Brooks Plumbing Co. Blog: Archive for August, 2014

The Very First Labor Day Celebration

Friday, August 29th, 2014

Labor Day as a federal holiday, held on the first Monday of September, has been with us now for 120 years. President Grover Cleveland signed the law that made Labor Day a national holiday in 1894. Ever since then, the three-day weekend has provided people in the U.S. with the opportunity for vacations, time with their families, shopping trips, and a general celebration of the conclusion of summer and the beginning of fall.

However, there were twelve years of Labor Day observations in the U.S. before it became an official holiday. The first Labor Day celebration took place in 1882 in New York City on September 5. According to the accounts from the time, it had a rough start and almost didn’t happen.

The main event planned for that first Labor Day was a parade along Broadway that was to start at City Hall. However, the parade ran into a bit of a snag early on. The marchers started to line up for the procession around 9 a.m., with a police escort to make sure the event went peacefully. However, the problem of the day wasn’t rowdy members of the parade—it was that nobody had remembered to bring a band!

With people ready to march, but no music to march to, it started to look like no parade would happen at all, and the first Labor Day would have ended up a failure. But just in time, Matthew Maguire of the Central Labor Union—one of the two men who first proposed the celebration—ran across the City Hall lawn to the Grand Marshal of the parade, William McCabe, to inform him that 200 men from the Jeweler’s Union of Newark were crossing the ferry to Manhattan… and they had a band!

At 10 a.m., only an hour late, the band from Newark walked down Broadway playing a number from a popular Gilbert and Sullivan opera. They passed McCabe and the other 700 marchers, who then fell in line behind them. Soon, the spectators joined in, and an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people marched through Lower Manhattan.

According to the New York Times, “The windows and roofs and even the lamp posts and awning frames were occupied by persons anxious to get a good view of the first parade in New York of workingmen of all trades united in one organization.”

The parade concluded two hours later when the marchers reached Reservoir Park. But the party was only getting started. Until 9 p.m., some 25,000 people celebrated with picnics and speeches and beer kegs. It was an enormous success, and all thanks to the speedy arrival of jewelers carrying band instruments.

If those musicians from Newark hadn’t shown up, perhaps we wouldn’t have the holiday opportunity that we now have every year. However you celebrate your Labor Day, our family at Brooks Plumbing Company wishes your family a happy end of summer.

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Fix That Leaky Faucet! Here’s What It Could Be Costing You

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

A dripping faucet in your bathroom can keep you up at night, but this isn’t something that you need to find a way to “live with.” The same goes for a leaky kitchen faucet which you can ignore when you’re somewhere else in the house. What looks like a small inconvenience is actually much more. A leaking faucet is wasting water and costing you money, far more than you may think.

If you have one or more faucets leaking in your home and you can’t stop them, you need to call for a plumber to come out to fix the problem. Brooks Plumbing can take care of any leaky faucets in your home, as well as any plumbing problem that can plague your pipes and appliances. We’ve brought great plumbing service to the Olympia area for 20 years, and we strive for the highest quality in everything we do. If you need a plumber in Tumwater, WA, don’t hesitate to call.

The Unpleasant Truth about Leaking Faucets

The small size of the drips from faucets can easily trick people into thinking that a leaking faucet is no big deal—those drips can’t possible add up to enough water to make a difference. However, the actual numbers on the volume of water that goes down the drain from a leaky faucet show that theses drip make a big difference.

For example, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the leaks from an average household can equal 10,000 gallons of water each year, which is equivalent to 270 loads of laundry. For a single faucet that leaks one drip per second can waste 3,000 gallons each year, which equals approximately 180 showers. And at least 10% of homes have leaks that waste 90 gallons or more per day. If you make the effort to have professionals fix basic leaks (not counting leaking in pipes), it will save you 10% on your water bills annually.

Take a look over your water bills for the last year and add them up. Now calculate what a tenth of that amount is: that’s how much you can waste every year if you allow leaky faucets to continue drip-drip-dripping.

Remember, this is not just an issue for your house, but an issue for water conservation in general. When you have a leaking faucet fixed promptly, you’re helping the planet along with helping your water budget.

You can call on Brooks Plumbing to help stop water leaks in your home. We’ll send a plumber who will also look to find other places in your home where you may be wasting water. We strongly recommend that you have new low-flow faucets installed to replace leaking ones; along with stopping the leaks, these new faucets will lower your water usage an additional 30%.

