Overcoming a Fear of Plumbing Jobs

This sometimes involved the underside of a Volkswagen, but my most vivid memories are of his torso hidden beneath a sink cabinet, like some sort of perverse iron lung that spouted obscenities.

Is this why I, a foolishly fearless home improvement amateur, have managed to avoid even the simplest plumbing projects my entire life?

No comment.

But if this column is about anything, it’s about overcoming fear. So I set my sights on the two easiest home plumbing jobs — installing a new shower head and a new faucet — and called for help from Larry Rothman, the director of plumbing for Roto-Rooter; Thomas Mills, a professor at the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech; and Anthony Lefeber, a former partner at an architectural restoration firm, Traditional Line.

The sum of their advice? Although plumbing projects have become easier, they still require careful preparation, some specialized tools and the occasional need to keep children out of earshot.

“And no plumbing on Friday afternoon,” Mr. Lefeber added. “Plumbing is always hard, it’s always complicated, and it always leads to surprises.”

Let’s start with shower head installation.

For this project, you need four things — sliding-head pliers (Channellock’s cost about $16), an adjustable wrench (Crescent’s, about $25), a small piece of rubber or cloth and, perhaps, plumber’s tape (Hercules half-inch tape, about $1.40 a spool).

This job is among the cheapest of plumbing tasks, but if you ignore the concept of “opposing pressure,” you could flood your home and drain your bank account.

“Opposing pressure,” or “backing off,” is required for virtually any fixed and rigid pipe, but it is especially critical when working with older pipes and nuts that require some muscle to remove. The shower head arm is often one of those pipes. To remove the old shower head you need only unscrew it from this pipe, but while doing so, if you don’t hold the pipe in place with a wrench and apply slight pressure in the opposite direction, you could tear it from its moorings.

Two other bits of knowledge are crucial before starting out — the location of your water supply valve, and how to turn it off.

“You don’t want to be searching for it when water’s coming in at 40 p.s.i.,” said Mr. Rothman. “That’s when you start getting out your insurance policy.”

Usually, the valve is near the water meter, or wherever the water enters your house. Mr. Rothman said you should not shut off the valve unless you actually run into problems, because sometimes the valves are so corroded or bonded from disuse that they won’t reopen.

“You’re supposed to exercise the valves once a year,” he said. “But I never do it.”

Finally, you’re ready for the shower head.

Put a piece of thin rubber or duct tape over the pipe before you grab it with the pliers, to prevent scratches. Apply opposing pressure, without squeezing the pipe so hard that you might bend it, and unscrew the shower head with either your hand or the wrench.

Next, clean off the threads on the shower head arm, and, if the directions on your new shower head so suggest, apply a few layers of plumber’s tape to the threads, in a clockwise direction. Then simply screw on the new shower head (the Forté model from Kohler is $85).

Hand-tightening will usually be enough. But if the water leaks, use the wrench to rotate the head an additional one-eighth or one-quarter turn, while applying opposing pressure.

Done. So, is it time to break out the bubbly? Yes — unless you still have a faucet job. Kitchen faucets are more complex than bathroom faucets because they often include sprayers (although Kohler’s Evoke, about $833, combines sprayer and spigot in one). But, in general, faucet replacements involve more thinking and aggravation than shower head jobs.