About 15 minutes ago you put a load of laundry in the washer downstairs in your basement. You know the sounds your washer makes and the sounds that are coming up through the floor do not sound like anything you have ever heard before and do not want to hear now.
You turn toward the basement door, afraid of what you might find when you open it. When you turn the handle and open the door to the basement, the sounds become louder and you know what those sounds are now. They are the horrible sounds of water rushing out of the pipes and spraying the walls and floor with jets of water that should be heading into the washer and not onto the floor.
When you finally think to turn the water off and stop the spray from pouring out, you go over to the pipes and try to assess the damage. You can see that it isn’t much, the stainless-steel clamp has come loose and the pipes became disconnected. Hose clamp sizes will sometimes vary when it comes to piping in the home, but a simple stainless-steel clamp of one size or another should be able to get the hose and the pipe together again.
The scenario that plays out above is one that will probably make anyone a bit queasy. It isn’t every day that pipes and hoses come undone and cause a great deal of damage. Sometimes we do not even see the problem about to happen. We don’t see the problem until it is too late to prevent it. So many time if we would just take care of the basic, easy regular maintenance, we might be able to avoid the more devastating situations from happening.
The home is not the only place that do it yourself repairs can take place. When you keep a stainless-steel clamp in a few very select style in your car as a backup, you might be able to fix a simple hose issue without any worry of being stranded or having to shell out a decent amount of money to a mechanic whom you do not know.
Let’s say you are driving down the highway and all of the sudden you hear a thump, which is followed immediately by severe smoke coming from underneath the hood of your car. You drive off of the next exit you come to and pull into the parking lot of a strip mall. When you raise the hood of your car, you notice through all of the smoke that a hose has come unhooked. It is the hose to the antifreeze and without it, your car will overheat and you won’t be going anywhere.
Premium hose clamps are of the kind of reliable clamp you want standing by just in case one of the stainless-steel clamps comes undone. Many times, when a hose clamp comes undone, the hose might still be attached to the other nipple and might be able to be salvaged and use again. It is usually the clamps that with get lost and will have been left in the road some time ago.
It is a great idea to have a spare couple of hoses and a stainless-steel clamp or two in the truck of your car or whenever you can store your tools. If you can assess a minor problem like a hose that needs replacing or a battery cable that has become too corroded, you can save yourself a great deal of money by fixing many of these small problems yourself.
You might be very surprised at how much you can actually do yourself when you have the right parts and the right tools to handle a job. Hose replacement or tightening is an easy thing for almost anyone to do. The key is matching up the hose with the right nipple and tightening the clamps to just the right pressure.
