10 Things Every Homeowner Wants To Know About Plumbing
All right, today we’re going to be talking about the top 10 facts that every homeowner has about their home’s plumbing in Edmonton with Scott Smulski. He’s the owner and operator of Watermen Mechanical in Edmonton. Have you ever wondered if that weird plumbing noise is normal or how to shut off your main water line in an emergency? You’re not alone. In this video we sit down with Scott Smolski, the owner of Waterman Mechanical in Edmonton, to answer the top 10 plumbing questions Edmonton homeowners ask most often. If you live in Edmonton and own a home, this episode is a must-watch.
Okay, so I’m going to start off and jump right into question number one—ready? What should I do if I have no water pressure in my house all of a sudden? If you have no water pressure in your house all of a sudden, that could be a big issue. That doesn’t happen too often—usually it’s either hot, it’s either, sorry, it’s either low water pressure on the hot side of the system or the cold side of the system.
If it is the hot side of the system, it could be a lot of debris that’s building up from your hot-water tank. A lot of companies these days are doing a quick installation of your hot-water tank, and so they’ll put some braided supply lines which actually have rubber inside of them, okay, and they got steel on the outside.
They kind of look like chain mail—like, yeah, old-school chain mail that a knight would have worn a long time ago—but inside of that there’s a rubber hose, and over time that can disintegrate and then gets lodged up in your faucets and your shower fixtures and all the valves in your house, so that can be a major cause of low water pressure.
What Happens If You Lose Water Pressure?
Oh man—so what if you lose water pressure everywhere? If you lose water pressure everywhere, obviously you can call a plumber like Waterman Mechanical. You give a shout to, a call out to, Epcore as well—that could be a major issue. There could be something stuck in the line, there could be, again, debris caught up in your pipes somewhere. The best thing to do—it’d be tough for a homeowner to check—so the best thing to do would be to phone a plumber, and we can come out and take a look.
All right, fair enough. Question number two: how do I shut off the main water supply to my home in case of an emergency? Good question. The main-water shut-off valve is located, right by your water meter, which is often in your mechanical room by the hot-water tank.
If you can’t find the water meter, what you can do is you can go to the hot-water tank, and on the top of the hot-water tank it’s going to say “cold inlet” or “cold,” and you can trace that pipe all the way back—it’s going to be the largest of the pipes. Sometimes they get knocked down in size as the distribution system gets sent out throughout the house, so just try to trace it back somewhere into your mechanical room to where it comes out of the ground, okay, and then you just turn it off.
Yeah, just shut it off. If you’ve got a newer home, it’s going to have a ball valve which will have just a nice yellow, red, or green handle on it, and you just shut it into the perpendicular position. If you’ve got an older home, it’s going to be a gate valve or a globe valve, so it’s going to have, like, kind of a hose-bib-looking handle on it—so you’ll have to do a whole bunch of turns to the right and hopefully it works.
The Problem In Older Homes VS Newer Homes
All right—hopefully it works, right? Sometimes in older homes, Trevor, they can get frozen up. Basically, people don’t touch these valves for years and years and years, and then the water hardness just seizes them up over time, okay, or sometimes if you haven’t touched it in a long time it’ll leak once you touch it for the first time, so, yeah. If that happens, give us a call and we can coordinate getting that fixed for you.
Awesome. So, this is an interesting question: why do my drains keep clogging even after I clear them? Drains can keep clogging for a couple of different reasons. It can be a venting issue—if it is a venting issue, sometimes you’re going to hear a gurgling noise or there’s going to be bubbling coming out of the water, out of the, the sink or the tub when you’re draining it—or the toilet. The other big problem that we see is sagging pipes.
When the house is built, obviously the ground isn’t quite as compact as it, it’ll settle over time, and so what happens is sometimes your pipes can settle as well, so there’ll be a dip, and then they can create blockages just with a dip in the pipe, or even as much as too many twists and turns in the drainage system. So, yeah, we can scope that, clear that out, and then provide a solution moving forward.
Are Your Pipes Making A Banging Noise?
Perfect. Now, this is an interesting question as well: is it normal for my pipes to make a banging or knocking noise? Yeah, so sometimes that’s called water hammer. Water hammer happens when you’re, you know, it’s either your laundry or your toilet fill valve—it’s basically like a solenoid or a fast opening-and-closing valve. So imagine the water flow is going through a pipe pretty quickly; all of a sudden you hit the brakes and what happens? Everything slams forward and then bounces back, and that bounce-back is what causes that water hammer. So, what we can do to solve that is just basically secure the pipes inside the walls or the ceilings, okay?
Okay, so they’re just not, they’re just not—yeah, tied down, clipped on, secured.
Yeah. Okay, so now how do I know if I have a hidden leak in my home somewhere? A hidden leak in your home—obviously your water bill is going to go through, you’re going to notice it on your water bill one day. Most often times it’s going to be a toilet fill valve that keeps running, or a flapper that’s bypassing in your toilet tank.
Sometimes we’ve even seen it as a humidifier, so the humidifier just keeps running, running, running, mhm. Those are the most common problems that you see, because anything before that is going to be under your home and it’s going to come out of the ground, but that’s pretty rare—so usually it’s the toilet or the humidifier.
Okay, good. Or your kids not, or your kids not shutting the faucet off—happens at my house sometimes.
That happens, right?
How Long Should Your Plumbing Last?
