Plumbing Advice From Someone Who Actually Knows
Peter has been working with pipes, water systems and heating installations for over two decades. This is his corner of the site — and whether you are dealing with a dripping tap at midnight, a toilet that will not stop running or a hot water system that has decided to stop being hot, you are in the right place.
Everything here is written from direct, hands-on experience. Not from a textbook, not from another website and not by someone who has never had wet sleeves from working under a sink. If Peter has written it, he has done it — probably more times than he can count.
Leaks & Drips
A dripping tap or a weeping joint might seem like a minor annoyance but left unattended a small leak has a reliable habit of becoming a significantly larger one. Peter covers the full range of common household leaks — from identifying where a leak is actually coming from (which is often not where the water appears) to fixing dripping taps, leaking pipe joints, weeping valves and the slow seeps around showers and baths that quietly cause more damage than most homeowners realise until it is too late.
Many leak repairs are well within the reach of a confident DIYer. Peter will tell you honestly which ones those are — and which ones need a qualified plumber on the end of a phone before anything else happens.
Taps & Mixers
Replacing a tap or fitting a new mixer is one of the most satisfying plumbing jobs a homeowner can tackle — and one of the most common sources of calls from people who got halfway through and hit a problem they did not anticipate. Peter covers tap replacement, mixer installation, understanding isolator valves, dealing with old fittings that have no intention of coming off quietly and all the preparation that makes the difference between a job that takes an hour and one that takes an afternoon.
Toilets
Toilets are straightforward in principle and endlessly variable in practice. A running toilet wasting water, a cistern that will not fill properly, a flush that has lost its conviction, a seal that is no longer doing its job — Peter covers all of it. Understanding how a toilet cistern works is genuinely one of the most useful things a homeowner can know, and Peter explains it in a way that makes the mechanics clear without making anyone feel like they are sitting a plumbing exam.
Pipes & Pipework
From understanding what type of pipework you have in your home to dealing with a burst pipe in an emergency, Peter covers the pipework side of domestic plumbing with the clarity and practicality that the subject deserves. Copper, plastic, push-fit, compression fittings, soldering, lagging for winter — it is all here, explained at the level a competent homeowner needs to understand it and act on it confidently.
Water Systems & Pressure
Most homeowners have only a vague idea of how their home’s water system actually works — which means that when something goes wrong they are starting from scratch at exactly the wrong moment. Peter covers the fundamentals of domestic water systems clearly and practically: the difference between combi boilers and system boilers, how cold water storage tanks work, understanding water pressure and what causes it to drop, where your stopcock is and why knowing that matters, and how to isolate the water supply to any part of your home in a hurry.
Understanding your water system is not just useful when things go wrong. It makes every other plumbing job on this page significantly easier and significantly safer.
Heating & Radiators
Cold radiators, systems that take forever to heat up, thermostatic valves that have stopped responding, bleeding radiators that need bleeding again too soon — Peter covers domestic heating maintenance and troubleshooting with the same plain English approach he brings to everything else. Central heating systems are less mysterious than they seem once someone explains how they actually work, and Peter is very good at explaining how things actually work.
When to Call a Professional
Peter will always tell you when a job needs a qualified plumber rather than a willing homeowner. Gas work of any kind must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer — no exceptions, no grey areas, no convincing yourself that this particular job is probably fine. Beyond gas there are other jobs where the risk of getting it wrong outweighs the satisfaction of doing it yourself, and Peter is always straightforward about where those lines are.
If you are ever in doubt, the sensible move is always to stop, step back and get professional advice before going any further. Peter would rather you called a plumber than ended up with a preventable problem.
Browse All Plumbing Articles
All of Peter’s plumbing articles, guides and tutorials are below — use the categories to find what you need or browse through at your own pace.