Nick's Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:
On today’s show, your questions, our answers.
I’m John Eccles, Richard Saad. We’ll get an exciting video for you guys today. We’ve had a bunch of questions come in over the week we’ll pick the ones that are interesting to us that we’ll kind of talk about and uh, answer them. So if you face these issues in your home, hopefully the answer is that we’re going to give you, you’re going to already know, okay, it’s going to be around about this and this is what I need to do. Call Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning. Absolutely. So the first one, this comes from Paul and memorial. Why there’s water backing up into my shower or tub. So you guys, we got this question last week from Paul. So stuff is backing up into his tub. Instead of calling us, he, he sends us a message. There’s nothing wrong with that, you know? No, but that’s, this is like an emergency you guys. This means your sewer line is completely shut down. Yeah. You know, so it can be, um, depending on how bad his problem is, right. You know, have you ever taken a shower and been standing in water? I think we all have at some point, right? I try not to say that’s disgusting.
Water is coming up in your bathtub or shower and you’re not in it and it’s coming up. It’s usually not clear, but what if it just wasn’t draining? He said, why am I having a backup into shower? Okay. Okay. So to me that means water is automatically coming back. God, that’s main line. But you actually mentioned something that makes sense because if we’re in there taking a shower and it’s not going down fast enough, that’s the other type of stuff. But dried. It’s called a slow drain. So let’s talk about real quick, right? Because we don’t want to spend a week. It’s an hour long show. We can really jump in if the water’s coming back up like Richard saying or like Paul is experiencing. If it’s coming back up, a lot of times I’ll be discolored for one, but if it’s coming back as normally at your main line, right?
That means your main sewer lines has a blockage. Something that’s creating a stoppage, and that’s normally the lowest point in the house. That’s where it’s going to show first, right? So that’s no Bueno and it’s gross, right? So you definitely need to stop what you’re doing. Give us a call. We treat those as emergencies. We’ll get someone out, we just taking care of the other one where you’re in the shower and the water just Kinda puddling in it and it’s not really going down and it goes down after you shut it off and it’s slow. That’s normally a buildup problem. It’s either hair, so it all gets, what’s the word regulated down in that drain pipe. And uh, it, it, it gives a reduction in the volume that the shower can let loose. So it just temporarily makes a slow drain. Again, needs to be addressed.
Not as immediate as the first type. Right. But definitely needs to be addressed as well. But that’s a good question. You know, if you got it coming back like you’re not using it and stuff, it’s coming back. You need to call someone immediately. Absolutely. So those two scenarios, it’s going to take two different pieces of equipment to get you unstuck. One that if water sitting in the tub or shower and it’s just draining slow, that’s going to be a much smaller machine than if water is automatically coming up that’s dirty water into the tub or shower, that’s going to take our largest machine and the way to get these, to get it unstuck is going to be completely different as well. I would not recommend if things are coming back up into the tub, trying to do that yourself. Now if you want to try to do the other one yourself.
I’m okay with that. Yeah. If you want to try to get that unstuck because that’s typically right there beneath the tub and it’s going to be the coagulation hair, so body products that you guys are using so you can try to get something in, grab it because it’s just going to be less than a foot roughly underneath that top should be. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to try that, go for it. If you can’t get it, we’re here to help you and we’ll come fix it the other way. Don’t do it now. Dangerous. Absolutely. Yes. So moving on. This one comes from another person named John Big John, and he wants to know what causes rattling pipes.
I guess he’s talking about pipe banging. Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. That noise, right? So what causes it sexy pipes? Sexy buys, right? That’s a different twist. Sexy pipes caused man. All right. But in reality what it is is typically, and we get this a lot and it takes really good trouble shooting plumbing technician to get this done. And we just had a hard. This lady spent $5,000 on her pipes that were making that noise called banging right? It drove her nuts and we walked in there and fixed it in five minutes. We’ve been well trained, I well-trained daily almost on this subject because there’s very few technicians again that can fix this. And typically what it is is a fixture going out and it’s got pieces like rubber pieces inside of whatever fixture that is. And that water is vibrating over like a washer and flat washer has a cut on it.
Uh, and there’s multiple things that it can be around what’s in the guts of a, of a faucet. Let’s say, but it’s that water that’s running over that creating the water to vibrate banging those pipes, so you have to do a process of elimination with that. It’s not easy, but you start eliminating, you turn this off and you turn this off and once that noise goes away, then you just figured out which one was making the noise and creating that water to vibrate. Now what you’ll hear a lot of times, oh, you need what they call air hammers or air arresters. That was the old way to do it. And some homes still have those and sometimes we have to put those in. Um, there’s some things that create a hard shut off. Now a hard shut off is created from the waters on and instantly turns off.
