Typical Plumbing Troubles: A Look at Frequent Challenges
Typical Plumbing Troubles: A Look at Frequent Challenges
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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.
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Just How to Fix Common Household Plumbing Issues
Doing the repair services yourselves on these straightforward plumbing issues can conserve you lots of money. As a homeowner, you will certainly experience many various plumbing problems that sometimes make an annoyance.
Low Water Pressure
Is someone from your household whining that there's low tide stress from the sink? Check if this concern affects both the warm and cool water lines. If indeed, then the problem is the aerator within the sink which may have a lot of sedimentation causing low water pressure. This is extremely simple to repair as you just need to take it out as well as scrub away the natural resource.
Running Toilet
You might have experienced a running commode, which can be quite bothersome due to the fact that the tank will not fill up. At the same time, leaving it alone corresponds to wasting water and increasing up your water bills. For starters, identify what's causing it to run. You might need to change any one of the complying with commode systems:
Bathroom fill shutoff
Dripping flush valve
Commode flapper
Malfunctioning Garbage Disposal System
This annoying issue is also high up on the listing of usual plumbing problems. Your device will certainly include a nifty secret to unjam your maker. If you lose it, you will certainly require an Allen wrench to repair the problem. You need to go under the sink as well as search for the place where you can place the key. Utilize your wrench to transform the machine to release the electric motor as soon as you detect it. Do not forget to shut off the system as well as reduced the circuit breaker when working with your waste disposal unit system to prevent nasty accidents.
Slow Draining Sink
This is the most typical complaint of home owners, with the sink accumulating a lot of hair, grease, particles, as well as other substance in time. The only way to get a smooth flowing drainpipe once again is to remove the particles. First, you can make use of a plumbing device for angling out the debris. From there, you can utilize a store-bought drain cleaner to cleanse the lines.
Sluggish Tub Drain
Just like the sink drain, hair, soap scum, dead skin cells, as well as various other gunk pool in the drainpipe commonly. After utilizing the claw, you can put drain cleaner to revitalize the drain lines.
You can constantly call in a plumber to get specialist aid if all of these audio laborious for you. Seeking specialist assistance means saving time and effort. Due to the fact that you can relax assured that your easy plumbing trouble will certainly not rise, you might also finish up saving cash in the long run. Since you will be welcoming complete strangers in your house, just make certain you call a respectable business with licenses and also certifications. Naturally, you have to see to it that you deal with somebody you can trust.
Some plumbing problems are more common and can be easily taken care of. Doing the repair services yourselves on these simple plumbing issues can save you lots of cash. As a homeowner, you will certainly run into many various plumbing troubles that sometimes make a nuisance. You can make use of a plumbing tool for fishing out the debris. You might even end up saving money in the lengthy run because you can rest guaranteed that your basic plumbing issue will not rise.
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