Brooks Plumbing Co. Blog: Posts Tagged ‘Lacey’

Plumbing’s Tip: Detecting Leaks with Your Water Meter

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

When you notice a leak in your Tumwater home, you fix it right away, but what happens when you don’t notice a leak for days or even weeks? The damage it causes can have a profound impact on your water bill and the good repair of your home. To avoid hidden leaks – the ones that hide in your walls or your yard, keep a close eye on your water meter.

The Hidden Leaks

Obvious leaks are…well, they’re obvious. They pour water down the walls, leave puddles in your bathroom or create ponds in your backyard. Unfortunately, the majority of leaks are much less obvious. They result from small drips between pipe joints in your walls or a hairline fracture in your water main or drain pipes. They may not even appear where you can see them.

If this happens, it’s important to have a keen eye for the signs that a water leak has occurred. Specifically, look for jumps in your water meter readings.

Watching the Water Meter

Your water meter tracks every drop of water consumed by your family. To check for water loss, record the reading at the same time every day and watch how it changes. To be sure of a leak, you can turn off all the fixtures in your home and watch for the meter to move. If the meter moves despite the fact that no one in your home is consuming any water, it is likely a leak.

You can also compare your bills from one month to the next. If your bill rises suddenly, without any clear reason, check the meter readings and the rates. If the meter reading increased suddenly and the water rate did not, there might be a leak to blame. If that’s the case, call a professional to inspect your water lines immediately – what is hidden to you might be a relatively obvious, straightforward repair to someone else.

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Plumber’s Guide: What You Can Do to Prevent Problems in Your Drains

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

When you look at your Lacey home’s drains, they seems fairly simple. You pour things down and they disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Of course, that logic goes out the window the second the drain starts to backup or overflow. There are things you can do to avoid such problems though and most of the time, they cost nothing and take only a few minutes a week.

Simple Household Drain Maintenance

The first step to avoiding a problem is not putting anything down your drain that might cause said problem in the first place. Specifically, avoid grease, food, or other objects that might build up in your drains if not properly disposed.

Food can be broken down by a garbage disposal or, even better, placed in a compost pile. Grease, however, should never enter your sink at all. Pour all old kitchen grease into a coffee pot or bucket and dispose of it carefully. It can be thrown away in some places, or it can be recycled. Whatever you do, though, don’t pour it down the drain.

Another easy tip to keeping those drains clear is to pour a natural compound down every now and then like dishwashing liquid or baking soda and vinegar. Expensive drain cleaners are not only unnecessary – they are unsafe for the person using them and can cause damage to the pipes if you are not careful. To avoid such damage, stick with hot water based compounds and vinegar. The key is to do it preventatively.

If you wait until a full blown clog occurs, baking soda and vinegar may not get the job done and you’ll need to call a plumber who has a snake or other equipment to get the clog out.

Professional Maintenance

While regular flushing of your drain with hot water and vinegar allows you to clear out the vast majority of the stuff that builds up there every week, it’s also a good idea to call a professional for annual maintenance. Such annual maintenance involves visual inspection, professional grade clearing of food and waste products and a full flush. Done properly, this will minimize the cost of future repairs and replacements and keep your plumbing running smoothly for years to come.

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Plumber Guide: Plumbing Basics

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

There are a lot of pipes, drains, fixtures and appliances in your Lacey home carrying out some pretty incredible tasks. For most people, plumbing is just another system that makes their lives easier. But, if something goes wrong, it’s important that you know exactly what to do and for that, you need to know how your system works.

Fundamental Plumbing

Plumbing is based entirely on the properties of gravity and water pressure. A plumbing system has two basic systems – one that brings water in and one that removes that water once you’ve used it. To bring water into your home, it is pressurized. With enough pressure, it can travel against gravity, rising in the pipes to your fixtures.

Every fixture in your home has a valve on it that allows you to shut off the flow of water when making repairs or if there is an emergency. If the emergency is big enough, you can turn the main water supply valve off outside your home as well.

Drainage Systems

While the water coming into your home is relatively simple – pressurized cold water goes directly to the fixtures and hot water comes from your hot water heater – the drainage system is slightly more complicated.

Once water has exited the faucets in your fixtures, it is no longer pressurized so gravity is needed to remove it. Each drain consists of a few basic parts – the flange, tail piece, trap, and drain extension. When you put water down a drain it goes into the trap and flows into the drain extension, eventually to the sewer line.

The trap is designed to always hold a small amount of water so that sewer gasses cannot back up into your fixtures. Vents are installed in your home as well to ensure there is always air in the plumbing system. That air ensures a vacuum doesn’t generate. If it did, water couldn’t flow out of the house. It’s the same as pouring from a small hole in a can – if you poke a hole in the opposite side, it flows much faster because air enters the can to displace the liquid.

Fixing Your Problems

A plumbing system is surprisingly simple to work on if you understand the basics. But, that doesn’t mean a plumber isn’t needed for most major jobs. Because a single fixture or pipe can have an impact on the entire system and because water leakage can be incredibly damaging, it is best to call a professional whenever you need a second opinion or are unsure you can handle it on your own.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving! We are very thankful for all of our customers; you really make what we do worthwhile. We hope you all have a great holiday and enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving feast! And if you are looking for some dessert ideas, here is a recipe for pumpkin pie from allrecipes.com that will make today a little sweeter:

Mrs. Sigg’s Fresh Pumpkin Pie

“A mixture of fresh pumpkin puree, brown sugar, spices, evaporated milk and eggs is poured into a prepared pie crust and baked. ”

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 sugar pumpkin
  • 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Cut pumpkin in half and remove seeds. Place cut side down on a cookie sheet lined with lightly oiled aluminum foil. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the flesh is tender when poked with a fork. Cool until just warm. Scrape the pumpkin flesh from the peel. Either mash, or puree in small batches in a blender. Increase oven temperature to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C.)
  2. In a large bowl, slightly beat eggs. Add brown sugar, flour, salt, 2 cups of the pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, and evaporated milk. Stir well after each addition.
  3. Pour mixture into the unbaked pastry shell. Place a strip of aluminum foil around the edge of the crust to prevent over browning.
  4. Bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees F (230 degrees C), then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake an additional 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Remove the strip of foil about 20 minutes before the pie is done so that the edge of the crust will be a light golden brown. Cool pie, and refrigerate overnight for best flavor.

For more details, click here.

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