Nick's Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:
Hey guys, Richard Saad, John Eccles, how are we doing this afternoon? Another live show coming from the headquarters. The Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning here in the Heights. Today’s show is exciting for you guys? We’ve got a question from Sandra and Montrose 77098 that ask us about water heaters and the best time to, uh, provide maintenance for them. So we’re going to talk about that today. That’s number one. Number two, we’re going to talk about hose bibs. We had another question. Memorial 77024. That was from. Who was that from? Eddie. Eddie talked about hose bibs. What’s a hose bib? That’s the thing that you attach your hose to water your plants, right? Other people call them outdoor faucets. Whatever floats your boat. Outdoor Faucet. Hose. Bib is technical term is hose bib. It’s where I used to get a drink of water when I was a kid. You get salmonella from that. Okay. That happens too, by the way. Um, that’s our show today. Thank you guys for tuning in. We’re so excited to be here. It’s a beautiful day. I’m actually going fishing today. Notice the bright dots right after the show.
So let’s go. Let’s talk about water heaters.
Water heater maintenance. What time of year is the best time of year? Um, and it’s actually not rocket science, right? It’s Kinda like air conditioning, you know, the best time to have it maintained is probably before it has to go through it season where it’s going to work. The toughest right now, your water heater, you know, especially gas water heaters aren’t working very tough, right? The addicts are hot, the garages are hot. So the water in the tanks, ot, your thermostats probably lightened up half as much as it will in a couple months. When we get in the wintertime, when the temperature is good luck cooler, that’s when that water heater is really going to have to go to work. Right. And probably he probably twice, maybe three times as much or as often as it is right now. Unless of course you made the educated decision to have a tankless, then it’s only lightened it when you use it, so there’s no real thing. But on a tank style heater, definitely in the winter months is when it’s really going to be pushing forward and really having to go to work for you.
God, you sounded intelligent. Those foil, you sounded pretty good. And this couple statements, they’re absolutely right. Think about this, you guys, it’s common sense that he hit your attic is 140 degrees to 180 somewhere and going up to 180 degrees. I mean you’ll go up there and bold chicken. Yeah, it is hot temperature and water heaters. What one? 20. Normally as a gold standard. Some people pushing the one slash 30. But if you think about it, that heat, there’s a, there’s insulation around that water heater, that insulation around the water heaters also from the outside staying hot, right? It’s getting hot on the outside. Hot on the inside. Yeah. It’s not wearing pairing as much may, let’s call it through what? September?
Uh, in our August, depending on how our weather pattern goes. Sometimes it cools off, you know, a mid September normally. Um, but yeah, so I mean until then though, I mean that water heater, no, if it’s 140 water’s supposed to be 120, there’s not much heat going on that thermostat’s not clicking on. It’s not going like it normally does. I said is, I mean it’s an easy season for your water. What happens during the winter? Well, temperatures drop now you’re adding instead of being 1:40 a year in an attic in the winter, that actually is pretty chilly.
I’m waiting for that. My biological clock is, it’s in my attic and I, and I’m being adventurous and I’m going to do it myself, but I’m going to wait because in life you literally, you guys, I don’t know how many people had been in an attic in the summertime and I would venture to say most of you guys that go into an attic come out very quickly, but you spend 15 minutes in an attic. You were going to sweat through your clothes. So just think about the plumbing guys and the AC guys all summer. Those guys are dying. Our policy actually is if you spend 15 minutes in that attic, you need it and you must come down, pick some water, relax for a minute, then go back in the attic. In anybody working on your house, you need to be cognitive of that because those guys will stay up there for an hour or two and people do pass out.
They do die and addicts and it happens a lot more than what you think. So we try to train our guys to take those breaks, hydrate, hydrate and hydrate. Right? And I know as a homeowner you want to hurry, hurry, hurry, because you’re seeing dollar signs and. But we’re a fixed cost company so the cost is what the cost is. But if you’re hiring somebody by the hour, you want them to hurry. So you want them to stay up there, but that’s not the correct approach. They’ve got to take breaks every 15 minutes pretty much or they’re going to or could die up there. And I don’t know how many people actually die and addicts that are in our profession annually, but it’s not just one. It’s quite a few. Unfortunately. Uh, so in saying that, if you think about this, when should you call somebody like us to do that?
