The Plumbing Upgrade That’s Quietly Saving Thousands
Hey everybody, welcome back to Waterman Mechanical’s YouTube channel! Again, I am pleased to announce Scott Smulski, the owner of Waterman Mechanical, and today we’re going to be talking about the top plumbing upgrades people in Edmonton in 2025 should be considering.
Have you ever had a pipe burst at minus 30 and flood your basement while you were out of town? One Edmonton family did, and it cost them over $18,000 in repairs. Today we’re talking about the plumbing upgrades that could prevent disasters like that—and actually save you some money in 2025. From energy-efficient fixtures to smart leak detectors, we’ll show you what’s worth the investment and what’s not.
What is the Most Common Plumbing Issue?
Question number one that I’ve got on my list for you today is: What are the most common plumbing issues that homeowners face, and how can upgrades help prevent them?
Scott: Well, leaks are obviously a big one, Trevor. Wintertime especially—we get some pretty cold winters here in Edmonton. I’d say the main thing is just making sure that your furnace is running properly. Biggest thing with that is thermostat and your furnace filter, so change out your furnace filter regularly, make sure you’ve got batteries in the thermostat, and your furnace should run, and you shouldn’t get many leaks in your home.
Now, if you do get a leak in your home, obviously it’s nice to be able to shut the water down as quickly as possible. Main problem with that is, if you’re in an older home, the valves can be seized, right? So if you don’t exercise your valves every few months—or at least once a year—they can seize up pretty quickly on you with the hard water in Edmonton. A few ways to stop that would be exercising them regularly, which most homeowners aren’t going to do. You can always phone us out for a quick plumbing inspection—yearly, or even, you know, twice every two years is fine too. Just as long as you’re exercising those valves, you’ve got to make sure that main water shut-off is going to work correctly when it comes down to it.
Modern Plumbing Systems Are Efficient
Okay, okay. How do modern plumbing systems help with water efficiency in 2025?
I would think that most people know the older toilets used about 13–13½ liters per flush; now we’re using about 4.8. Just the actual molding of the toilet is a lot better; the flush mechanism is a lot better. They’ve just—you know—kind of, not come up with aerodynamics for it, but just a lot more of an efficient model. The other thing is low-flow fixtures—so aerators in faucets and low-flow showerheads—so you actually feel like you’re getting just as much water, but it’s not putting out near as much water as it used to.
Trevor: Yeah, that’s awesome. So you’re saving water, a little bit on your bill.
Scott: Yep, that’s great—heating bill, water bill, both.
Trevor: All right, Scott, so what are the benefits of replacing poly-b with newer options?
Scott: Sure. A lot of our poly-b swaps come from realtors or home inspectors—people that are looking to buy or sell a home. Insurance companies have a hard time insuring poly-b; it’s a big problem these days. Most insurance companies won’t do it, and I think you have to look pretty hard to find one that will. One of the benefits—or one of the downsides—to poly-b is it’s going to leak over time. I’ve only ever seen one or two catastrophic leaks from poly, and that’s when they’re sitting right beside a big light. UV is never good for much of anything, including poly-b. But it does usually leak at the fittings, and sometimes a slow leak is just as bad because then it creates a lot of water damage—mold, rotting wood, and things like that. So to get rid of your poly-b just to save from some surprise leaks—yeah.
Should You Get Rid of Poly-B and PEX Piping?
Trevor: And getting rid of that, putting in PEX?
Scott: Yeah. So we put in PEX tubing—it’s cross-linked polyethylene piping is the actual proper name for it—and it can last, you know, anywhere between 50–70 years, is what the manufacturers say.
Trevor: Wow, that’s an incredibly long time.
Scott: Just as long as copper.
Trevor: Okay, now seeing as we’re discussing energy efficiency and how people can save some money in their plumbing, let’s talk about tankless water heaters. Give me some of the benefits of tankless water heaters and how that helps with some efficiencies.
