Learn English useful for describing plumbing problems at home. Practise everyday phrases for explaining issues, asking about cost, and arranging repairs.
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This lesson is suitable for intermediate-level learners. After listening, test your knowledge with our quiz.
Learning notes:
Examples of phrases you can use when talking about plumbing problems:
- My tap won’t stop dripping
- The tap keeps leaking.
- There’s a constant drip.
- The shower pressure is really low.
- The toilet keeps running.
- The sink is blocked.
- The drain smells bad.
- That sounds like wear and tear.
- It could just be a worn-out washer.
Examples of phrases you can use when asking about plumbing costs:
- What am I looking at to fix it, roughly?
- Can you give me an estimate?
- What’s the ballpark figure for this repair?
Colloquial expressions:
If something keeps happening, it happens again and again and doesn’t stop easily.
If something is driving you crazy, it means it is very annoying and hard to ignore.
Wear and tear is the damage that happens slowly over time to something that is used a lot.
A ballpark figure is an approximate estimate, not an exact number.
To swing by is an informal word for to visit someone or some place, often for only a short time.
Vocabulary:
To Leak is to allow water or some other liquid through from somewhere to a place where it shouldn’t go.
To drip to drop as small drops that fall slowly, one by one.
A washer is a small rubber circle inside a tap that helps to seal the flow of water.
To seal is to stop the flow of a liquid or air.
To flush means to send water quickly through a space in order to clean it.
A drain is the opening or pipe where dirty or used water flows away.
Blocked means unable to let something flow through. If a pipe is blocked then, water cannot flow properly.
Low pressure means low in force. If water pressure is low then the water flows weakly, not strongly.
An estimate is an approximate idea of how much something will cost, not an exact number.
Transcript:
(Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript)
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Your tap won’t stop dripping. The water in your shower gets weaker after a few minutes. Or maybe your kitchen sink is full of water which won’t go down. These are common problems at home that can quickly turn into big headaches.
I’m Kate and in this episode, we’re practising everyday English you can use when talking about plumbing problems.
Plumbing is the pipes and systems at home that bring in fresh water and take dirty water away. A person who fixes pipes, toilets, and water problems is a plumber. . In Australia, we sometimes call them a tradie - short for tradesperson.
You know who is having a plumbing problem today? Claire. She is standing in her bathroom, staring at the tap as it drips...drip..drip...into the sink. She sighs, grabs her phone and calls her plumber, Allan.
Claire:
My tap in the bathroom won’t stop dripping. It’s driving me crazy.
Allan:
Yeah, it doesn’t sound to serious. It could just be wear and tear, a worn-out washer maybe.
Claire:
I see...What am I looking at to fix it, roughly?
Allan:
I can’t say now. I can give you a ballpark figure once I see it. Do you want me to swing by this afternoon?
Like Claire, we all have small problems at home. Things break, or stop working, and we need someone to fix them. To get the best help, it’s important to explain the problem clearly. So, let’s look at some useful phrases we can use when talking to a plumber.
First, Claire said,
My tap in the bathroom won’t stop dripping.
If water is dripping, it means small drops of water are falling slowly, one by one.
Or another way of saying this is,
- The tap keeps leaking.
If something ‘keeps’ happening, it means it happens again and again, and doesn’t stop easily.
And if water is leaking from somewhere, it is slowly coming out from somewhere to a place where it shouldn’t go so that even when you turn it off, the water still comes out in small drops.
You could also say.
- There’s a constant drip.
This means the same thing. The water keeps coming out slowly, or we can say, it keeps dripping.
Claire also said,
It’s driving me crazy.
If something is driving you crazy, it’s very annoying and hard to ignore. You can use this phrase whenever something keeps bothering you or makes you feel frustrated. For example, I love spending time on my balcony, but the traffic noise drives me crazy. Do your kids drive you crazy in school holidays?
So far we have talked about water that is dripping or leaking. That’s just one example of a plumbing problem you can have at home. There are so many others, and it’s useful to know how to describe them clearly. For example, you might have this problem:
- The shower pressure is really low.
If your shower pressure is really low, the water is only coming out very weakly, not strongly.
Or this one,
- The toilet keeps running.
If your toilet keeps running, the water keeps flowing into the basin even after you have finished flushing. To flush the toilet is to press the button or pull the lever that sends water quickly through the toilet to clean it.
Let’s look at a few more examples of problems you might have,
- The sink is blocked.
If your sink is blocked, then the water doesn’t go down the drain properly because something is stopping it. The drain is the opening at the bottom of the sink where the dirty water goes away.
Or,
- The drain smells bad.
This means there is an unpleasant smell coming from the pipes.
These are all common problems and phrases we can use to help the plumber understand what’s wrong. Let’s go back to our dialogue. Allan said,
It could just be wear and tear.
Wear and tear is the damage that happens slowly over time to something that is used a lot. It’s not sudden damage; it’s the kind of damage that can be expected after something has been used a lot. The other day, my washing machine stopped working. It is very old, so I expect that the damages just wear and tear and I’ll probably have to get a new one.
Allan also said,
It could just be a worn-out washer.
Washer is a small rubber circle inside the tap that seals the flow of water. To seal is to prevent water or air from getting through. A worn-out washer is a common cause of dripping taps.
Then Claire asked,
What am I looking at to fix it, roughly?
Here, Claire is asking for an approximate price. You could also say,
- Can you give me an estimate?
An estimate is an approximate idea of how much something will cost, not an exact number. You could ask,
- What’s the ballpark figure for this repair?
A ballpark figure is, like an estimate, is a rough number that is close enough, but not exact.
At the end of the dialogue Allan said,
I can’t say now. I can give you a ballpark figure once I see it. Do you want me to swing by this afternoon?
To swing by means to visit someone or some place for a short time. It’s informal and friendly.
You can use it when you want to visit someone quickly because you’re already nearby or when the visit is short and informal and doesn’t need much planning.
So, in this context. Allan is offering to come to Claire’s place later that day for a quick visit to check the problem.
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Paul Nicholson and Lily O'Sullivan voiced the characters of Allan and Claire, and Professor Lynda Yates was our educational consultant.
