DIY Home Plumbing for Dummy Homeowners

House plan with plumbing schematic

Sometimes our researchers are lazy – or maybe it's just Friday afternoon and they're busy checking the standing of their fantasy football team before the weekend. Whatever the case, one of the easiest ways to find freelance dumbassery seems to be to look not for the topic but for the writer. That's what happened today: after noticing just how clueless eHowian Marissa Wilson was about finishing plywood and putting up crown molding on cabinets, one of our staffers just tracked her around the 'net for a few minutes. Sure enough, Marissa proved golden, with her HomeSteady.com post "How to Install Plumbing in a House."¹

That's pretty much the definition of an open-ended question, but Wilson was game. She decided it meant to repair copper pipes: apparently she thinks "install" and "repair" mean the same thing. A little hint, Marissa? they don't. Even if they did, Marissa's "instructions" are – to be blunt – seriously lacking. They comprise rubbish like,

"Use the hacksaw to cut the bad pipes out. You can tell they are bad pipes because they will have splits in them or will be corroded."

We hesitate to point out that corrosion on copper pipes does not mean they are "bad." You'd be wise to look for, oh, we dunno, leaks, maybe? And then there are her "instructions" for installing the pipes:

"Measure the copper pipe... You will know how much pipe you need depending on how many breaks there are and where they are. Put the fittings on. Dry fit them to make sure everything is right... After you know everything fits right take them apart and put flex [sic] on the pipe and fittings." And then when it comes to putting it all together? Wilson says to, "Solder all of the connections with the solder and the propane torch and take your time. Run the pipes to where you want the water to be hooked up. Attach the fittings on the hot and cold with the solder and propane torch. You attach the fittings to the hot and cold by putting flex on the pipes and fittings. The flex draws the soldering, creating a permanent seal."

That's not what flux does, Marissa. That's not what "flex" does, either; but from what Wilson wrote it's crystal clear that she had abso-friggin'-lutely no idea what she was talking about. Do you know what it means when an ignorant freelancer tries to tell you how to do something that she can't do herself? Right: it means she's our Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_6082487_install-plumbing-house.html

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