Most people do not plan ahead for emergencies. You already know that if you have a true emergency, you need to call 911. You might have a plan for dealing with natural disasters, especially if you have already lived through one. But most people don’t plan for plumbing emergencies. Nearly every homeowner will cope with a plumbing emergency at least once. Here’s how you can be prepared for any plumbing emergency.
Know Your Shut Offs
Throughout your house, there are manual shutoff valves that you can turn. These control the flow of water to certain areas of your home. You probably have a shut off for the kitchen, one for each bathroom, etc. You will also have a main shut off valve that turns off the water to the entire house. It is important that you know where all of these shut off valves are located and how to get to them. If you have a plumbing emergency such as a leak, shutting off water to the area can save you a lot of money and time from water damage. Continue reading “Planning Ahead for Plumbing Emergencies”
Being a homeowner has a lot of advantages over renting, and it is part of the American Dream. One of the issues that homeowners often have is that they must come up with money for maintenance and repairs throughout the home, and sometimes these repairs can be costly and unplanned. One of the most expensive systems in your home to maintain can be your plumbing. There are ways to minimize your maintenance costs when it comes to your plumbing and water heating systems.
Water might look like a liquid to the naked eye, but its specific properties and additives can actually make it “hard” or “soft” water. Even if you can’t see or feel the difference, you can certainly recognize the signs and symptoms associated with each. Here’s what you should know about hard and soft water for your own home, and when it might be time to call a plumber for help.
How much thought do you give to your sewer lines? If you’re like most homeowners, probably not much! Sewer lines stay out of sight, so it’s easy to take their functionality for granted. However, since you rely on your sewer lines to transport wastewater from your home into underground sewer mains, the last thing you want to experience is a sewer line clog that forces raw sewage to come up and out of your drains. Remain alert for signs of a sewer line problem so that you can resolve the issue before it becomes a major expense and inconvenience. 
Whether you receive your water from a municipal source or from your own backyard well, it is very important to consider what your water might be hiding. Simply using the water that falls from the faucet isn’t always the best or safest choice, especially if you have hard water. Is your household water hard or soft, and why does it matter?
Slow-running and completely stopped-up drains are very common in households, especially those with young children, but chemical-based uncloggers aren’t always the best solution. They are definitely simple and convenient, but they also place a host of dangerous chemicals into the water supply and threaten the integrity of your pipes. Next time you have a clog, give these alternatives a try instead.
Earth Day itself has come and gone, but the widespread desire to conserve water has not. Countless homeowners and business owners are eager to cut down on their water use to simultaneously support the environment and minimize their utility bills.Thanks to today’s technology, you don’t need to skip showers or eat off dirty dishes to save water. Instead, you can work with a professional plumber to install more efficient plumbing fixtures. 
You may not think about them frequently, but the pipes in your home serve the essential purpose of delivering water exactly where and when you need it. Chances are that you use the majority of your pipes on a regular basis to take showers, clean the dishes, flush toilets, and water the lawn. However, if you have a sink or tub that isn’t used on a daily or weekly basis, you might be inadvertently leaving those pipes vulnerable to damage from an unlikely source: bugs! 
It’s all too easy to take clean water for granted as it flows from the faucet, but the truth is that it requires immense effort to deliver clean water through the pipes of millions of homes in America each day. Plumbing Manufacturers International (PMI) is working to remind Americans of this as the new White House administration threatens to eliminate the WaterSense program under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new budget.