How to Buy Plumbing Supplies | Plumbing Repairs

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Plumbers are expensive. Learning how to do a few simple home plumbing repairs can save you a ton of money. In this video, master plumber Tim Flynn shares tips on buying plumbing supplies.

I'm Tim Flynn and I'm the owner of Winters Plumbing and Heating in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Winters Company offers plumbing, heating, cooling. If you need service today; we're the business to call. My website is wintershomeservices.com. I'll be talking to you today about plumbing. Buy plumbing supplies, you want to be careful about what you want to buy. You want to either, go and bring the part with you to the supplier, or take a digital photo with your smartphone or your digital camera, bring that with you. Put a tape measure in the photo for reference. If you were going to by a toilet, for example, you may want to lay your tape measure down on the floor, take a photo of it so that you can see the distance between the wall and to the bolts, they're very important. I don't think you want to watch out for us, I like to support local business. So local plumbing suppliers always tend to cater to the plumber first because they're there every day, so if you're going to go out and buy plumbing supplies, I wouldn't go out first thing in the morning at like, 8-10. I'd go out, you know, 10-12, after the plumbers have come in and gone and then you can work with the people behind the counter who usually are very knowledgeable. Everybody is going to go on a Saturday, which is not the best day of the week to go and buy plumbing supplies because everybody's going to buy them. If you're going to be prepared, go on a Friday. If you could go on a Friday night, I'm sure you're going to be the only one there. Going on a Saturday - at least you if have your parts on a Friday, you'll be able to start your project first thing on Saturday morning. Quality plumbing supplies generally are American made. They're made with non-ferrous brass materials. I would tend to stay away from anything made out of plastic. I would tend to stay away from anything that's not made here because the tolerances can be slightly off as well. Buying supplies online is good if you've bought plumbing before and you know what you're buying. I not, I wouldn't recommend buying online. If you were going to buy a tool you could probably buy a tool. If you were going to buy a toilet online, I think that's kind of a blind item, I would always recommend going to see that fixture first. Going to see how it works, how it feels, because once you buy it you own it and then it's a pain to return it.