Normal wear and tear, as well as the simple settling of your house, can wreak havoc on your pipes and other plumbing fixtures. As rust and corrosion settle into older, galvanized pipes, it can lead to discolored water and strange smells from your faucets.
Built-up grease, hair, and other dirt in your pipes will coagulate and make it difficult for wastewater to drain properly out of your home. Regular plumbing inspections can bring attention to these issues before they have a chance to do any real damage to your property.
Plumbing inspections are an essential part of your home’s regular maintenance plan. In this article, we’re going to take you through the process of a plumbing inspection, tell you who can perform plumbing inspections, and give you a rough idea of what a plumbing inspection may cost.
Many homeowners resist having a plumbing inspection performed, as they may feel that it is a waste of money, or worse that it may reveal expensive repairs that need to be made. It may not seem like much, but a single dripping faucet can waste several gallons of water every day, resulting in higher than average water bills.
Did you know that a single broken pipe in a wall or ceiling can cause tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage in just minutes? It won’t just be your pipes that need replacement, but also your rugs, wood floors, drywall, and priceless mementos.
What is a Plumbing Inspection?
A professional plumbing inspection is a thorough review of your home’s plumbing to investigate its current condition. Below you will find a list of what should be examined during a proper plumbing inspection:
- Pipes Inside Home
- Pipes Outside Home
- Water Heaters
- Toilets
- Bathtubs
- Showers
- Sinks
- Faucets
Why are Plumbing Inspections Important?
Protect Your Home
Even a minor plumbing problem can cause severe damage to your home’s structure and property. It’s these small issues that are most difficult to locate with the untrained eye and, if overlooked, can quickly become a much more significant concern over time. Having a plumbing inspection performed by an experienced plumber can help prevent a plumbing nightmare from occurring.
Save You Money
The damage that can occur from even the smallest of leaks can be costly to repair. Often, it’s not only the home structure that gets damaged but personal property like pictures and keepsakes as well. The small investment required to have a plumbing inspection performed is far less than what the repair and replacement of your drywall, floors, and ceilings could cost.
Peace of Mind
It can be scary when a homeowner first locates a leak and wonders where it’s coming from, not to mention the damage it may have caused. Don’t let leaks get the upper hand and make sure they’re located and repaired quickly by scheduling a routine plumbing inspection. It’s a great comfort for a homeowner to have the peace of mind knowing that their home’s plumbing system is safe and in proper working order.
How Often Should Plumbing Be Inspected?
Plumbing companies commonly suggest that you have a plumbing inspection conducted in your home at least every two years. If your home is older than forty years, and you’ve never had the plumbing replaced, we recommend annual plumbing inspections.
Who Can Inspect My Plumbing?
A plumbing inspection should only be performed by a professional plumbing company with experienced and licensed plumbers. Do some online research about the plumbing company you’re considering and look at their reviews. You can learn a lot about local plumbing companies and their credibility by reading their reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook.
How Much Does a Plumbing Inspection Cost?
According to Angi.com, the average cost for a plumbing inspection falls between $100 and $1,375, with an average cost of $575. At Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning, one of our licensed plumbers will conduct a plumbing inspection of your home for Only $279 as part of our VIP HVAC & Plumbing Maintenance Plan.
In addition to our standalone plumbing inspection, Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning offers a VIP HVAC & Plumbing Maintenance Plan for just $299 a year.
The VIP HVAC & Plumbing Maintenance Plan is an excellent way for our customers to have a thorough plumbing inspection, a video inspection of their entire sewer line, and a combined 52-point inspection of your HVAC system each year.
Regular annual maintenance for your plumbing and HVAC systems is vital for optimal function and longevity. Other plumbing & HVAC maintenance activities, such as drain cleaning and air filter changes, play a significant role in the efficiency and health of your systems.
Avoid unexpected plumbing or HVAC emergencies. Entrust your annual maintenance to Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning with our comprehensive VIP plans.
Learn more about our comprehensive VIP HVAC & Plumbing Maintenance Service Plans and choose the one that best fits your needs. Our experts are here to help you enroll in these valuable, money-saving services.
What Will a Plumbing Inspection Tell Me?
A thorough plumbing inspection, performed by a licensed plumber can alert you to early warning signs of impending failures. Every exposed water line and connection are inspected for leaks and signs of wear or corrosion. Water heater and washing machine connections are checked, as is every faucet, spigot, and valve inside and outside your home. If our technician detects anything that needs attention, we will provide a a cost evaluation for any needed repairs.
How Do I Know If I Need a Plumbing Inspection?
