heaters are supposed to have a shut-off valve on the cold water supply.  If the water heater is going to be replaced, this is where the water gets shut off.

Some homes also have a valve on the hot water side of the water heater - these aren't required, but they're also not a problem.  They just make it a little easier to service the water heater.  I've heard some home inspectors call shut-off valves on the hot side of a water heater a safety hazard, but they're not.  They're fine.

As you may have guessed, Walter couldn't shut the water off completely.  He had an old gate valve at the water heater, and the gate valve was fouled - it shut off most of the water, but most isn't good enough.  A gate valve has a round handle on it, and shuts off the flow of water by essentially closing a gate.  The three photos below show a gate valve in the open position, halfway open position, and fully closed position.

As you can see, the handle never goes up and down as the gate opens and lowers; for this reason, it's impossible to know if a gate valve is in the open or closed position just by looking at it.  The exploded view below shows what the guts of a gate valve look like.

When the gate valve at the water heater wouldn't completely shut off the flow of water, Walter decided he better replace the valve.  He tried to shut the water off  at the main shut-off valve for his house, located downstream from the water meter.   That valve was fouled too.  Next, he went to the other main valve for his house - the one upstream from the water meter.  Can you guess where this is going?  That valve was also fouled.  Three fouled gate valves, no way to completely shut off the water to his house.  It's a good thing this was only a 'project' and not an emergency.

Do you know where the main shut-off valve to the water supply in your home is?  If not, take a quick peek at your home inspection report - home inspectors are supposed to report on the location of the main water and main fuel shut-off valves.  For most buildings in Minnesota, the main shut-off valve is located in the basement near the front of the building.  If there is no basement, the valve will probably be located in the furnace room.

Curb Stop

To continue with his project, Walter had to replace his main shut-off valves.  To do this, he needed to call the city water department and have them turn off the water to his house at the street.  The first shut-off valve to a home's water supply is located below the ground near the street - this is call the curb stop, or the curb cock.  Sometimes the valve is buried in the dirt, and sometimes they've completely covered in concrete.  The photo below shows an example of an access cover located in the front yard.

Here's a closer view.

In Walter's case, it took the people from the municipal water supply about 40 minutes to even find the one in his front yard, because it was buried.   At least it wasn't buried below a sidewalk.  Here's what the access cover may look like if it's located at a driveway or sidewalk.  It's tough to mistake this for anything else.

When the city turns the water on or off from the curb, they use a special tool like the one pictured below.

Ball valves

Once the city had turned off the water supply to his house, Walter started replacing his valves.  He hired a plumber to replace the first valve before the meter, and then did the rest of the valves himself.  Instead of using gate valves, he used ball valves.  Ball valves are much easier to operate -  they have a lever handle that only needs to be moved 90 degrees to be turned off completely.  By comparison, the gate valve that I showed above took me 15 turns of the wrist to completely shut off.

When the handle of a ball valve is parallel to the valve or pipe, it's open.  When it's perpendicular, it's closed.  This makes it easy know if a ball valve is open or closed, just by looking at it.  The ball valve below is in the open position.

The photos below show a ball valve in the open position, halfway open position, and fully closed position.

Ball valve are also much less likely to leak; I can't recall ever finding a leaking ball valve, but I find other types of valves leaking all the time.

Stop Valves

Walter didn't have any stop valves to deal with, but as long as I'm talking about different types of valves, I should mention stop valves as well.  Stop valves are commonly found at plumbing fixtures - for instance, at the water supply line to your toilet.  A stop valve looks very similar to a gate valve, but it's a little bit more compact.  A stop valve works by moving a stopper up and down.  The photos below show a stop valve in the open position, halfway open position, and fully closed position.

Check out the stem in these photos - you'll notice that when the valve is fully closed, the stem isn't visible at all.  Most stop valves are much smaller than the one pictured above, but I decided to use a larger one for my example because it gives the best view.  The photo below shows an exploded view of the guts of a stop valve.

Like gate valves, stop valves take more time to operate and they're more prone to leaking.  If you have a leaking stop valve, you can often stop the leak by using a wrench to tighten the nut right below the handle.  Lefty loosy, righty tighty.

