Category: Emergency Plumber

Have you ever experienced an emergency basement flooding? If not, you probably don’t know what to expect. Here are some tips.

For homeowners, there might not be anything more frustrating than a flooded basement. Whether the flooding is caused by mother nature or a burst pipe, not only can it cause lots of damage that ends up costing an arm and a leg, but also it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing.

Want to ensure that you are ready for a flooded basement? Read on to learn who you should call, what you should do while you wait for help, and what to expect once help arrives.

Who to Call after an Emergency Basement Flooding

Perhaps the most important thing to do following a flooding incident is to take extra precautions until a professional can arrive. A flooded basement is often an electrical hazard and setting foot in the water can lead to serious injury and even death if you are not careful. It’s best to contact an electrician if you cannot safely turn off the power to your home. If your circuit breaker is located in the basement, wait until you know it is safe to enter the water before cutting the electricity.

You should also make sure to call your insurance to file a claim. If you do not have flood coverage, you might want to reconsider. Because flood coverage is not included in most standard homeowner’s insurance policies, if you do not add it to your coverage, you could be out of luck if you need it.

Finally, you need to call a plumber if you suspect a burst pipe is responsible for the flood. An emergency basement flooding requires immediate attention so that you can fix the problem before it gets worse and causes significant damage.

What to Do When Your Basement Floods

Aside from calling in the experts, what can you do?

Well, for starters, you can prevent further damage from happening to your property. If you are certain that the water is safe to touch, you can begin moving personal items and furniture out of the water to minimize the damage. Move any items that you can to a safe area to dry.

If you wait too long to move your possessions from the water, you risk the formation of mold, which could irrevocably damage them. You should also take measures after the water is removed from your basement to clean, sanitize, and dry thoroughly all of the surfaces that the water touched to prevent infestation.

What to Expect from Us

When you call in the plumbing experts from Custom Plumbing of Arizona to help with your emergency basement flooding problems, you can expect quick, professional service with a smile. Our plumbers are standing by to help you stop treading water so you can focus on more important things. Talk to us today if you need help.

Posted on Author Vince VinceCategories Blog, Emergency PlumberTags

In an emergency, you want to know that you can rely on your plumber to get the job done. A good plumber knows what to do—and how to do it fast—during a plumbing emergency. What is a plumbing emergency? Keep reading to learn when you should call a plumbing expert ASAP.

As the name suggests, a plumbing emergency is an incident during which the plumbing in your home or business malfunctions, often causing serious damage, or at least having the potential to cause it. It does not take long for a little bit of water to do a lot of damage to a building’s flooring, walls, ceilings, and even foundation.

A plumbing emergency usually has a few distinct characteristics:

  1. Water is leaking from an undefined source.
  2. Water is coming from a visible source but can’t be stopped without professional help.
  3. The leaking water has caused or has the potential to cause extensive damage.
  4. Hazardous waste or materials are present.

Your basement doesn’t need to be flooded to warrant a call to an emergency plumber. What is a plumbing emergency? These four examples answer this critical question.

Leaking or Burst Pipes

Leaky pipes are one of the most common examples of a plumbing emergency. A burst pipe can lead to thousands of dollars in water damage, even in a relatively short period of time.

But it doesn’t take a broken pipe that is gushing gallons of water to qualify a leak as an emergency.

Even a pinhole leak left unattended can severely damage carpet, wood, and drywall, not to mention lead to mold damage that can put your family’s health at risk and lead to expensive repairs.

Overflowing Toilet

We’ve all done it—we go to flush the toilet and the water rises fast. Aside from being a bit embarrassing, a clogged and overflowing toilet could indicate a larger problem than an isolated incident suggests.

If your toilet repeatedly overflows, it might be time to call an emergency plumber to take a look.

Flooding

No matter what the cause is, if your home is flooded, you need to call a plumber right away. If you don’t take care of the problem the first time it happens, it will be more likely to happen again.

Sewer Backup

As we have written about before, you don’t ever want to experience a sewer backup. Needless to say, if you have sewage backing up into your home, you need to call a plumber immediately. Keep your nose on high alert. If you smell any weird scents coming from your drains, you could prevent a hazardous, costly incident by simply having a plumber take a look.

