Common Plumbing Issues Demystified: What You Should Understand
Common Plumbing Issues Demystified: What You Should Understand
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 and How You Can Fix Them
As a homeowner, you will run into lots of various plumbing troubles that periodically make an annoyance. Doing the repair services yourselves on these simple plumbing troubles can conserve you bunches of money.
Slow Draining Sink
You can utilize a plumbing tool for fishing out the particles. From there, you can make use of a store-bought drain cleaner to clean the lines.
Slow Tub Drain
This is one more pesky problem given that the bathtub is among the most previously owned components in your restroom. Much like the sink drainpipe, hair, soap residue, dead skin cells, and also various other cruds swimming pool in the drainpipe frequently. You must pop open the drainpipe cover and also use a tub claw to get rid of the debris. Do this ASAP before the drain blocks completely. After using the claw, you can put drainpipe cleaner to refresh the drainpipe lines.
Low Water Pressure
Is someone from your household complaining that there's low tide pressure from the sink? Initially, check if this issue influences both the cold and hot water lines. The problem is the aerator within the sink which may have a lot of sedimentation resulting in low water pressure if indeed. This is very simple to take care of as you just require to take it out and also scrub away the natural resource.
Running Toilet
You may have experienced a running toilet, which can be fairly irritating due to the fact that the storage tank won't fill out. At the same time, leaving it alone relates to drainage and increasing up your water bills. For starters, figure out what's creating it to run. You might require to replace any of the adhering to commode devices:
Bathroom fill shutoff
Leaking flush valve
Commode flapper
Malfunctioning Garbage Disposal System
This annoying issue is also high up on the list of usual plumbing concerns. Your device will feature an awesome trick to unjam your machine. But if you lose it, you will need an Allen wrench to fix the issue. You have to go under the sink and look for the place where you can insert the trick. Utilize your wrench to turn the equipment to release the electric motor as soon as you spot it. When working on your rubbish disposal system to stop unpleasant crashes, do not fail to remember to turn off the system as well as reduced the circuit breaker.
You may even end up saving money in the long run because you can relax assured that your straightforward plumbing problem will certainly not rise. Simply make certain you call a reliable firm with licenses and also certifications since you will be inviting strangers in your house.
As a property owner, you will experience many different plumbing problems that periodically make an annoyance. Some plumbing concerns are much more typical and can be conveniently dealt with. Doing the fixings yourselves on these basic plumbing issues can save you loads of cash. You can make use of a plumbing tool for angling out the particles. You may also finish up conserving money in the long run because you can relax assured that your simple plumbing problem will not escalate.
As a serious person who reads on Do It Yourself Plumbing Solutions, I assumed sharing that short article was a great idea. Enjoyed our piece? Please share it. Help others discover it. I love reading our article about Do It Yourself Plumbing Solutions.
24/7 helpline active. Report this page