And that’s going to be your washing machine, that’s going to be your dishwasher. And if you do an absolute hard shut off and that pipe is banging, sometimes an error restaurant is the only way to fix those items. That’s a lot less common nowadays. It’s a lot less common. That’s exactly right. And we can cut those typically in the attic where you will get in trouble. Uh, and I’m saying on a retrofit your systems already done and it starting to do this, but if you have a two story, your laundry’s downstairs and your washing machine is creating the pipes to bang, that’s a much different issue and we usually have to take out sheet rock to fix that and we’ll have to put that, what they call their arrest or again at that washer machine box. Um, other than that, you gotta find the fixture.
And again, we just had one last week she spent $5,000 trying to figure out and fixing this banging noise. This was going to send her to the Ludington straight. And she, yeah, she would really frustrated. And again, we fixed it in five minutes. It’s just a process of elimination. And he hit the fixture like in the first couple of minutes on the one that was creating the problem and done, put a new cartridge in it. Done, done. So she was very excited, very happy. And I’m happy for her to. Sorry that she spent all the money prior. Yeah, but you know, that happens whenever you’re doing troubleshooting these things. You don’t know exactly where you’re going to end on cost. Right. Anything you want to add? No. You hit it nail on the head. Okay. So hopefully we gave you enough information to where I don’t want to mess with my pipes. Banging. Call us. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and again, there’s not a lot of technicians that can do this work proficiently. Yeah. Unfortunately. So the last question that we have, this comes from Janet in West University.
Okay.
She’s buying a home in West University. Should I get a plumbing inspection in addition to a whole house inspection? Love the question. That is such a great question. Not Enough people ask that and we do very little inspections, which means nobody in the plumbing industry is doing very many inspections. They’re trusting the home inspector. That’s exactly right. But what’s a home inspector, John? You know, to me a homeless factor. Nothing wrong with it. They’re just a jack of all trades, right? They, they, they’re looking at a report and you know, they’re trained to know the 10,000 foot view of, of a lot of items, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, you know the, the plumbing system along, you know, probably what the AC system probably makes up for 70 percent of the homes, financial makeup, right? I mean there’s a lot of money invested in that plumbing system and if you’re buying a home, especially if their price is these days, I think that you would want to protect that investment and know beforehand kind of what you’re getting yourself into.
You know, all it takes is a little bit of time, a little bit of money, nothing what it could end up if you don’t do it in something happens. Problem with plumbing, you guys is everything is covered up. You can’t see anything except that faucet that you can turn off and on. Well that’s the least amount of your problem is that Faucet. You know why it’s easy to get to. You can buy another one, you can take that one out and you can put a new boss of them, but anything that’s covered up underneath this floor in those walls in the attic tend to add up to big money on getting those fixed and solutions around them. Absolutely, and you guys really need to think about something. If you’re buying a house prior to 19, let’s say 19, 75, oh yeah, you should have galvanized.
You should have a cast iron unless they’ve done replacements, but that could be partial replacements. Could be for replacement. You don’t know. It takes one person that’s doing this on a day to day a profession to let you know that, hey, this is what you’ve got. Everything that I can say, this is what you’ve got. These are the decisions that are. You’re going to have to come to when you buy this house. Yeah. That’s why you would hire a plumbing company to get that information on. Okay, what’s going to go wrong in the future? Let you know how old that water heater is, the piping that you have, the fixtures that you have anything to do plumbing wise. We also have camera systems that home inspectors do not have that we can run that sewer line. We view that sewer line and let you know that, okay, you’re going to have problems where you don’t have problems.
We can let you know the material that it is. Yeah, absolutely. That’s the important thing around hiring a plumbing company to do your inspections. Now again, prior to 75, this is a no brainer. You should always hire a plumbing company to do a plumbing inspection period, but I would say the vast majority of people do not do this. They rely on the home inspector in what I see time and time again when something goes wrong and usually it’s plumbing related and usually it’s 10, 20 grand to fix it. They want to blame the home inspector. Always. Everybody wants to blame somebody else. Right? Well, the home inspector is just a visual guy. He’s got no equipment to look at anything. Yeah, no camera systems to look at anything like we’ve got so highly recommend hiring employment system. Yeah. You want someone to plumbing company. I mean it was just going to dive in there and be very, very um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not Delicate but very inter granule or annual. They. Oh, that’s a great word. You know, when you’re talking, especially, you know, two, three, four, $500,000 for a home and plus you want to make sure that your investments taking care of. Agreed. Yeah. Well I don’t want to go spend another 10 or 20 grand up or closing. No, especially if you’re like, Oh man, what a beautiful wall. And then, oh wait, we’ve got to cut it up. Exactly.
Or what a beautiful yard with landscaping. Yeah. And then you got to cut it all up, cut it up. And it happens everyday. Any questions that you guys have? These are some great questions that you guys have sent in to us. We really appreciate it. Keep sending questions. Absolutely. Keep doing these videos and let you know and giving you answers so you can make educated decisions. Make good decisions for you and your family. That’s what this is all about and any questions that you guys have. John and I are here everyday dry. We’re here to answer those questions so don’t hesitate. Give us a call and thank you very much. See Ya later.
