Photos That Help a Plumber

A plumber who has not yet entered the house has only your pictures and your sentences. ManjeProp would rather send that person with a part in the van than send them to guess which of two bathrooms is wet. The public fault form already asks for photos. These are the frames that earn the upload.

This is not a photography course. It is a site brief.

Three shots, in this order

1. The room from the door. A stranger should see which bathroom or kitchen, which wall, which fitting. Include a bit of the passage or a window. If the door has a number, include the number.

2. The failure, filling the frame. The joint, the trap, the base of the pan, the mixer, the geyser overflow from the ground, the wet ceiling. Focus. No filter. No beauty mode that turns a drip into mist.

3. The consequence. Water on the floor, the stain on the room below, the bucket, the outside gully if the smell is outside. This shot answers “how bad.”

If you only have time for two, take 1 and 2.

Light and water

Wet surfaces reflect. Move until the drip is a line, not a white flare. Daylight from behind you is better than a yellow bathroom bulb in a steam cloud. Wait thirty seconds if someone just showered and the mirror is fog.

Do not mop before the photo unless someone will slip. A puddle is evidence. A caption that says there was a puddle is a story.

If water is at a plug or a light, do not stand in it to get a hero shot. Photograph from the dry, mark Emergency, phone +27 60 313 6961, and do not open anything electrical.

What to include in the close shot

A bit of the surrounding fitting so we know we are looking at a trap and not a random pipe. A tile grout line or a bottle for scale. The isolation valve if you found one — even if you could not turn it.

If you closed a tap, photograph the tap closed. That sentence plus that picture stops a second call-out.

Model stickers on a geyser or a toilet cistern help when a part must be matched. Photograph the sticker, not the serial next to a tenant ID.

What to leave out

Housemates. Medicine. Identity documents. Keys. Gate codes. A walk-through video that also tours the street number and the labelled key hook.

A five-minute video of you talking is worse than three stills. A ten-second video of a flush filling a shower tray is useful — if the stills are also there.

Words that must travel with the pictures

On Report a fault: property, unit, still running or not, hot or cold or both, since when, chemicals already used, whether more than one fitting is affected. Category Plumbing or Water / leak.

“Same as TCK-xxxx” if this is a return visit. Plumbers hate surprise sequels that look like first dates.

Different fittings, same honesty

Under a sink. Open the cupboard door for the wide shot so the plumber sees which side the trap is on. Close shot of the joint that is wet. Photo of the goods you pulled out so we know you did not hide a soaked ID book in the frame.

Toilet. Photo of the base where it meets the floor if that is wet. Photo of the cistern if that is the drip. Do not stand on the pan. If the bowl is rising when someone showers, say that — the stack matters more than the porcelain.

Geyser overflow, from the ground. The pipe, the drip, the wall or ledge it hits. Not a selfie on the roof.

Ceiling. Wide enough to know which room. Close enough to see whether the mark is tea-coloured or still glossy-wet. Photo of the room above if you can take it from the floor.

After the visit

If staff ask for a “second reading” photo of a water meter because the leak may have been silent, shoot the meter the way the meter article describes: square-on, serial in the frame. That is a different brief, same honesty.

The repair log should later hold a photo of the finished joint. You do not take that one unless you are there and staff ask. Your job was the before.

If the same fitting weeps a week later, do not send a new abstract album. Send two new stills and the old reference. That is how a failed washer is distinguished from a cracked pipe.

Viewers

If a viewing shower tray fills, photograph it (empty house, no occupants’ things) and put it on the enquiry form. That is how a listing gets corrected before anyone pays a deposit.

A plumber is paid to fix a fitting, not to decode an album. Send the three shots and the one honest sentence about whether the water is still moving.

Report a fault · +27 60 313 6961 when the water is winning.