Many plumbing problems occur inside of the walls or beneath the floors of our homes, making them difficult, if not impossible, to detect. Decreased water pressure, rattling pipes, sewage backing up into your toilet, or tub drains are all visible signs that you have a plumbing issue, and you need a plumbing inspection!
Are you thinking about buying a new home?
Call Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning to perform a complete inspection of your potential home’s plumbing system. Sure, the handyman who performs your whole-house examination also checks your plumbing, but he’s not an expert in plumbing. Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning has been the plumbing inspection in Houston experts since 1979.
Nick’s has the right people with the right tools for any plumbing task with over forty years of experience!
More on the Importance of Plumbing Inspections on the Potty Mouth Guys Show
Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning Live Video Transcription:
On today’s show, it’s all about the importance of plumbing inspections.
Yeah.
I’m John Eccles, Richard side here, another week. Excited. Thank you guys for tuning in. Last week. I really liked that show last week asking about what it takes to be a plumbing technician. I thought it was pretty neat. I think it was. I think we, a lot of people watch that and I think people learned from that. I hope so. Just like today show just like today’s. So let’s dive right in. Plumbing inspections, um, what, what’s the main reason why? What’s the importance of doodle? It’s very simple. You want to take a proactive approach to your home rather than a reactive. It’s a huge investment for most everybody that owns her own home, right? It’s the biggest investment, right? Typically. So a reactive approach turns into problems, right? A lot of people call us after leaks already happened. Well, when stuff like that happens, you got a bigger mess on your hands and what you want.
Normally you got damage. Normally you have to take off time from work that wasn’t scheduled. Um, you’re missing things that you don’t need to miss. Another big one, depending on how bad the damages is, insurance claims number one, insurance claim is water damage, water damage, and that’s primarily coming from plumbing situations, so having a proactive approach with these plumbing inspections, being in, hey, you’re a homeowner or taken the initiative to be on the forefront, you’re going to catch it before it happens, before a small little problem turns into a gigantic, you know, a mole hill of just issue after issue after issue. So today we’re going to talk about a couple of different ways because there’s two different types really that I can think of if you’re going to buy a home or if you already own the home and we’re going to touch on both of those.
The first one is going to be, if you’re going to buy a home, why would you want to hire a plumbing company versus a home inspection home inspector? I’m sorry to do your plumbing inspection. Why? Richard? Great question. There’s a huge difference between a home inspector and doing plumbing inspections. That’s right. Those guys have very good knowledge and they do a really good job, but it’s a visual job. A plumbing company such as ours, have the equipment that you need and we need to be able to get the job done, more of a forensic type of approach. Absolutely good words so we can see what’s going on with your drain system. We can check the sewer system, we can make sure that your sewer going from the house to the street is operational and in perfect working order, we can make sure that your drain system underneath the slab isn’t perfect working order.
If you’ve got a problem with your plumbing underneath that slab, a on the house, that you’re actually going to purchase a. That can cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix. You want to know now, not later. So a home inspector doesn’t have the capability to give that to you. We do, absolutely. Yeah, I would. I would like to think that the home inspector is very well versed in many things, right? They’re great. They cover roofing and electrical Lindo, I mean everything. They’ve got a great purpose. We are experts in one field and that field is a huge, huge portion of your own and the value of your home. You’re talking about the water pipes, the water heater, the drain system, drain lines underneath the slab drains, all your fixtures, all those things and we’re experts in it and we have the equipment to do the forensic testing, like Richard said, to get really in there and tell you that it’s absolutely worth it because nothing would be more disheartening to spend x amount of dollars on a brand new home or any sort of home and go, Oh man, you mean that there’s a problem under the slab and is going to cost me thousands of dollars to fix.
And it’s usually not thousands. It’s usually over 10. Yeah, and how many times and how many phone calls we get in our office on a daily basis where somebody has purchased a home and they didn’t do testing and all of a sudden, Ooh, I got a problem. Right. Well, the other owner that sold you the home knew there was a problem typically and didn’t tell you and they’re not going to. And there is no, if you look at our legal system when it comes around us, you see it all the time, I’m going to sue them. Never works, guys. Just do your homework up front and your due diligence and it fixes that issue. It makes it go away. Absolutely, right? Absolutely. Now, the other style is what have you already own the home, right? You already own it. You live, you’re living in it.
