How Good Is Your Plumbing Vocabulary?

Any fixture like a sink or basin should have a p-trap under it that gets its name because it's a p-shaped bend in the pipe. Water gets trapped in the curve when the faucet is off, and that prevents sewer gases from flowing back up the line and stinking up the place.

Plumber's putty is used any time you need to seal around a fixture to make sure it's going to be watertight. It looks a lot like Play-Doh, and it tends to be applied pretty liberally when doing any kind of fixture work.

Earthquake straps aren't too hard to figure out; you use them to secure things to the wall in case of an earthquake. In plumbing, they're a necessity for water heaters, which you need to properly secure for an added layer of safety in case disaster strikes.

A plunger is the most basic tool in a plumbing arsenal and pretty much the only one commonly used by everyday citizens. The suction cup creates a vacuum in a toilet or over a drain to loosen clogs.

You can bleed the lines of excess air in a building by opening all the faucets to allow the air out. Why do you care about air in your pipes? An excess of air can lead to very noisy pipes that can actually rattle and shake in the walls.

Your anode rod lives in your water heater and exists solely to be destroyed. It's a steel rod covered in a metal (like aluminum or zinc), and through the magic of electrolysis, the rod will corrode over time rather than the inside of your water heater.

Oakum is generally made of old rope fibers, sometimes hemp rope, and it should be tarred in some way. The oakum is forced into the space between a cast-iron pipe in the fitting to fill the gap and then molten lead is poured in to finish the seal.

A grease trap is a key component for many large-scale commercial kitchens that traps the grease flushed down a drain and prevents it from flowing out into the main sewer line. Grease traps have to be emptied regularly.

Flux is a compound necessary for soldering a joint that helps them "sweat" together. The flux, as it heats up with the torch, helps pull the solder all the way into the joint to ensure proper coverage.

A lot of people call them taps, but it's just the faucet you have to allow water to flow out. You have a faucet in the kitchen, the bathroom, the tub and probably the laundry room and outside somewhere as well.

Pipe bursting is a way of replacing pipes called trenchless pipe replacement. A new pipe is run through already-buried pipes that need replacement with a head that literally bursts the old pipe as the new pipe replaces it. This saves time and money and ensures you don't need to dig up your lawn.

You rough-in a building during the construction process by running lines and pipes through the framework as the building is being built but not connecting everything. This will be done before the walls are built so the pipes are in place and fixtures can easily be installed later.

A reducer is a handy fitting that will be able to connect pipes of two different sizes. One end may be 1.5 inches and the other end will be perhaps 2 inches or whatever size you need. Generally, the difference isn't too dramatic to prevent clogs in the line.

PEX pipe and tubing is a flexible plastic pipe that is being used much more often in place of copper in modern buildings. It's easier to use since it doesn't require soldering and, being flexible, it is easier to transport. Plus, it's cheaper.

If you've ever looked in the tank of your toilet when you flush it, you've likely seen a small, round valve that gets pulled up on a chain when you push the handle down. That's called the flapper, and it's what keeps the water in your toilet tank until it's flushed.

Dual-flush toilets are all the rage in most parts of the world that use flush toilets, though they haven't fully caught on in North America yet. The mechanism allows for using two different amounts of water so that less can be used for flushing when a larger amount would be wasteful.

All drains in a house connect to one main pipe that runs vertically through the building. From the highest point a fixture is connected on down, it's considered a soil stack. Above that point, it's a vent stack. Gases rise up and vent out of the room, and waste flows down and drains into the sewer.

You have potable and non-potable water in any plumbing system. Potable is what you drink and cook with, and non-potable is suitable maybe for watering the lawn, flushing the toilet or washing a car but probably not for personal use.

Basin and sink are often interchangeable, but some plumbers will stick to calling a sink what you have in the laundry room and a basin what you have in the kitchen or bathroom. It often depends on the plumber.

You've likely seen a float valve in a toilet tank; it looks like a ball on a stick. As the water level rises, the ball floats up pushing the stick down, which cuts off the flow of water at a certain volume to ensure it doesn't overflow.

Weeping tile is installed around the foundation of a building to allow for the draining of groundwater away from the foundation. Generally, the weeping tile, a porous tile covered in aggregate to allow only water to pass through, then drains into a storm sewer.

Graywater is pretty much any household wastewater except that which is contaminated with fecal matter. In other words, if it comes from any of your fixtures other than the toilet, it's graywater.

Most toilets you'll see in your life are close-coupled toilets. The cistern or tank is a separated but connected piece to the bowl, unlike some much older models of toilets where the water tank was elevated and away from the bowl.

A backwater valve is a key piece of equipment, especially in areas prone to flooding. If water backs up the sewer line, the backwater valve closes to prevent it from flooding back into the house.

WaterSense is a label you'll find on fixtures like toilets that means they're EPA certified to use less water than traditional fixtures and are therefore more environmentally friendly and responsible to use.

Annealing copper is the process through which copper is heated so you can make it more malleable instead of it being firm and rigid. An annealed pipe is much more easily bent, shaped, or hammered into whatever position you need it in.

All a valve does is either allow or prevent the flow of liquid through a system of pipes. An open valve is a straight pipe from one to another while a closed valve will use some kind of ball or other mechanisms to obstruct the flow.

The rate of flow in a fixture like a shower is typically measured in gallons per minute or GPM. 2.5 GPM is the federally mandated maximum for a showerhead and has been so since the 1990s.

Low-flow fixtures like showerheads and toilets are meant to use less water overall without compromising on the functionality. A low-flow shower, for instance, should force water out at higher pressures, so it functions just as well but saves water overall.

A bidet, either on its own or combined with a toilet, is designed to clean you with a direct jet of water. They're not particularly popular in North Ameria, but they're actually much more efficient and environmentally friendly than using toilet paper.

A snake is a kind of auger meant to clean out drain lines, often when a clog is either very deep in the line or so large it's hard to be cleaned by other means. A long metal line is forced down the pipe and usually hand-cranked or mechanically cranked to loosen up any material clogging the drain.

Household wastewater from the toilet is called blackwater and is often separated in drain systems from graywater, which can sometimes de diverted to storm sewers. Blackwater must always go to the sanitary sewer so it can be treated.

Often, bathtubs and bathroom sinks will have overflow valves installed, and they're just holes in the basin or the tub under the faucet. When the water level reaches the overflow, it drains out and prevents the water from overflowing onto the floor.

Sewage flows from houses and businesses into a sanitary sewer so it can flow to a treatment plant. A storm sewer does not transport sewage and does not have to go to a plant for treatment.

Especially in rural areas, sewage from a home will be transported to a septic tank where it can decompose and begin the basic treatment process. This happens most often when a connection to a municipal sewer system is not an option. Septic tanks have to be drained regularly.

A tankless water heater is a device that saves a lot of space by doing away with the large traditional water tank instead of heating water directly in the pipes as it passes through. This way you never run out of hot water, but it can be pricey to set up.

A basin wrench is designed to work in confined spaces. The head is on a hinge so it can flop from one side to another, letting it operate in a narrow vertical passage like up under a basin.

A sump pump generally works with a sump basin below a basement floor. Sump basins collect water sometimes from overflow and sometimes from external drainage systems like weeping tile, and the sump pump forces it out before it backs up to flood the basement.

You have hard water if there's too high a mineral content in it. Hard water makes it hard to work up a good lather and get anything clean, but a water softener exchanges the harsh mineral ions for sodium ions and makes your water a little easier to work with.