Understanding Common Plumbing Challenges: A Comprehensive Guide
Understanding Common Plumbing Challenges: A Comprehensive Guide
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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
Some plumbing problems are much more typical and can be quickly taken care of. Doing the repairs yourselves on these straightforward plumbing troubles can save you lots of cash. As a property owner, you will certainly run into many different plumbing problems that occasionally make an annoyance. Have a look at 5 of one of the most usual ones listed below:
Low Water Pressure
Is someone from your family grumbling that there's reduced water stress from the sink? If indeed, then the issue is the aerator within the sink which might have a great deal of sedimentation resulting in reduced water pressure.
Running Toilet
You may have experienced a running toilet, which can be fairly irritating due to the fact that the storage tank won't load up. At the exact same time, leaving it alone corresponds to throwing away water as well as increasing up your water costs.
Toilet fill shutoff
Dripping flush shutoff
Toilet flapper
Malfunctioning Garbage Disposal System
This irritating trouble is likewise high up on the listing of usual plumbing problems. Your device will feature a great trick to unjam your machine. If you lose it, you will certainly require an Allen wrench to repair the issue. You need to go under the sink and look for the place where you can insert the key. Utilize your wrench to turn the equipment to release the motor once you detect it. When functioning on your rubbish disposal system to protect against awful mishaps, do not neglect to transform off the system and also cut the circuit breaker.
Slow Draining Sink
You can make use of a plumbing device for fishing out the debris. From there, you can use a store-bought drain cleaner to cleanse the lines.
Slow Tub Drain
This is another pesky annoyance considering that the tub is one of one of the most previously owned fixtures in your restroom. Much like the sink drain, hair, soap residue, dead skin cells, as well as other cruds pool in the drain commonly. You should pop open the drain cover and also use a bathtub claw to remove the debris. Do this ASAP before the drain congests completely. After utilizing the claw, you can pour drainpipe cleaner to rejuvenate the drainpipe lines.
If every one of these audio laborious for you, you can constantly hire a plumber to obtain expert support. Looking for specialist aid indicates saving effort and time. You might even wind up conserving money in the future due to the fact that you can rest assured that your simple plumbing issue will not rise. Due to the fact that you will be inviting unfamiliar people in your house, just make certain you call a respectable company with licenses and qualifications. Naturally, you need to make sure that you deal with a person you can rely on.
Some plumbing concerns are more typical and can be conveniently repaired. Doing the repair services yourselves on these straightforward plumbing issues can save you lots of cash. As a homeowner, you will certainly come across many various plumbing issues that occasionally make a nuisance. You can use a plumbing device for angling out the particles. You may also end up saving money in the long run since you can rest guaranteed that your basic plumbing issue will not intensify.
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