How to Tackle Common Plumbing Challenges: Pro Tips
How to Tackle Common Plumbing Challenges: Pro Tips
Blog Article
MOST COMMON PLUMBING PROBLEMS IN OLDER HOMES
Galvanized Pipes
The galvanic process means coating an iron pipe with molten zinc to prevent the iron from corroding. The zinc lasts a while, but not forever. As the zinc erodes, the exposed iron begins to rust. This can cause pipes to fail, but the warning signal is easy to spot: Your water will become discolored from the rust in it.
The answer is to have galvanized pipes professionally replaced by modern alternatives, such as copper or PEX (Cross-Linked Polyethylene). A well-trained plumber and assistant can perform this work in relatively short time, ensuring a constant water pressure, no odd taste or color to your water and no leaks.
Pipe Bellies
As your Phoenix home rises and falls in its surrounding soil, the pipes leading into your home will rise and fall, too. When they buckle or bow, they form a pipe belly, a low spot that defies gravity’s pull on sewage. While this settling occurs slowly, you will eventually notice poor drainage, slow-flushing toilets and, ultimately, a clogged sewer line.
Similar to pipe bellies are pipe channeling, where hard water carves its own channel in the bottom of a sewer pipe, rendering it very weak.
Polybutylene Pipe
Once thought of as a great water pipe product, polybutylene pipe (PB) was used from the late ’70s into the early ’90s because of its low cost and easy installation. It breaks down with exposure to water and water’s dissolved solids, so it is not acceptable anymore. As time goes on, homeowners experience more and more polybutylene pipe problems.
If you have an entire house piped in PB, you need the services of an experienced local plumber to replace every run, every elbow and tee, and every connection to fixtures throughout your house. Otherwise a leak could destroy furniture, furnishings, flooring and more.
Sewer Lines
Sewers and sewer lines are definitely at the top of a lot of people’s old house plumbing problems. Sewer lines take your home’s gray and black water from drains to the sewer main, where it travels on to a municipal treatment plant. Sewer lines are always wet, so they attract tree roots. Cast iron pipes are particularly susceptible to cracking and intrusion by tree roots, which can completely clog a line.
Professional plumbers can send a camera into your home’s sewer pipe to diagnose channeling and bellies, and they can find and fix tree roots that clog your pipe. This is a much more affordable option than the disgusting and expensive issues created by a sewer backing up.
Drains
Fifty years of draining water, soap scum, sewage and shampoo can take a toll on your older Phoenix home’s drains. Clogs develop in pipes in all drains, but toilet, kitchen, and bathroom sink drains are particularly prone to clogs.
Toilets are infamous targets for children, fascinated by the disappearing act. While you may never know a small action figure or toy car went down the toilet, you will know a backed-up toilet when it strikes. A small item could start a very slow-building clog.
Kitchen sink drains also tend to accept things that should not go down the drain, like kitchen fats, bits of food that should go through a sink strainer and even bone. You can do your part, of course, by keeping waste out of the kitchen sink or having a garbage disposal installed, but in an older home you will not know what others have stuffed down there before you.
Original Fixtures
While some original fixtures are notably sturdier and of better quality than their corresponding modern fixtures, many older ones simply wear out with time. Washers and valves degrade and cause leaks. Stems and handles break. If your home still has its original spigots, faucets, handles and valves, you may not notice the tiny leaks that lead to higher water bills and unpleasant smells.
A worry spot in any home is the shut-off valve for a toilet. This little-used valve attaches where the rigid pipe exits the wall, down below the tank, and a flexible metal and plastic tube connects the water supply to the tank. That shut-off valve can get stuck in its typical, open position, so any attempt to close it may actually cause it to leak. A trained plumber can replace not only the flexible tube to the toilet tank, but the antiquated or stuck shut-off valve. This means you never have to worry about turning off the water to the toilet should a bowl clog cause your toilet to back up.
https://www.acehomeaz.com/blog/common-plumbing-problems-older-homes/
5 Typical Household Plumbing Issues as well as How You Can Fix Them
As a property owner, you will encounter many various plumbing issues that sometimes make a nuisance. Doing the repairs yourselves on these simple plumbing problems can conserve you heaps of money.
Slow Draining Sink
This is one of the most typical grievance of homeowners, with the sink gathering a great deal of hair, grease, particles, and other crud in time. Sadly, the only method to get a smooth moving drainpipe once more is to remove the debris. First, you can utilize a plumbing device for angling out the particles. From there, you can utilize a store-bought drainpipe cleaner to cleanse the lines.
Slow-moving Tub Drain
This is one more pesky problem since the bathtub is among the most previously owned fixtures in your shower room. Similar to the sink drainpipe, hair, soap scum, dead skin cells, as well as other cruds swimming pool in the drain often. You need to pop open the drainpipe cover and use a bathtub claw to get rid of the debris. Do this ASAP before the drainpipe clogs up totally. After using the claw, you can put drainpipe cleaner to rejuvenate the drain lines.
Low Water Pressure
Is someone from your home grumbling that there's low water stress from the sink? If of course, then the issue is the aerator within the sink which might have a whole lot of sedimentation resulting in low water pressure.
Running Toilet
You might have experienced a running toilet, which can be quite irritating because the tank will not fill up. At the exact same time, leaving it alone relates to throwing away water and also increasing up your water bills.
Toilet fill shutoff
Leaking flush valve
Commode flapper
Malfunctioning Garbage Disposal System
This frustrating problem is also high on the checklist of usual plumbing problems. If you lose it, you will certainly need an Allen wrench to repair the problem. You have to go under the sink and look for the spot where you can put the key.
If every one of these sound tiresome for you, you can always employ a plumber to get specialist help. Seeking professional aid implies conserving time and effort. You might also wind up saving money over time because you can rest assured that your simple plumbing issue will not escalate. Just make certain you call a trustworthy firm with licenses and also accreditations because you will rate unfamiliar people in your house. Naturally, you need to see to it that you work with a person you can trust.
As a home owner, you will experience several various plumbing troubles that periodically make a problem. Some plumbing concerns are extra usual and also can be conveniently fixed. Doing the repairs yourselves on these basic plumbing problems can save you lots of cash. You can make use of a plumbing tool for angling out the debris. You may even end up saving cash in the lengthy run due to the fact that you can relax assured that your easy plumbing issue will not intensify.
I am just very intrigued by Fixing Typical Household Plumbing Problems and I am hoping you appreciated our article. If you enjoyed our blog post if you please be sure to share it. Thank you so much for your time invested reading it.
This Resource Report this page