Tags: Plumbing, Tumwater
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Reasons to Consider Kitchen Remodeling

Friday, August 15th, 2014

Undertaking a major remodeling project for your home can seem intimidating, and making the choice to remodel a central part of your home, like the kitchen, is one you shouldn’t make lightly.

However, there are some excellent reasons why choosing to have your kitchen remodeled is worthwhile. If you have an excellent contractor to assist you with the remodeling, most of your worries will be taken care of and the job should go smoothly, with reduced disruption to your daily life. If you are thinking of kitchen remodeling, call our experts at Brooks Plumbing today. We can help you plan for the right fixtures and plumbing upgrades to make your remodeling project a complete success.

Some Reasons To Remodel Your Kitchen:

Increase its function: If you feel that your kitchen makes you work too hard, then upgrading it can help you change it into a more functional and efficient space. Multi-bowl sinks, additional room, easier access to storage, improved appliances… all of these will make your kitchen much easier to work in.
Update the style: Perhaps your kitchen feels like a stale a lifeless space; it simply isn’t an attractive or pleasant place in which to spend time, and the passing years have made it look increasingly out-of-date. A remodel will give your kitchen a much needed face-lift to modernize it and help it reflect your personal sense of style.
Entertainment value: Kitchens are often located near the center of a home, and you can make the room a part of the center of social activity. If you are interested in doing more entertaining in your house, expanding and upgrading the kitchen will make the job much easier and enjoyable. The basic layout of many older kitchens can make them restrictive for entertaining purposes, and a remodel will fix this.
Raise resale value: If you think that you will eventually put your home on the market, a beautiful and effective kitchen will make the home more attractive to potential buyers. Surveys have shown that a kitchen remodeling job can return 85% of its cost in resale value alone.
Safety: Kitchens are the space in the house where the most accidents can occur. If you have a home with young children or people with special assistance needs, it’s wise to have a kitchen designed to lessen the chance of accidents from narrow walkways and countertops at unsafe heights.

Brooks Plumbing is here to assist with the remodeling work you need. We can perform the repiping and drain upgrades to support your new appliances. For any plumbing changes that you need done to accommodate the work on your kitchen remodeling in Olympia, WA, you can place your trust our remodeling specialists. We can match your needs with our full range of service.

Tags: Kitchen Remodeling, Olympia
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The Many Benefits of a Bathroom Remodeling

Friday, August 8th, 2014

The bathrooms in a home are not the centers of social and family life, but they are central to daily life: the first place you go after your wake up in the morning, the last place you go before heading to bed. Bathrooms are also the spot where you use the most water in your home. A bathroom that is becoming old and outdated can turn into a sore spot in your day and a locations where you waste water and suffer repair problems due to declining plumbing.

Arranging for bathroom remodeling can change all this. Remodeling a bathroom is about more than giving the place a quick face-lift; there are a number of advantages that you may not have thought about. Call Brooks Plumbing today and ask about our bathroom remodeling services (as well as our kitchen remodeling) and we’ll explain what we can do for you to enhance this important room in your home.

Here Are Some Benefits of a Bathroom Remodel

Conserve water: For a bathroom remodel, you can choose to have old, wasteful water fixtures replaced with EPA-approved low-flow models. Low-flow faucets and toilets use 30% less water than standard models (and sometimes even less, if you are replacing a very old toilet) without sacrificing performance. Depending on your water use, this can add up to a few hundred dollars in savings from your utility bills each year, and you will help the environment as well.
Get rid of poor quality or aging pipes: A remodel is an ideal time to have the old plumbing in your home taken out and replaced with newer material like copper and PEX. If your plumbing has experienced numerous leaks and clogs in the bathroom, it’s probably past time you had the aging plumbing modernized.
Increase your home’s value: Any effective remodeling job will increase your home’s resale value because it will be more modern, attractive, and efficient.
Brighten the room: Finally, a remodeled bathroom will simply be a more pleasant place. With new a tub and fresh fixtures, a bathroom will change from drab and functional to a cheerful spot. You spend a great deal of time in the room: why not make it brighter and more life-enhancing?

Although some homeowners like to take on home remodeling as a DIY project, you do not want to do this for a bathroom: the plumbing work is simply too important to risk on amateur work that creates leaks. Contact our Olympia, WA bathroom remodeling specialists today, whether you want to get started right away with the project or if you just need more information on how our remodeling works and what it can do for you.

Tags: Bathroom Remodeling, Olympia
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