Maintenance and John has an 100 percent accurate when it starts to before and right when it starts to cool down, that water heater is going to be a lot more. We come in, we give it service and what does that mean? Cleaned the burner, assembling. We get the lint and everything else that’s accumulated through the suction. Because remember, when something’s burning, I eat from the natural gas, right? It needs air to breathe. Well, that’s sucking in the stuff that’s coming into the act. All those little particles, particulates are getting stuck in the where it needs to draw air from just like your car. So that needs to be cleaned out. Your burner needs to be cleaned out and if your water heater is under three, needs to be drained a fully to get that settlement out after three, I would not do it. It actually throws sediment to the, to your, uh, faucets. And then you’re going to get a stoppages on your faucets and you’re going to call us going, hey, my, my sink is not running my sink. False. That’s not running very fast. Well then we got to come clean them all. And, and that’s a nightmare.
No, I don’t want to clarify. So you’re saying that they’ve never had it. So what if I’m a regular service person and I’ve had it serviced every year. Can I go beyond the three? If I’ve serviced it from your one, two, three, can I service that you’re afforded drain it? It as long as you’ve been servicing it every year prior to for absolutely no service. It’s the long gap of no service specifically the draining part of the service because a technician might have come in and serviced it a different way. Meaning they just cleaned, let’s say the air intake because technically that’s what it’s called, the Aaron Tag, just like your car. Um, and they cleaned the burner but they didn’t drain it. And that is a big injustice to you guys because once it goes up and beyond that three years, you should not drain it. Reason being minerals formed deposits, those deposits can come out of that faucet. Then I mean out of the water heater and then it hits the Faucet, then we’re going to be over there multiple times cleaning faucets to keep the water at the pressure that it’s supposed to be. So I wouldn’t do that.
Yeah. So the best time, you know, we recommend, you know, this month wouldn’t be a bad one, early part of September before that water heater really has to go into the work. That’s the absolute proactive approach. You know, obviously some people are low reactive and they’ll wait till October, November. Um, I’ll water heater’s not working the way it’s supposed to. Can have us come out and you know. And by then let me tell you something, it’s a lot easier to take a cooler shower today than it is. So personally I don’t want a cooler shower at all. So how do you know when your water heater starts to suffer? You didn’t do the right main. How do you know it will suffer? You don’t know your stuff from. Um, so how do you know how well you know? Because usually people take showers for x amount of time and they don’t deviate from it. So if you’re a five minute person shower person or you’re a 30 minute shower person, do you usually stay consistent? So the longer the shower goes, you know, I’m like a 20 minute shower person. I like that hot hot water to hit my back. It makes me feel better. It gets me going in the morning. So I know that 20 minute mark I’m done and I’m out. So if I start losing hot water to that 20 minutes, that means the hot water heater suffering, it needs maintenance, something’s wrong.
But by that time, typically it’s too late because what’s creating that are those mineral deposits. So if you haven’t done your maintenance, that’s how you know that something’s wrong with your water heater, you start losing that efficiency, you start losing that hot waters in a gallon capacity, right? So if you’ve got a 40 gallon unit, maybe it’s certainly got a capacity of 25 or 30 gallons, that’s when you start saying the, uh, hot water not lasting as long part, that’s what happens. Right? Well, let’s talk about hose Bibs, talk about hose bibs and Sandra. Thank you for that question. Great question.
