Spring is here and its time to take care of those projects around your home. While you may be able to easily deal with some issues, some projects are better left to a professional. Shower repair is one of those projects that is best when left to a licensed and reliable plumber.
How can you tell what aspect of the shower needs repair? Read More→
Bugs and rodents go wherever there is water. If you have a leak under your house it will attract pests. If the wood stays wet from a leak it will entice wood lice and termites. Leaking tubs and shower drains, especially shower pans, seem to invite the highest concentration of ants and termites. Likewise, if the wax ring around the bottom of a commode isn’t sealing you are creating a watering hole for a herd of critters every time you flush.
Not only do pests capitalize on water and drainage leaks they actually cause them in some cases. Mice and rats like to chew on the lead bends under commodes in crawl spaces. This is a common cause of plumbing leaks under houses. Rats climbing out of the city sewer into house drains is a common cause of whole house back-ups!
It is a good idea to call a plumber at least once a year to come out and make sure nothing is leaking and inviting new infestations. Likewise, It is a good idea to call a pest control specialist to make sure you don’t have any pests in your crawl space that could be attributed to water.
Photo Credit: Moon Stars and Paper made available through a Creative Commons License
Family-owned operations like ours have your best interest at heart. We’re not just out to fill quotas or pocketbooks with quick-fixes to see how many appointments we can manage in a day. Our strongest desire is to help you with your plumbing issues and add you to the list of clients that call us over and over because they know they’ll get personable and reliable service.
If you wonder whether or not we can help, call us and see! 972-424-6479
Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapitol.com on Flickr made available through a Creative Commons License.
Take precautions when you notice that turning a handle won’t cause water to completely stop. Plumbing leaks will only get worse over time. If a faucet washer is already worn out, applying more force can actually do more harm than good. You don’t want to strip the threads. If you do go that far, turn off the water under the sink at the source so that your faucet will stop running.
It’s a good domestic practice to regularly go around your house and make a mental note of the state of your faucets. Don’t forget the faucets that exist behind your washer and under the kitchen sink, connecting the dishwasher and refrigerator to the main water line.
Next, take a good look around the outside of your home. Outside hosebibs are easy to overlook, and during the colder months, even more susceptible to unnoticed problems. Be sure to disconnect your hose before a freeze. Outside hosebibs that freeze usually do not cause any trouble until they start to thaw. You may notice a wet spot on your carpet in the closet for instance.
Another thing to quickly take notice of is the ceiling of a two or more story building. If water is leaking somewhere overhead, you need to know about it before it gets out of control. Pay attention to the flooring around toilets, dishwasher and washing machine. If there is cracked and blistered paint, or water-damaged material, it could be a leak that is intermittent, happening only when a certain fixture is used, but not constantly. Those situations still need to be corrected immediately to salvage the remaining building materials and keep serious rot and mold from happening.
Tell us your plumbing leak discoveries. Everyone has some sort of disaster they can remember – share yours here!
Photo Credit: jmgold on Flickr through a Creative Commons License
We talked about slab leaks in last week’s post. The only thing that I can think of that could rival the frustration of 
dealing with a slab leak, would be a sewer leak.
Sewer leaks are smelly, potentially dangerous, and somewhat difficult to detect and repair due to the nature of a sewer itself.
When you call us out for a sewer clean-out because your plumbing is backing up into your home from a clogged sewer, we’ll use a rod to clean that line. If we draw mud back on the line from the sewer, we can be reasonably sure that there is a break in the sewer pipe somewhere.
At that point we don’t know how long it has actually been leaking! Sometimes it is one spot and one bad piece of pipe and sometimes it can be several sections of pipe that might be rotted out and leaking.
The plumber will put a sound down the sewer to the point of stoppage. The sound puts out a signal that we can track above the concrete or soil. That’s where we break the floor or dig the soil to repair. We then test…and check for any other breaks in the sewer.
If you have any questions about possible sewer leaks on your property, don’t let the fear of the costs associated with the leak repair stop you from calling us to get the urgent help that you need. It is far more costly to wait. What most people don’t realize is that the sewer in your home connects to the sewer in the street and when that break occurs in your home, you are connected to everything that gets flushed down that drain in the street. The possibility exists that any back up of the city sewer could back up into your home too! In addition, any uncontrolled water leaking into the soil beneath your home can cause foundation problems, especially with our N. Texas soils.
Contact us today for more information.
Photo Credit: ilovebutter on Flickr
Recent Comments