Top 10 Homeowner Plumbing Checks Before Calling Your Plumber

All proper homes need a smoothly functioning plumbing system. Along with the electrical and heating system, it forms the holy trinity that turns a house into a comfortable home!

Plumbing repairs and replacements don’t exactly come cheap. Knowing exactly when to call in expert assistance can often result in savings to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Check out the following plumbing tips for homeowners to deal with basic plumbing issues, and if you are in Sugar Land or Katy, TX, area, feel free to drop us a line for experienced plumbers and advanced plumbing solutions!

1. Know where the main cutoff is: any minor plumbing mishap has the potential to lead to a major indoor flooding incident. If you care about your carpets and such, make sure enough people in your family knows the exact location of the main cutoff for water supply. Especially the younger more agile ones, because you know, every second count!
2. Check your water meter dials often: if the dials are active when nobody is using water, that is a sure sign of trouble. Chances are high that you might have a leak somewhere that you have no clue about. Here is a nifty tip that could save you a couple of hundred bucks; check your toilets and faucets, they are the usual suspects.
3. Check for seepage with some color: add some food coloring to your toilet tanks to check for seepages and water loss. If any staining appears in your toilet bowl after 30 minutes, that means you have a seepage issue, probably around the flapper tank. Cheap and easy to fix, as long as it is detected early enough.
4. Water heater tank maintenance: if you can afford one, a tankless water heater is a definite upgrade in every sense that will lead to lower energy bills. But if you are still using a model with a tank attached, remember to drain a couple of gallons from it at least twice a year to prevent sedimentation and improve energy efficiency.
5. Maintain a stock of basic replacement parts at home: toilet kits and rubber gaskets are cheap and can be readily replaced by homeowners themselves without seeking expensive professional help. Learn how and keep a stock handy.
6. Stay clear of chemical drain cleaners: they can adversely affect the longevity of your pipes and drains. To handle clogs, use a plunger instead. For the more stubborn ones, consider investing in an “auger”, a rotor based clog removal tool that also goes by the popular nickname “snake”.
7. Stalling a toilet overflow: to achieve this, you need to immediately plug the hole at the bottom of your tank. Remove the lid of the toilet flush tank and press down firmly on the flush valve. This will buy you the time necessary to identify the source of the clog leading to the overflow.
8. Always keep a plunger around: incredibly cheap and effective to boot, these can handle the basic garden variety plumbing issues like clogged sinks and toilets with minimum fuss.
9. Avoiding frozen valves: this is a serious plumbing issue that can potentially blow a big hole in your wallet. The only way to avoid this from developing is to make sure that your valves don’t freeze up over time. It is very simple really. Just remember to open and close all your water and drain valves, twice every year without fail. That should keep them humming along just fine.
10. Learn to isolate an issue locally: shutting off the entire water supply to deal with a minor faucet issue can be a major pain. But you can avoid this by isolating the location of individual stop valves for all your faucets and toilets.

As the old saying goes, a stitch in time saves nine. We are only too happy to take care of any and all plumbing requirements you may face in the metropolitan areas in Sugar Land and Katy, TX. But with these tips, you can make sure that you need to call us only when the really serious issues arise.