Okay. Do you guys do barrier installation and it’s silver better than spray on or is on better, Chad? To be honest, we don’t do anything. Was a insulation except insulating pipes. I wish I knew that knowledge because if I had it I would give it to you. Um, I personally have radiant barrier in my house and you do too. And uh, it’s the foil and it’s not the one that goes against the decking. It’s the one that goes against your roof rafters. So I’ve got an air gap between my, a roof and the radiant barrier. And supposedly the one that I have is the best. Is it rigid or spray on? It’s rigid. I got spray. It’s actually stapled to those roof rafters. Um, I would highly suggest that you call a installation company and asked them that same question. I know they’re going to have the answer for you. So moving on, we’ve got hose bibs. What’s special about? Put a little hose to it by the bank might have them, but water my plants and that discussion. They’re pretty simple, but same thing we’re heading in the winter, right? It’s an exposed pipe. A lot of things can happen to exposed pipes and frigidaire. If it’s dripping now, now’s a great time to have it. Take a look at. A lot of people don’t realize that they’re dripping or leaking until it’s too late. Right? Not Too many people, unless you’re an avid water out of the hose kind of guy. Brian, a lot of people these days have automatic sprinklers or just people don’t pay attention to it. It’s one of those things at your house that just doesn’t Garner a lot of attention. We one pull off the other day. Yeah, those are fun. Yeah. They snap a pipe. This house and CPVC. I would never put CPBC to a hose bib going to the outside of your house. You know how many plumbing companies would.
It happens all the time, so if a customer wants CPBC, we make it rigid. I’ll put a piece of copper on the interior, stabilize it. Then we go outside with copper, we attach the hose bib, right? Well it takes time and money. You know how many people don’t do that and and a lady called the other day she was pulling, pulling or hose and it completely snapped off and flooded in her house. So she calls us and it was a really bad situation. But here’s the bad thing. You think that you can go after the plumbing company for that install? No, that is a legal code approved installation, but one of the worst installed you could ever do. So as a homeowner you have to be aware of that. But I can’t tell you how many homes are done that they do that should. They should, should they insulate their husbands?
Absolutely. To the hose bib. Yeah. I’m the poor man’s way to do it is when it gets really cold and no, it’s kind of phrase. I wrap a towel on it, but you can actually get to a big box store, big box store and buy this a styrofoam cover that it latches onto the hose bib and it just kinda form fitted form fitted 10. Now you now are there multiple different types of hose bibs? Absolutely. They make a bunch of types for you guys and they actually make some that are false. A Frost, frost free, which means they should not freeze in the winter and those are pretty cool, but those are harder install. You got to take out the sheet rock to be able to get those in, but then you don’t have to worry about installation because they’re not going to freeze and then they also make what they call a wall hydrogen and we’ve been done quite a bit of those here lately on residential homes.
Used to be only commercial facilities would have these wall hydrants. If you look them up, they’re really cool, they’re flush mounted, nothing sticks out beyond the house and they’ve got a door that closes, so everything’s hidden behind the door. Really Cool Product and those are frost free so there’s no insulating knows. And so when you’re wanting to attach a hose, you open up the door, you screw your hose onto it, and then it takes like a fireplace key to open and close the water flow. What would be the advantage of that over a normal host them looks. Looks, yeah. No, I’m a big fan of them. Um, how many of you have at my house? None because my house is not conducive. They are better for brick home and I don’t have a brick home saying Oh, if I had brick that I would have a mall so we can’t put them in your home. You wouldn’t want to do it on a signing house. There’s not a good way to, to keep the water from going behind that gun from the rain. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So it’s a protection issue. Um, but yeah, if I had a brick home, I, that’s when I would put in their expensive but. Nice.
And that’s kind of all I’ve got on the host bib section for you guys or did that call come out of that was Eddie. Was Eddie again at seven. Seven. Oh, two. Four. Thank you. Any good question really? And we hope we answered it. So make sure you cover those. Everybody cover those before the first freeze? No, I think that’s a wrap. That’s both for the fishermen here. Hook line and sinker that try portacath I’ll bring back from red fish. That’s. Is that a promise? No. Oh, it’s a try. Well, thank y’all so much for tuning in. We’ll be here next Thursday. Same time, same place. Uh, we hope to see all them. Thank you guys. Take care. Have a great weekend. Call us anytime if you have any questions on anything. We’re always here except for today in a more for me.
