Plumbers in Medina, Texas

What goes in the box

Toilet parts. A flapper and a fill valve that match what you have. They fail more often than anything else in a house, they are cheap, and a toilet out of service on a property with one bathroom is a genuine problem.

Braided supply hoses. One for a basin, one for a toilet, one pair for a washing machine. These fail suddenly and they are the difference between mopping and rebuilding.

Pipe repair clamps sized to whatever your supply pipe actually is. A clamp holds a weeping section for days, which is exactly long enough to arrange a proper repair on your own schedule.

Tape, a decent wrench and a meter key. The key is the item people discover they need at the worst moment, and it costs almost nothing.

Pump and pressure tank parts if you are on a well. A pressure switch is the single most common failure on a private water system and it is a small, cheap part that leaves a house completely without water when it goes. On a remote property it is the one spare worth having above all others.

Water. Stored, rotated, and enough for a couple of days.

Knowing what you have before you need it

A spare is only useful if it fits, so the useful hour is spent now rather than during a failure. Photograph the label on the pressure switch, the model plate on the pump and the water heater, and the underside of the toilet cistern. Write the pipe size and material down.

Keep those photographs somewhere that works without the internet and without power, which in practice means printed and in the same box as the parts.

Label the valves while you are there: the main, the one to the heater, the one to any outbuilding. In a house where two people know where things are, both of them are occasionally away.

And check the spares occasionally. Rubber parts age in a box as well as in service, and a flapper bought eight years ago may not be the bargain it appears.

What not to attempt, and how we work

Having spares is not the same as doing the work. Gas of any kind, water heater replacement, anything requiring a permit and anything on the sewer side are not jobs to attempt because a part happens to be in the shed.

What the box buys is time: the ability to stop a leak, keep a toilet working and get water back on while a proper repair is arranged rather than while somebody drives an hour each way.

When you call, tell us what you have on hand. It occasionally means we can talk you through a fix and occasionally means we arrive with the one part you did not have rather than making two trips.

We cover Medina, Bandera, Vanderpool and Utopia, and out here the phone call before the visit is worth more than anywhere else we work.