Brooks Plumbing Co. Blog: Archive for January, 2012

Plumbing’s Tip: Detecting Leaks with Your Water Meter

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

When you notice a leak in your Tumwater home, you fix it right away, but what happens when you don’t notice a leak for days or even weeks? The damage it causes can have a profound impact on your water bill and the good repair of your home. To avoid hidden leaks – the ones that hide in your walls or your yard, keep a close eye on your water meter.

The Hidden Leaks

Obvious leaks are…well, they’re obvious. They pour water down the walls, leave puddles in your bathroom or create ponds in your backyard. Unfortunately, the majority of leaks are much less obvious. They result from small drips between pipe joints in your walls or a hairline fracture in your water main or drain pipes. They may not even appear where you can see them.

If this happens, it’s important to have a keen eye for the signs that a water leak has occurred. Specifically, look for jumps in your water meter readings.

Watching the Water Meter

Your water meter tracks every drop of water consumed by your family. To check for water loss, record the reading at the same time every day and watch how it changes. To be sure of a leak, you can turn off all the fixtures in your home and watch for the meter to move. If the meter moves despite the fact that no one in your home is consuming any water, it is likely a leak.

You can also compare your bills from one month to the next. If your bill rises suddenly, without any clear reason, check the meter readings and the rates. If the meter reading increased suddenly and the water rate did not, there might be a leak to blame. If that’s the case, call a professional to inspect your water lines immediately – what is hidden to you might be a relatively obvious, straightforward repair to someone else.

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Plumber’s Guide: What You Can Do to Prevent Problems in Your Drains

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

When you look at your Lacey home’s drains, they seems fairly simple. You pour things down and they disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Of course, that logic goes out the window the second the drain starts to backup or overflow. There are things you can do to avoid such problems though and most of the time, they cost nothing and take only a few minutes a week.

Simple Household Drain Maintenance

The first step to avoiding a problem is not putting anything down your drain that might cause said problem in the first place. Specifically, avoid grease, food, or other objects that might build up in your drains if not properly disposed.

Food can be broken down by a garbage disposal or, even better, placed in a compost pile. Grease, however, should never enter your sink at all. Pour all old kitchen grease into a coffee pot or bucket and dispose of it carefully. It can be thrown away in some places, or it can be recycled. Whatever you do, though, don’t pour it down the drain.

Another easy tip to keeping those drains clear is to pour a natural compound down every now and then like dishwashing liquid or baking soda and vinegar. Expensive drain cleaners are not only unnecessary – they are unsafe for the person using them and can cause damage to the pipes if you are not careful. To avoid such damage, stick with hot water based compounds and vinegar. The key is to do it preventatively.

If you wait until a full blown clog occurs, baking soda and vinegar may not get the job done and you’ll need to call a plumber who has a snake or other equipment to get the clog out.

Professional Maintenance

While regular flushing of your drain with hot water and vinegar allows you to clear out the vast majority of the stuff that builds up there every week, it’s also a good idea to call a professional for annual maintenance. Such annual maintenance involves visual inspection, professional grade clearing of food and waste products and a full flush. Done properly, this will minimize the cost of future repairs and replacements and keep your plumbing running smoothly for years to come.

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Happy Martin Luther King Day from Your Area Plumbers!

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Happy Martin Luther King Day! Many people consider this day a call to service, and there are so different many ways you can help your community, from lending a hand to a neighbor to donating food. Take a moment to think about how you make a difference in someone’s life today; even a small act of kindness can have a big effect. Help us make our community a better place!

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Plumber’s Tip: Bathtub Drain Clogs

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

When we think of clogged drains and plumbing problems, we most frequently think of toilets and kitchen sinks, but one of the most common drains to cause problems your Tumwater home is probably the bathtub. To avoid drain problems and to help fix any problems that might crop up, here are some tips for how to handle your finicky bathtub drain.

  • How the Bathtub Drain Works – A bathtub drain works the same as the other drains in your home with a simple trap that ensures the safe transfer of water out of your home and blockage of sewer gasses from getting into your home. The drain itself is frequently open with a small crack – roughly a quarter inch – beneath a larger drain plug that can be lowered when you fill the tub. While the space is not large enough for objects like a bar of soap to enter, it is plenty large enough for hair, soap scum, and other small objects from a bath or shower to enter and start clogging that trap.
  • Cleaning the Drain – To cut down on how much hair and gunk actually gets into the drain you should take off the entire drain mechanism once a week and remove any excess hair. You should also use some form of wire device like a bent coat hanger or scrubber to reach in and remove any hair you can reach. There are specific plumbing devices to help with this as well, but a hanger works just fine assuming you do not have a heavy clog. It is also a good idea to run boiling water through your drain once every week to clear out any soap and hair build up. While most soap is water soluble, it can create a thick, greasy clog when combined with hair. Hot water can help to remove it before a clog occurs.
  • If a Clog Occurs – If a clog does occur, you should use the hot water method along with a plunger to try and clear out as much of the clog as possible. Avoid chemical use at all costs. Bathrooms are usually small rooms and even with the fan on, the fumes can be dangerous and the chemicals caustic on your pipes and tub. Baking soda and vinegar often help for small clogs, but otherwise, you should move on to a snake for physical clog removal.

If you have a clog deeper than the snake can reach or that you simply cannot affect with the tools listed above, it may be necessary to call a Tumwater professional who can track your clog into the pipes and find where the root of the problem is. It might be just too deep in your drainage pipe or it could be a completely different area of your plumbing system.

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Plumber’s Guide: Quick Tips on Toilets

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Quite simply, everyone needs to have a working toilet in their Olympia home. Of course, when we do, we tend to take it for granted. Most people really do not know much about how their toilets work and how much water they use, and acquiring that information can be beneficial to you for several reasons. Toilet tips can help you save money, catch problems early and generally get the most out of your toilet.

Water-saving devices are always useful on toilets. Even if you did not buy a water-saver toilet to begin with, you can convert your regular toilet into one by installing a toilet cycle diverter. These great gadgets actually direct some of the water from each flush back into the tank rather than allowing it to run into the toilet bowl itself.

What this does is allow the tank to fill up faster. Less water goes down with each flush and less water is needed to fill up the tank. These devices are relatively easy to install yourself and they can save you a ton in the long run. In fact, the average toilet cycle diverter can conserve up to a gallon of water per flush.

You will also benefit from learning about how your toilet works because it can enable you to catch problems early when they are easy to correct. You may or may not be able to do the corrective work yourself, but at least you can call out an Olympia plumber earlier rather than later.

Fixing toilet problems early hopefully means that you will not have to go without a toilet for very long, if at all. And the repairs that you need should be relatively minor and inexpensive. When toilet issues are allowed to persist, they can turn into a much bigger plumbing problem and cause a great deal of inconvenience to you and your family.

One of the most common toilet problems is leaks. A leaky toilet can have all kinds of symptoms, but the bottom line is that it is probably costing you money on your water bill each month. Also, leaks will only get bigger as time goes on, so you will be much better off if you fix them early. Phantom flushing and continuous running are both signs that your toilet is leaking, and the earlier you do something about it, the better off you will be.

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