Plumbing emergency waiting to happen? find out now!

A plumbing emergency in a home can often be a very unwelcome crisis. It’s not enough that it can disrupt the modern convenience of 21st-century life; it can be expensive as well.

If you want to avoid having to check into a hotel just to use a shower and toilet or stop professionals from needing to tear into the floor to get at a pipe, keep an eye out for these issues.

LEAKY FIXTURES

Not as severe as the other emergencies we have here. Some would even say this isn’t really an emergency.

However, it can cause endless irritation with the incessant dripping. It also ends up going on your monthly water bill as an unwelcome, wasteful, added expense.

A leaky fixture is often a simple matter of just turning taps more tightly “off,” or replacing a few key parts.

The O-ring and the washer are two small, but cheap, easily replaceable parts that can cause leaks in fixtures after years of constant use. Try breaking out a wrench and swapping out these parts to take care of this issue.

THE BLOCKED DRAIN

Are you ignoring a problem that could get very big and inconvenient later on down the line? A blocked drain is impossible to ignore when it finally happens, but very easy to notice—and ignore—when it’s building up.

Blocked drains don’t happen overnight. It could be either hair or food, but it means something is getting caught in the pipes and sticking. As time passes, other things stick to that initial build up, resulting in a partial blockage.

That partial blockage first manifests as the “slow drain,” where your sink empties out slower than it used to. At that point, it’s up to you to deal with the problem now, while it’s small, or wait till it gets more expensive.

OVERFLOW FROM THE TOILET

If you have children that have discovered how to use the toilet and entertain themselves by playing with it, this could be a very real, very expensive, ongoing issue.

Toilets are supposed to eliminate only human waste, which is either soft, or liquid, or toilet paper, which is designed to break apart on contact with water.

Any other foreign object flushed down a toilet has the potential to block the toilet and cause an overflow.

So if you’ve got children that are playing with the toilet by flushing things down, break them of this habit quickly

If they learned it from you, because you’ve been flushing down cigarettes, tampons, disposable diapers or even paper towels from the kitchen, you should stop this habit too.

PIPES THAT HAVE BURST

It takes extraordinary circumstances for pipes to burst, but it does happen. High water pressure can weaken water pipes.

Very old pipes, like early 20th century cast iron drain pipes, are prone to metal fatigue as they approach the 100-year mark.

Get old pipes replaced, and keep water pressure within tolerance levels for your water pipes to avoid these issues.

Homes in Fort Worth, TX usually enjoy years of plumbing operation free from issues. If you want to keep that streak going, keep an eye open for the small signs of trouble, and deal with them early to prevent them from getting larger and more costly.