Garbage Disposal Repair | Slow Shower Drain

We are coming Live, to your house from next plumbing answering questions that you guys have sent in the past week. And uh, we are going to start off with the first question and I dropped my glasses. Hold on, I got my glasses on. So. Oh, I forgot. I’m Richard Saad. This is John Eccles. John Eccles. We are next plumbing coming to you to answer these questions that the first one was sent in by Jenny j and she states my garbage disposal is not working.

We’re going to tell you a little bit about that today. What should you do, John? Alright. So there’s a couple of easy things that you can check out yourself at your home prior to calling a plumber and spending any unnecessary money. Um, we’ve actually brought in an old disposal that we’ve already replaced and it’s going to give us a little show and tell on some areas. So when your garbage disposal is not working at all, flipped the switch, nothing happens. The first easiest thing you can do is go underneath and locate this reset button, right? And it’s you simply just given a push right? And then it’ll reset and you should be able to work again if that’s still not working, if it’s humming a little bit like it’s getting the power, but it’s not turning, there’s a good possibility that it’s jammed. All these disposals come with a sized right Allen wrench that fits right here in the middle.

If it. If you’re in an older home where you moved in and you can’t find that custom made allen wrench for their disposal, the appropriate size allen wrench can be found in almost any toolbox probably in your garage. You insert that Allen wrench and counterclockwise. We’ll unjam it once it and jams we recommend you. Go ahead and swing it both ways to make sure it’s free flowing. Once you do that, you pull it out, you turn it on. It should be good to go at that point, at that point, if it’s still not working, that’s where we say, hey, go ahead and stop what you’re doing. Give us a call at our office 713-868-9907 And we’ll have a professional come out and assist you with it. So that’s the easiest steps whenever your governor suppose was not working, to really try to get it going prior to you calling and spending any unnecessary money.

So I want to add one more thing. Okay. Kind of nontraditional, but let’s just say you don’t have an allen wrench. What are you going to do? A lot of people get an old plunger or broomstick. That’s what I was going to stick it in the top. Same thing. Counterclockwise. Clockwise. So you can take your broomstick, stick it in there, but we’re not supposed to be really telling you this plumbing. But if you don’t have an allen wrench, this is what you do and you, you can free up those teeth and unjam it, uh, by using the broomstick handle. So there we go. Yeah. So that’s an easy tips that if you’re a garbage disposal goes on the Fritz, that maybe you can get it back in working order without spending any additional money. Pretty simple, right? Yeah, yeah, it is. Alright, we’re gonna. Move on.

We’re gonna. Move onto the next one. I get to read this one. Yeah, you got to answer. So Jason R. from Jersey village. What causes my water heater to make loud rumbling noises. That’s a, that’s a great question. By Jason. Well, as your water heater ages, you uh, accumulate minerals that then form the deposits and they start to form rocks. So typically what happens is when your burner fires up and it is heating that water, it starts to pop away. Now, uh, these rocks that are inside of your unit and that’s the banging and rumbling noise that you hear. And when that burner assembly turns off, it will usually stop. But the issue with that is, okay, how do we fix that? When you started hearing those rumbling noises, I can tell you that there’s no fixing that. There’s just water heater replacement. By then if you are not maintaining your water heater and draining your water heater every single year, you will get these mineral deposits.

And in Houston we don’t have super hard water, but there’s minerals running through our water. Everybody knows that. So when this occurs and you start hearing that banging noise, you’re done. You need to replace the unit. If you have maintained it properly, you will probably never hear that noise. It is going to be able to get that sediment out prior to it forming those deposits that will become informed rocks. Anything you want to add. If the customers are pretty handy person, can they drain it themselves? Sure. They are on the very bottom of the unit. They have a hose connection, so what you would do is screw the hose, your outdoor hose, end of that hose connection on the bottom of that tank, uh, and then leave the cold water on and run the hose to a bathtub. Or if you can get it out a door or a window, all three of those are fine.