Summary

If you want to be proactive about preventing a plumbing headache, check out the main shut-off valves at your home.  Are they accessible?  When the valve is fully closed, does this completely shut off the water to your house?  Is the curb stop in your front yard visible?  It's nice to know about this stuff before you have a problem.

Gate valves, stop valves, and ball valves are the most common types of valves to find in your home.  If you have any projects that require replacing valves, I recommend using ball valves, also known as quarter-turn valves.  They're easier to use and less prone to leaking.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections

I heard a rumor that the faucets purchased at plumbing supply stores are superior to faucets purchased at big box home improvement retailers, such as Home Depot.  Just ask any plumber about this, and they'll probably tell you it's true.

Here's how the story goes: a homeowner contacts a plumber to have a new faucet installed, which they've already picked out - a Delta Addison faucet they saw at Home Depot's web site for $349.  The plumber will install the faucet, but won't give any type of warranty on the faucet, because it's an inferior product compared to the faucet the plumber would get from their plumbing supply store.  If the plumber provides the faucet, it will cost a lot more money - the list price at Delta's web site for the Addison faucet is $514.45.

The plumber goes on to explain that the faucets provided by a plumbing supply store are superior; while they may look identical, the 'guts' of the same faucet are of a higher quality when they come from the plumbing supply store, and less prone to failure.  For this reason, the plumber will only warrant the faucet that comes from the plumbing supply store, for a much higher price.

Reality Check

I've heard this repeated so many times, from so many sources, that I decided to do a little calling around.  I called and spoke with reps from Kohler, Delta, Moen, American Standard, and Price Pfister.  They all flat out denied this claim.  They say there is no difference in faucets that go to different retailers.  They're all the same.

American Standard said that the drain assemblies they ship with some of their lav faucets that go to plumbing supply stores will be made of metal, while the faucets that go to big box  stores will be made of plastic.

I suppose it's possible that all of the manufacturers were lying to me, or that the reps I spoke with don't actually know what their talking about... but how likely would that be?

In the plumber's defense

So why would a plumber claim that the faucets at plumbing supply stores are superior if the manufacturers don't agree?  I'm not sure.  Maybe it used to be that way.

At any rate, I have no problem with a plumber giving a warranty on the faucet they get from a supply store, but not a big box retailer.  If a faucet goes bad and it came from a plumbing supply store, the plumber can bring the bad faucet in and swap it out for another, or easily obtain replacement parts if something goes bad.  If the faucet came from a big box retailer, not so.  While many faucet manufacturers have liberal lifetime warranties on their faucets, a leaking faucet can mean waiting around for the manufacturer to ship a replacement piece.  If the kitchen faucet is leaking, who can wait around for replacement parts to be shipped?

Also, when a faucet comes from a plumbing supply store, the plumber has presumably marked up the price of the faucet.  This markup helps to cover the cost of a repair visit.  It's essentially the price the homeowner pays for a warranty.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections

Jerry Seinfeld:  "Have you ever noticed if a guy is out in his driveway, working on something with tools, how all the other men in the neighborhood are magnetically drawn to this activity?"

Too true.  That's totally me.  You can see this bit here - men love work.

My neighbor across the street was making a bunch of noise in his garage a couple of weeks ago, so I had to wander over and see what all the noise was about.  He was re-organizing his garage by putting up pegboard and hanging up all of his 'big' tools on it.  I was dumbfounded.  Why had I never thought of that?

I keep most of my hand tools on pegboard in my basement, but the idea of storing my bigger 'outdoor' tools on pegboard had never occurred to me.  I visit a lot of houses, and I can tell you from experience that most other people haven't thought of this either.  I can't remember visiting a single home where the outdoor tools were stored on pegboard, but this is a great way to do it.

It's cheap, it's easy, it looks clean and organized, it's easy to keep it clean and organized... what's not to like?  I resolved to do the same thing as soon as possible, which was last weekend.  Here's the before pic:

What a mess, huh?  I pulled it all down, took all the extra wood 'hangers' down, and threw up four sheets of 4' x 8' pegboard, available at any big box home improvement store.  I also bought several boxes of assorted pegboard hooks to hang all the tools on.

