FAQs

Smelly drains are a common problem in houses that are frequently empty or that have extra bathrooms of kitchens that are not in use. If you notice a musty or sewage–like smell coming from any of the drains in your home, the first step is to briefly run the faucet.

Every drain has a trap in it that holds a small amount of water. This water blocks sewer gasses from rising back into the house. However, if the fixture isn’t used for an extended period of time, the water in the trap evaporates which means there’s no barrier to keep out the smell. If this happens, run the tap for a few minutes to clear the drain and refill the trap. If you know you’ll be away from the property for some time, consider having the fixtures winterized or sealed up until you plan to use them again.

This is a very common concern and is an early warning sign of a leak somewhere in the plumbing, but they’re often in places that aren’t easy to see. They are small and frequently between walls, underneath floor boards or even beneath your home. By the time you feel a drip from your ceiling or see water on the floor, quite a bit of damage has probably already occurred.

If you see your water bill suddenly increase without explanation, call a professional to check your home for leaks. Most homes use a consistent amount of water each month, so increases are often signs that you may have a leak.

Water may look clear, but it carries a number of other minerals and metals that are diluted in moving water, but stick to fixtures and pipes as they pass through. There are quite a few different minerals that might be in your water. White buildup is often a result of calcium and magnesium – resulting from hard water. Iron leaves behind a reddish tint and copper will leave a bluish green tint.

Almost none of these residues signal a problem with your water that will be detrimental to your health, but it is still a good idea to have someone inspect the lines. Hard water in particular can cause damage to your fixtures and pipes and result in early replacement needs.

The most common reason you lose hot water is because of a blown heating element in the hot water tank. This can be fixed by a professional in just a few minutes, but if it doesn’t solve the problem, there are a number of other issues your technician will inspect for, such as a bad heat sensor, a fickle pilot light, or an old water heater that simply needs to be replaced. If you’re not sure why your water heater suddenly stopped working properly, call a professional to take a closer look.

Clogged or backed up sewer and drainage lines are common occurrences. Unfortunately, they happen for a number of reasons, so even if you perform regular maintenance, it’s a problem you may someday need to deal with. When a backup occurs, the first step is to ensure that it is in fact in your sewer or drain lines.

Does the blockage slow all of the drains in your house, or only certain drains? Is there sewage or waste water backing up into your pipes or is it just draining slowly? Do you notice any water or waste leaking up onto your lawn? While any of these problems needs to be fixed immediately, the severity of the situation will determine how quickly the repairs need to be done and how much they will cost.

There are two important things you can do to stop clogs from forming in your drains and sewer lines. The first is to avoid putting anything down the drain that isn’t supposed to go there. There are a lot of things on this list, including:

• Paper Towels


• Tissues


• Napkins


• Hygiene Products


• Diapers


• Toys


• Food


• Kitchen Grease

Pretty much anything that isn’t specifically rated for flushing should never be put down any drain – regardless of how easily it seems to go down. Yes, paper towels and napkins seem to go down the toilet fine, but they should never be flushed. They are designed to absorb water not disintegrate in it. Toilet paper on the other hand is designed to break up almost immediately when flushed – making it safe for your drains and sewer line.

The second way to avoid clogs is to have regular maintenance done on your drains. Pipe inspection with a video system will check for potential blockages and high pressure jetting can remove any that were found before they become serious problems.

For many years, if your sewer line got severely clogged, started leaking or was cracked in any way, the only solution was to dig a massive trench across the property to manually extract old pipes and replace them with new ones. This was both an expensive and intrusive process.

However, modern technology has made it possible to avoid this kind of headache in many cases. Trenchless pipe repair allows a plumber to create two small two foot wide pits on your property while sewer relining allows them to replace the inner lining of the sewer line without removing anything, often times making it more effective than it was when it was new.

While it’s certainly possible to guess what’s wrong with a sewer line or drain, it’s much more effective to see the problem before prescribing potential solutions. Video inspection allows a professional to look inside pipes to check for cracks, leaks, broken joints, or even roots infiltrating the pipes.

This often eliminates the need to dig trenches, makes it faster and easier to reach the potential problem in the pipeline, and speeds up the repair process significantly. Whether you can avoid digging or full replacement will depend on what the inspection finds, but in many cases, something simple like a high pressure jetting will solve the problem with no further work.

Tankless water heaters are rapidly gaining in popularity these days. They are efficient and effective at providing hot water in a variety of settings and are a great alternative for many people. But tankless water heaters are certainly not for everyone either and figuring out if one is right for you can be a complicated process.

The best thing you can do if you are trying to decide between tankless and tank water heaters is to consult with a professional who can help you evaluate your options. Tankless water heaters are great for low–demand households. However, they can have difficulty keeping up with demands from multiple locations in a home at once. If you think that this is a likely occurrence in your household, you may want to consider having multiple tankless water heaters installed, or you may be better off with a tank model.

Tankless water heaters do have many benefits, though. They use much less energy than tank models because they do not have to keep a reserve of water hot all of the time. They also take up much less space than tank water heaters, making them an excellent option in houses where space is at a premium.

Different types of water heaters come with different recommendations for the frequency of service they require. In general, though, a traditional tank water heater should be serviced about once a year. Many tankless water heater models do not require service this frequently, but it is a good idea to follow the manufacturer’s recommendations even if your water heater is brand new. There really is no substitute for proper maintenance service and it will likely save you a lot in the long run.