Scott: Tankless water heater—you are saving on gas because you’re not going to be heating that water continually. So when you leave your house in the daytime, nobody turns down their tank—maybe on a vacation some people do, most people don’t. Your on-demand system is just going to turn itself right off. It’s obviously going to sit there in waiting mode, so if anybody—if there’s a pressure drop in the system or a call for hot water—it’ll turn on, but you’re not going to be spending a dime on gas while you’re not using it.
Trevor: And that’s good, and we know gas is pretty expensive nowadays.
Scott: Yes, especially with the additional carbon tax on it.
Trevor: Yeah, they get us.
Scott: That’s—they get us every time. Every time. Every time.
New Plumbing Technology Available for Homes
Trevor: So let’s talk about some smart plumbing technologies. How does that, you know, save people either from catastrophic damage or from, you know, wasting a lot of money?
Scott: So there is a new device out there that’s called the Moen Flow device, and basically what that does is we install that just downstream of your water meter, and it kind of learns the habits of the home. If, you know, let’s say 2 in the morning all of a sudden there’s a whole bunch of water use, what it’s going to do is that valve is actually going to shut itself down after a couple of minutes of running. So you’re not going to have a catastrophic water leak. You might have a little bit of a water leak—’cause obviously you don’t want this thing shutting down every time you turn on a tap—but it is called the smart valve because it does learn your habits and then, you know, shuts itself down over time.
Nice—so works really well for snowbirds, you know, people that like to go on lots of vacations in the wintertime. And you can actually use it remotely from your phone.
Trevor: Wow, so it’s a really cool feature.
Scott: Yeah, that’s great.
Trevor: So you can—if you wanted to—you can just turn it off and then, you know, all the water’s off to the house.
Scott: Exactly, yeah.
Do You Need a Sump Pump in Your Home?
Trevor: Perfect. Yeah, that’s great. Okay, let’s talk about sump pumps.
Scott: Sure.
Trevor: What role do sump pumps play in preventing floods and leaks in homes?
Scott: It’s a good question. Obviously sump pumps in the springtime are very important in Edmonton. We get a lot of thawing of the snow, and so a lot of ground water comes in, and a sump pump obviously takes that water from your weeping tile and pumps it out further away from your house—or, actually, in some newer homes we have a summer-winter switchover, and that pumps it out into the city drainage line where they don’t want all the ground water getting pumped out onto the street.
We do have the option of installing a battery-operated sump pump—basically it’s a backup sump pump—so if the initial sump pump dies for some reason, or there’s an electrical fault, or the float switch isn’t working, then that battery-operated sump pump kicks in and saves the day.
Trevor: That is—that’s awesome.
Scott: Yeah, it’s a really cool feature. So there’s a lot of new technology with sump pumps that are new; I never heard of those things before.
Trevor: Yeah.
Scott: They’re a little bit more expensive, so, you know, not your average homeowner sometimes wants to invest the money in it, but it is a great, great safety mechanism.
Do Edmonton Homes Need Water Softeners?
Trevor: Nice. Now let’s talk about water softness—water softeners. Do you recommend them? What are they good for? You know, let’s have a quick discussion about that. If anybody in Edmonton is curious about water softeners—why they should get one—what are your answers to that?
Scott: So, water softener in Edmonton’s a good thing. We have notoriously pretty hard water in Edmonton and surrounding areas, so we do install a lot of water softeners, and that saves the life and longevity of plumbing fixtures, hot water heaters, humidifiers, the cartridges in your shower valves, the shut-off valves under your sinks, or your main water shut-off valve. It really prolongs the life of all that.
Trevor: So basically everything.
Scott: Yeah, everything can benefit from having softer water.
Trevor: Also with washing—what about washing clothes and stuff? Does soft water help with clothes-washing, detergent use, that kind of stuff? Is that something that’s a real thing?
Scott: Yeah, so detergent actually seems to go a little bit farther in the soft water. Basically a water softener is going to take out—your standard water softener is going to take out—all your heavy metals, so your iron and your manganese. And then if you get a little bit of an upgrade on your water softener, it can take out the chloramines or the chlorine in the water as well.