Now, why would it be important for a plumbing inspection then? Well, let’s go back to that first thing. We’re talking about proactive, reactive, and we’re talking about why the importance of the plumbing inspection. Well, whenever you’re there and you’re going through your daily routine in life, how often do you check things? Normal wear and tear. Um, things just tend to break. Nothing made by man lasts forever, right? And so last thing you want is a broken pipe. No hot water. You get in the shower, the faucet doesn’t work. Whatever the case is, you don’t want those things to happen. A plumbing inspection, something you scheduling your time whenever you know you have availability. We come in, we do a thorough inspection of everything up in the house, everything below the house to make sure that everything’s in good working order and when it’s not, we love to give you either, hey, this needs to be addressed right now.
It’s an issue today and has to write or I’ll watch list item. What I’d like to ask you guys is what is the age of your water heater? How many of you guys know what the age is of your water heater and did you know that water heaters in Houston last seven to 10 years? I’d try it if you can’t answer how old your water heater is. It’s really important to get plumbing inspections done so you know things about your current situation in the home, so things don’t become an insurance claim. Right? Very important. Here’s a good way to look at it. If you had, if you’re going to invest into stock and you’re going to give two, three, $400,000 to invest in the company, would you do research on the company and want to know what’s going on with them? Absolutely. Same thing with your home, know what’s going on with it, right?
No one’s going in and out. What’s what needs to be addressed, what does it need to be addressed? You need to have that information and knowledge at least a little bit. That way you’re aware of things before it becomes a huge expense are the whole point of the plumbing inspection is to take away that big expenditure right before it really happens. Now everybody’s gonna say, well, water heater cost a lot. Well it does, but does it cost as much as replacing the water heater, the sheet rock, the baby crib underneath all this stuff, hardwood floor stuff that happens because it leaked and you didn’t address it beforehand so it. Yes, that might be a larger ticket item that we have, but it’s not. It can be addressed before it becomes a much bigger issue. Right? Kinda like under drain slabs. That’s exactly right. Water heaters. You’re just one little tiny aspect of your plumbing system and for inspection purposes, very little on the inspection purpose, but it can create a monumental amount of damage.
So it’s really important that you guys are proactive and not reactive when it comes to plumbing. I think everybody tends to think, Hey, I turned my faucet on. Water comes out, everything’s fine. That’s it. I don’t know where the water came from. They don’t know what’s in it, but it’s coming out of my faucet and it’s warm and it’s warm. That’s it. But there’s a lot more to this than that. So we highly recommend that you get a plumbing inspection done on your current home or if you’re purchasing a new home, get it done. It’s very important. You know, we haven’t even touched on this. If they currently live in their home and they own it, they’re not going to buy a new one. What would be the recommended timeframe? How often should they get a home inspection done? We’ll once a year. Annually. Annually. Is, is once a year.
Have someone come in, you know, one that we didn’t touch on. We touched on it with the new homes, but nothing about the current home is what have you get a broken line underneath the slab. Right? And you let it go on and on. What could that cause? The evidence that is going to be shown typically is you’re going to start seeing cracks in walls, slab movement, you’re going to start seeing slabs in certain areas, maybe fall off, like in a corner of the home. Uh, and that’s how you definitely know that there is a big plumbing problem. It’s carrying the soil out, uh, through the drain system, into the sewer system, into the city sewer system. And that’s when, you know, you have a problem. We’re doing a remodel right now. We started Jack Hammering, they’ve got a two foot void underneath that house. Their kitchen line had been leaking for who knows how long it’s over there.
And the willow bend area, you know, Braeswood area, um, and there’s a two foot void underneath there. Well now it’s become a much larger problem. How do you rectify it? How do you fix that? But being proactive, it wouldn’t nearly be the money exchange that’s about to happen. Yeah. Maybe we could have caught it way early. Done. So fort carry, two foot of soil out from underneath your slab. Yeah. Yeah, that way there’s a big difference in doing a plumber repair and then do an appointment in parallel with the slab repair and then it snowballs it. That’s just how it is. That’s exactly right. That’s how it isn’t anything alive. Thinking about your vehicles, right? You start hearing your break start squealing probably just in pads. You let it keep going and going and going, what happens like I do road or is we to do this and it just snowballs into a bigger expense and that’s how plumbing works.
That’s exactly right, and that’s all we’re trying to do is help you be proactive and prevent that correct. Another example is if you let your faucet keep dripping, there’s a point where there is no repair, there’s just replacement. It’ll channel out the faucet. Sorry, get your home inspection of the day. Thank you guys for watching. Any questions or concerns, please call us. John’s here. I’m here. We’re telling you guys this every single week and we’re getting more and more phone calls and helping people. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you are. Thank you for watching. Thank you so much.