Okay, so let’s talk about lifespan: what is the average lifespan of plumbing in an Edmonton home? Yeah, so, I mean, obviously that’s going to vary—different types of pipe, like there’s poly-b piping, it’s susceptible to leaking over time; it was installed mostly in the 1980s, 1990s. It’s going to be a dark-gray pipe, and that can be susceptible to leaking. We do highly recommend you change that, as it’s hard to get insurance for that type of piping in a home.
Copper pipe can last a long time—obviously you’re going to get some pinhole leaks, usually around the elbows, anytime there’s more friction, and that can kind of crop up in a 1960s home, 1950s home, maybe even 1970s depending on the usage.
Sure. Hot-water tanks, appliances, things like that—they can go a lot sooner just due to wear and tear and water hardness. One thing that you can do is install a water softener or water-filtration system in your home, and that will keep your appliances lasting a lot longer—your fixtures, all that kind of stuff.
Awesome, I love it. Now, you did mention poly-b piping. Tell us, you know, should I be worried about poly-b piping in my house, and what does it mean if I have it? Yeah, good question, good question. So, we’ve had clients phone in a major panic about poly-b piping. One client in particular was absolutely hysterical. So, after we calmed her down, I just said, “No, it’s not going to spontaneously erupt on you, not cause a major leak.”
What To Do If Your Pipes Leak
I’ve only ever seen that happen once, where the piping was right next to a light in a mechanical room—luckily there’s a floor drain—but most of the time on a poly-b system the leaks are small drips, and they happen at the joints. So hopefully there won’t be any in the walls, but obviously behind showers and tubs, changes of direction in walls sometimes require a joint, or your mechanical room, or under sinks, under faucets, things like that.
So, I don’t know if I’d be worried—I would, you could definitely call to get a quote and have us come and take a look at it, see if there’s any problematic areas or any hard-to-reach places, and we can, you know, we—it’s an easy solution to replace the poly-b. I guess the biggest deal about that is insurance.
Yes, yeah. Tough to get insurance and it’s expensive.
It is. It’s harder and harder to get insurance for poly-b piping nowadays.
Okay, now this is a really good question: why does my hot water run out so fast and what can I do about it?
Well, the quick answer would be your kids are taking too long of showers, right? But, no—you probably have a bit older of a hot-water tank, and so, you know, instead of turning it up, which most people do—once you turn up your hot-water tank over 140 °, so that’s kind of at that, at the hot mark—you can kind of go, there’s hot, there’s warm, there’s hot, there’s ABC.
The warmer you turn up your hot-water tank, the more water hardness actually settles out of the hot water and then creates an insulating barrier at the bottom of your hot-water tank and all around the actual heating element of your hot-water tank. So, yeah, it’s just going to take a lot longer to heat up; you’re not going to get as much hot water.
Replacing Your Hot Water Tank
Okay, and what’s a solution for that? Solution for that is, you know, obviously you can replace your hot-water tank—that’s probably the best solution. Other solution—we can drain the hot-water tank, see if we get any sediment, any debris out of it. A lot of time it gets crusted on. The other thing we can do is quickly clean out your burner assembly—sometimes that helps, but usually that’s not the problem. Usually the problem is that the tank is old and that there’s buildup, corrosion, and calcified corrosion on that hot-water tank.
Okay, perfect. So really best solution is probably replace it.
Most likely—if you’re not getting much hot water out of it at all, your different fixtures—it’s probably time for a new tank.
Okay, fair enough. Number nine: how often should I get a plumbing inspection or maintenance check on my system?
Just depends on what kind of plumbing fixtures and plumbing appliances you have in your home. If you have a water softener, or an on-demand system, or even a water-filtration system like RO or something like that, we definitely recommend once a year—that’s usually manufacturer specs. Sometimes the warranty can be void on some of those things if you don’t have documentation on a yearly check-up.
If we come in and we do a maintenance check-up on your house, we’re going to check the water softener, we’re going to check your hot-water tank, we’re going to check all the valves, all your toilets, flappers, and fill valves. We’re going to exercise all the valves, especially that main-water shut-off that we talked about earlier, and make sure that all that is in good working order. We can definitely flush out your hot-water tank, or we even do a chemical treatment to your on-demand system, and that just flushes out any debris and hardness in the heat exchanger.
When Should You Call a Plumber?
Okay, that’s excellent—I like that. Now, question number 10, last and final question: when should I call a plumber versus attempting to DIY it myself?
I mean, you can always give us a call—even if you don’t want to hire us, we can always give you a quick consultation over the phone and we don’t mind doing that whatsoever; builds trust with our clients. But, you know, I would say definitely for gas you should be never working on gas yourself, and if you have to shut down the water to your entire house, you know, be ready that something could go wrong and you might end up phoning a plumber in an emergency, and it’s going to cost you possibly a little bit more because, you know, not often can a company come out within the next couple hours, right?
Yeah, because there is emergency call-out fees, especially if it’s after hours.
If it’s after hours, yeah. So just—if you are going to do some plumbing, hopefully there is a shut-off right near the appliance you’re going to be working on and not the main-water shut-off, and just be ready to pull the plug, or to pull the pin, put a cap in the water line, and turn the water back on and call your plumber.
There you go. All right, thanks so much for sharing the information with us today. If you guys are looking for a plumber, no one better to call than Watermen Mechanical. They’ll be happy to help you out in the city of Edmonton with any of your plumbing needs.