You should consider replacing your water heater if you have noticed persistent problems with getting hot water when and where you need it or if you are calling for repairs on a regular basis. Even if this is not the case, however, you may still want to replace your water heater if your current unit is more than 12 years old. This is about the average lifespan of a water heater anyway, and a model this old is likely much less energy efficient than the ones on the market today, meaning you’re spending more on monthly energy bills than you need to.

While it is true that water heaters are not a particularly complicated piece of equipment, it is not a good idea to try and install one on your own. Proper water heater installation requires knowledge of local building codes and the ability to attach your unit safely to the appropriate power source. This is delicate work and something best left to a professional. And if you have your water heater installed by an outside agency, they will take care of removing and disposing of your old system as well.

Most water heaters come preset to maintain the water in the tank at 140°F. However, if you would like to save a substantial amount of money on your monthly energy bill, turning the thermostat down to around 120°F is the way to go. This is still high enough to make the hot water you get out of your tap comfortable, but it will cost you much less in the long run and can reduce the wear and tear on your unit as well.

Despite the treatment that just about all drinking water gets at the municipal level, there are plenty of ways that contaminants can infiltrate your home water supply. The only way to know if they’re there and what they are is to have your water tested by a professional. Testing will identify the presence of things like excess minerals, chemicals and bacterial agents.

Once testing is done, you’re in a much better position to determine what type of water treatment system you need for your home. If your water is too hard, you’ll want a system to soften it. If there are excess chemicals in the water, filters can be put in place to remove them. And if it’s bacterial agents you have the biggest problem with, UV antibacterial lights can be installed to neutralize them on contact.

Your water is hard if there is an excess of minerals in it, most commonly calcium and magnesium. These minerals are not inherently harmful, but when their concentration in your water supply is too high, they can do a lot of damage to your pipes and appliances. They can also make your water taste bad.

Once you know you have hard water, however, it’s quite easy to remedy the situation. There are plenty of great water softening systems on the market and your water treatment technician can help you determine which one is appropriately calibrated and sized for your home and water needs.

Just like any other piece of equipment in your home, your water treatment system can’t continue to work properly forever. Often when it stops working effectively, you’ll have very few warning signs that a problem exists. So the best way to ensure that your system is always doing exactly what you need it to do is to keep up with regular maintenance visits from a professional.

During these visits, a technician or plumber will thoroughly inspect your entire system to find any problems and clean out whatever sediment and debris may have built up over time. They’ll also change or clean all of your filters. With this attention, your water treatment system should have no trouble keeping your water safe and clean, and you won’t have to worry about how well it’s working from one month to the next.

While both water filtration and softening remove certain elements from your home water supply, they go about it in very different ways. Water softening equipment makes use of ion exchange to get excess calcium and magnesium out of your water. In the process, water softeners typically insert sodium ions in place of the unwanted minerals.

Water filters, on the other hand, actually catch and absorb particles floating in your water. These particles are generally things like organic debris and iron, and once they are trapped in the filter, the remainder of the water can continue on, free of contamination.

Bacterial contaminants can be especially tricky to get out of your home water supply. Because of this, installing UV antibacterial lights after your main filtration device is essential. These lights work because the bacteria absorb the UV–C radiation as they pass by the light. This radiation scrambles the DNA inside each microbe and ends their ability to reproduce. Once they can no longer reproduce, bacteria are not a threat to the health and safety of your family.

There are a number of varying estimates as to how much electricity the average person uses. Household electrical use generally ranges from 10,000 kWh to 13,000 kWh per year, which equals about 900 kWh per month or 30 kWh per day. The actual amount you use will depend largely on the temperature in your area in the summer (air conditioning), the size of your home and whether you use electric or fuel based heating. There are a lot of ways to cut back on your electrical use, however, starting with green lighting and energy star appliances. You can even replace much of your electricity use with solar powered electric panels.

Many homeowners try to install their own panel box, but it’s a very complex process and should be overseen by a licensed electrician with the proper permits. First, there is the issue of shutting off the incoming electricity supply. This varies depending on your municipality and usually requires a city permit.

Old wiring and connectors that are no longer safe may also need to be removed which requires an understanding of what impact each action has on the rest of the system. Replacing a panel box isn’t the same as putting in a new water pump or fan belt in your car. You can’t simply pull the old part out and replace it with another. Electrical upgrades and changes have a direct impact on the rest of your home.

You’ve probably heard that your panel box should have at least 100 Amps and 240 Volts serviceable for your home. This is generally necessary, depending on where you live, however you may find that 100 Amps is not enough for your home if you have a central air conditioning system or other large appliances in place. Additionally, you need a panel box and electrical wiring that is up to code, so an inspection of your current system is needed to check for fire risks and low quality wiring.

There are varying regulations regarding the number of outlets in your home, but a general recommendation is that no point in any room of your house should be more than six feet from an outlet. Each outlet should be 18 inches off the ground and they must be grounded. You also need to have GFCI outlets installed in your bathrooms and in your kitchen if the outlet is near a sink. Additionally, GFCI outlets should be used outside if you have outlets installed on your patio or in your garden or shed.

In many areas, homes are now required to have arc fault circuit interrupters (AFCI) for outlets installed in bedrooms if they are on branch circuits with 125V, single phase and 15–20 amperes. These AFCI outlets will shut off the circuit immediately if there is an arc.

Because these arcs don’t always trip the main breakers automatically, AFCI outlets are a much needed safety precaution for your home. A small surge or short can occur in your room and not trigger a flipped breaker, but could still start a fire. These AFCI outlets are different from GFCIs in that they reduce fire risk, while GFCIs reduce the risk of electrocution and shortages in generally damp areas of your home