Total cost: $100

Total time: 4 hours

If your garage walls are covered with drywall, you can't attach the pegboard directly to the walls because the pegs need a little room to protrude through the holes in the boards.  No problem.  Just attach a bunch of furring strips to the walls, such as 1"x2"x8' pieces of pine.  They sell for about $1/each, and using three per sheet of pegboard works fine.

I attached the pegboard using Spax screws, which are available at Home Depot.  I keep these screws on hand in various lengths because I seem to use them for everything.  They're strong, self tapping, and they accept a #2 square bit, which is far superior to a phillips head.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections

Everyone knows what LED light bulbs are by now, right?  The three main benefits of LED light bulbs are  longer life, less energy usage, and Conspicuous Conservation.  OK, that last one was a joke.

Kind of.

LED light bulbs have been around for many years, but they've been too expensive for me to justify buying.  While I know they make a lot more economical sense than a Prius, I've been holding off for the prices to drop down a little further.  I finally decided to buy a few last week.

I use the recessed lights in my kitchen more than any of the other lights in my house, so those are the ones that made the most sense to replace.  I have 65 watt flood lights, and I probably have them on for about four hours every day - more during the winter, less during the summer.  To figure out my annual cost to operate each bulb, I'll assume I pay $0.08 / kWh.  The equation is 4 hours * 365 days * .065 kW * $0.08 = annual cost.  This makes my annual cost to operate each bulb $7.59.

Two or three weeks ago, Home Depot had a special buy on the 65-watt equivalent LED lights, bringing the price of a 9.5 watt LED floodlight down to $24.97.  My annual cost to operate one of these bulbs would be $1.11, making my annual savings $6.48 per bulb, bringing the 'payback' period to a little less than four years.  

To really sweeten the deal though, these bulbs are designed to be installed without a trim kit.  If you have decent trim kits on your recessed lights, this will mean nothing to you... but I have super-ugly yellow (ok - 'ivory') trim kits on the recessed lights in my kitchen, and I've actually contemplated spray-painting them white or buying new ones, but now I don't have to.

Comparisons

The photo below shows the four new LED light bulbs on the left, and two older incandescent bulbs with ugly yellow trim kits on the right.  Those will be replaced very soon.

A common complaint that people have with LEDs is that the color looks blue-ish or cold, but not so with these bulbs.  These looks just like the other bulbs in my kitchen - in fact, I think they look even better.  I wouldn't even know these were LED bulbs if I hadn't been the one to put them in.  The light output is 575 lumens, which is average for a 65-watt incandescent bulb.

Dimming LEDs

Another complaint that people have with LEDs is that they don't dim properly, or they won't dim low enough; not so with these bulbs.  To properly dim an LED bulb, the bulb itself needs to be dimmable and an LED dimmer switch needs to be used.  After installing an LED dimmer switch, I was able to get these LED bulbs to dim about as low as my incandescent bulbs.  I had to wait until night-time to take a photo of this, but I think you'll agree - the light output at the lowest level is quite similar to the incandescent bulbs.  The one interesting thing is that at the full dim level, these lights seem to change color - they look a little green-ish.

If you try using a standard incandescent dimmer switch with LED bulbs, it might not work properly.  The video below, taken by Milind, shows a good example of what happens when the wrong dimmer is used.  This video shows CFL light bulbs, but CFL and LED dimmer switches are the same thing.

Another good bulb

If you're not interested in replacing the existing trim kits on your recessed lights, you can buy standard LED bulbs without a trim kit.  Costco sells a 65-watt equivalent for about $15, and it looks almost identical to a standard incandescent bulb.  I picked up one of these for a recessed light in my bathroom, and it seems to give off the same color as the old incandescent bulb, but it's actually quite a bit brighter.  While the packaging called this a 65-watt equivalent, it actually puts out 750 lumens of light and consumes 13 watts.  Given the comparison to the bulbs from Home Depot, this seems more light an 85-watt equivalent.  Either way, I like it.  I'm happy.

LED bulbs are cooler... and they generate less heat.

Besides all of the energy saving features, LED light bulbs are great for recessed lights when you have an attic space above, because they generate far less heat, which means less heat gets transferred to your attic space during the winter, which can help to prevent ice dams.  You can read more about that here - Recessed Lights are Evil.

Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections