Sinks and tubs whisk away a lot of stuff, including dirt, soap, shampoo, hair, dead skin — a lot of material that can build up in the drain. While we may be quick to grab a drain cleaner or try a plunger when water won't go down, sometimes a simple cleaning out can do the trick. Feed a drain snake (if you don't have one, try straightening a wire clothes hanger) a few inches past the stopper, twirl it around and slowly pull it out. This will be easier if you can remove the stopper. There's a good chance you'll snag a clump of hair and gunk. Keep doing this a few times until the water drains and you can't remove anything else. Now's a good time to follow up with a drain cleaner or a simple combination of baking soda and vinegar, followed by very hot, but not boiling, water.

Before you start any plumbing project, even if it's tightening your toilet seat, you should locate all of your shutoff valves and know what they control. If you have a nice system that was installed with some thought, you might even have shutoffs for each bathroom.

Most of these valves are found in the basement, though some might be hidden behind access panels. If you're unsure what a specific valve controls, just close it off and start turning on your faucets and flushing your toilets.

Most importantly, always know where the main house shutoff is. It's usually right where the water line enters the house. Keep in the back of your head the fastest route to the shutoff. You could be sprinting there someday.

If you are getting pricing on your installation project feel free to try to negotiate pricing with your plumber. Most of the time the plumber you want to do the job would rather come down to the competitors price vs. losing the project.

Buying your own plumbing fixtures will save you the mark up from the contractor. Usually 20 to 30%.

Having the areas where the work is taking place be clean and easy to move through will most definatly save you money.

My water bill recently appears to be rather high and none of my faucets seem to be leaking, is there anything else that could be causing the sudden increase?

The first thing you should check is your toilets to make sure they are not leaking. Then you can check to make sure your fill valve inside the tank is not overflowing through the overflow pipe. There is a small tube that should be connected to it, you want to make sure the water level is about 1 inch below the overflow tube or level with the manufacturers mark inside the tank. The last thing you can check is your flapper is in good working condition.