I’m running into the shower to whatever is closer and then you turn it on and you let it drain for about 30 minutes. Roughly. Give or take a. If nothing is coming out and you don’t see any sludge mineral deposits and discoloration and it’s clear, you’re pretty safe to stop. Yeah, you’re good to go. So this is something that you can do, but I do not recommend it if you. If your water heater roughly three years or older. Personally, I would not do that and that’s our company policy that we don’t drain it either and the reason being is if you drain that, those mineral deposits can’t come out of that drain valve. They’re larger than that, but what they can do is get thrown up out of the hot water side and then they start going to your faucets than your faucet start stopping up.

Then you have to call us to start cleaning. All the faucets and some of those can be pretty difficult to get to a and be able to clear and clean so that can really add up on your cost, which the point of doing it yourself was not to have a cost. So I would not recommend doing it if your water heater’s three years or older, especially if you haven’t done it before. Right? Yeah. But if you’ve been doing it every single year, basically after year one, you’re good. You’re not going to have those deposits and you’ll keep that sludge out of there. Am I doing that or? Absolutely. Extend the life of the water heater. No question. Absolutely. Yeah. Good. Save on that. Replacement water heaters, or are one a piece of equipment that nobody thinks about taking care of, but they do need to be taken care of. You changed the oil in your vehicle. You need to drain the water heater the same way you change the oil in a vehicle and it will make it last and if you don’t change the oil in your car, I don’t think that’s going to last as it should. That’s exactly right. So it all works the same. Right? Good man.

So we get a Kurt. Hi Kurt. Kurt is saying that we’re the best plumbing service in Houston.

That’s awesome. Thank you. Really appreciate that. We try to be. We try to give a great customer service every single time to every customer calls us. We want them all. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you Kurt. I appreciate you coming on and letting us know that and thanks for using US and helping us.

Alright, any other questions? Meredith shaline is saying great information and easy tips.

Hello. Great job guys. Good. Awesome. Thank you so much. That’s really appreciative actually. Yes. That’s very much appreciating. And uh, do we have another question? We do have one more. Okay, we’ll do one more. Um, and I’m going to take this one then I’ll read it. You want to read that out loud? Okay. What causes a slow drain in my shower? What does cause a slow drain in your shower? This is a quick answer. It’s a collab. Collated hair products with hair. What happens is, is your, your soaps and all of the things that the ladies used for their hair color regulate in that drain and gets mixed with hair and it grabs onto the pipe and it won’t allow it to flush out of the pipe. Easy solution is I’m basically taking. You can do this and I’m going to tell people they can do this. You can unscrew the top of that strainer and try to reach it with a coat hanger.

Proved do it yourself. Yeah. Yeah. If you can’t reach it with a coat hanger, that means they’re on the very bottom where it hold water is called a p trap and that’s typically where all that collaboration has held. Absolutely. So if a coat hanger won’t reach down there and you can’t get it unstuck, more than likely you’re going to have to call us. We’ve got a piece of equipment that’s got a cable drive piece of equipment and it’ll go a little bit further to be able to get that unstuck. And thanks Mike. I appreciate that question and I hope that it helps. You said only women use shampoo, men use it to. Well, I wouldn’t know because I didn’t have any hair left. Some more than that in the dream. I wouldn’t recommend draino, drainos very abrasive, but the answer is yes. And that Draino sometimes will take care of that clog and it also depends on how long you leave it in there before you run water. Um, there’s multiple levels of acid and that’s what that’s considered. Um, and there’s ones that are also base, but they’re very hard on the piping structure and if you’re in an older home with cast iron piping, I definitely would not recommend it. It will eat that pipe up, uh, not, not the first time that you do it, but through the years. Yeah. But the answer is yes. You can try that first before calling us.

And then you want to add to that. No, that was great. That was great. I think that was some great tips for followers and uh, some things to do to kind of save them some money in the forefront. Good. I hope that helps and I hope we save you a little bit of money, but if not, and you don’t want to tackle these items that Jenny, Jay, Michael and Jason R sent us call us. We will be there and we will help you and we will fix the issue. Absolutely. And thank you guys for tuning in and we’ll see you next week. Thank you. I’ll see you next week.