Trevor: Okay, so yeah, really helps freshen things up and, again, prolongs the lifespan of your plumbing fixtures.
Scott: Fantastic.
Trevor: Okay, Scott, you’re the professional, right?
Scott: Yes sir—professional plumber.
Does Your Home Need a Plumbing Upgrade?
Trevor: What are some signs that someone needs to do a plumbing upgrade?
Scott: Signs for a plumbing upgrade? Honestly—I mean, you know just as well as I do—when you walk into somebody’s home, if they haven’t done anything in a long time, you can tell. It definitely increases the resale value of your home, can definitely lower your water bills, and also your gas heating bills. If you have a really old tank, a lot of people with their older tanks say, “I’m not getting a lot of hot water,” so they just start turning them up, up, and up. And what happens then is the water hardness actually settles out of the water and creates an insulating barrier on the bottom of the tank that gets baked on, so even if we go to flush your tank it’s not going to remove any of that sediment because it is baked on to that hot water tank. So you can, yeah—you can save on heating costs and water costs just from low-flow fixtures and less gas usage on your hot-water heater.
Trevor: Yeah, and then probably the fixtures too, right? The fixtures are probably all leaky and all of that.
Scott: Yeah, for sure. So, like I said, low-flow fixtures are a great option and—yeah—less risks of drips and leaks.
The Number One Upgrade All Homeowners Need To Do
Trevor: All right, Scott, let’s talk about homeowners who want to, you know, protect their home and save a little bit of money in the long run. What are some things that they can do to protect their plumbing system and potentially save themselves, you know, thousands of dollars over the life of their home?
Scott: I would say the best option would be non-freeze hose bibs, your main water shut-off getting replaced, or you could always install a new Moen Flow. If you don’t want to go through the process of getting EPCOR to do the water shutdown and then we come in and change out your main water shut-off—which is located just before your water meter—I’d say the non-freeze hose bibs and the main water shut-off valves are some major problem-solvers in a home. Especially for those people who travel and those people who like to go away on the weekend. Or even in our cold winters, Trevor—if you get a cracked or frozen pipe, then it can cause a serious issue in the springtime, or even just later that week when it warms up a little bit.
The other thing is on-demand hot-water heaters—you can end up saving money over the long, long term if you upgrade to an on-demand water heater. There are some government grants that can get you given back to you if you upgrade to energy-efficient appliances in your home.
Are Copper Pipes a Concern?
Trevor: Okay, let’s talk about copper. Sure, so a lot of the older homes in older neighborhoods still have copper lines. Is it recommended that we change out the copper lines to PEX, or what would you recommend in that situation?
Scott: I mean, copper lines—no. Unless you’re in a super-old home, I don’t think you have too much risk with copper line. Obviously you can get some pinhole leaks, but you know what, a pinhole leak in a copper line is going to be persistent, and so it’s going to show itself pretty quickly with some saggy and leaking drywall or leaking ceiling. So, no—replacing copper isn’t too much of an issue. There is a piping called poly-b piping—polybutylene. It was installed a lot in the 80s and 90s and maybe a little bit in the early 2000s, and that is very problematic, and insurance companies do not like to insure that. So we get a lot of calls from realtors and home inspectors and people who are thinking about selling their homes or just notice that there’s a dark-gray pipe—that their water lines are made of dark-gray piping, which is called poly-b.
Trevor: Yep, and get rid of that stuff.
Scott: And you can get rid of that stuff, yeah.
Trevor: Okay, so saving money, saving your home—talk to Scott at Waterman Mechanical. He’ll be able to come out and give you a quote, and he’ll give you the straight goods. He’s not going to sell you something that you don’t need; he’ll give you valuable information on your plumbing system, your fixtures, hot-water tanks, sump pumps—just about anything plumbing-related, he’ll be able to give you an answer on that, give you a fair quote, and—yeah—you should get these guys out there. They’re five-star rated in Edmonton; they’re really great guys—highly, highly skilled professional plumbers. I suggest you give them a call today: call Scott at www.watermanmechanical.com.
Thank you.