What Is a Plumbing Emergency Going to Take to Fix?

If you think you are having a plumbing emergency, it is best to err on the side of caution. Give us a call any time, day or night, and we will send an expert to take care of the problem.

Posted on Author Vince VinceCategories Emergency Plumber, Commercial Plumbing Service, Residential Plumbing ServicesTags

When was the last time you tested your home’s water pressure? Never? If you have given little to no thought to learning how to test water pressure in your house, you might want to reconsider. Here is what you need to know.

Too much water pressure and you could damage your plumbing. Too little and you can’t take a comfortable shower. In some cases, you may not even realize that your pressure is not what it should be, but that problem is easily fixable with a few simple steps.

If you have ever wondered how to test water pressure in your house, these tips are for you.

The Shower/Toilet Test

Have you ever noticed how the water pressure changes while you are showering when someone else flushes a toilet? If you have, you might want to take a closer look. Turn on your shower and watch what happens when you flush the toilet. Does the pressure drop significantly while the toilet is refilling? If so, it might be time to call a plumber to diagnose the problem.

Buy a Pressure Gauge

If you do not notice anything when you try the shower/toilet test but you still suspect you have a water pressure problem, you can get a more accurate reading of your home’s water pressure by buying a pressure gauge. You can purchase this tool at most home supply stores. After you hook up your pressure gauge to your faucet, make sure no other water is running in the house, then run the water to get a baseline reading of your pressure. Depending on your preferences and your home, you want to get a reading between 30 and 80 psi.

A Few Potential Causes

Now that you know how to test water pressure in your house, let’s talk about what might be causing the problem. When you have low pressure, the cause could be a few different things.

One potential cause could be a leak somewhere in your plumbing. A leak in one pipe decreases the pressure in the rest of the house. To fix this plumbing problem, you will need to locate the leak and repair it. The problem could also be a partially blocked pipe due to mineral buildup.

The low water pressure problem could also be due to your municipal supply, though that is more often the cause of high pressure. If you live at the bottom of a hill, you may need to install a pressure regulator.

Hire a Plumber So You Don’t Have to Learn How to Test Water Pressure in Your House

If you need help determining why your water pressure is too low or too high, get in touch with the experts at Custom Plumbing of Arizona. We will help you achieve optimal pressure in your home.

Posted on Author Vince VinceCategories Emergency Plumber, Commercial Plumbing Service, Residential Plumbing ServicesTags

What goes down must not come up! If you want to avoid the mess of a sewer backup, these tips are for you.

Whether you are doing laundry or using the toilet, the last thing you want to happen is for whatever you are sending down the drain to come back into your home. You don’t need an active imagination to picture what that would look like—just think of the damage to your carpets and hardwood flooring!

Fortunately, you have a chance to stop that from happening if you know the signs. Use these tips to avoid a major sewer backup.

Don’t Ignore That Bad Smell

Do your drains smell like sewage? That’s one of the signs that you have a possible sewer backup on your hands. When a drain gets clogged, whether from roots invading your main line or from something that just got stuck, the material that gets stuck in the pipes decomposes, which produces a foul smell.

It is possible that the smell is coming from a clog that is isolated to a single drain, but if conventional methods of clearing the blocked drain do not work, calling a plumber might be necessary to determine whether the clog is something more serious, like a clogged sewer.

Stop Believing in Coincidences…When It Comes to Clogged Drains

One drain clogged? OK, maybe things aren’t so bad. Two or more drains clogged at the same time? Now you might be at risk for a sewer backup.

To understand why two or more clogged drains are a sign that your sewer is backed up, let’s think about how your plumbing is structured. Imagine that your plumbing—from each drain down in your home to the main sewer line running up to your house—is a river system. The drains are smaller tributary rivers that feed into the larger river of the main sewer line.

When the sewer line is backed up, those tributaries have nowhere to send their water, which means they are going to force water out of other tributaries.

Give Your Toilet a Good Listen

The next time you flush the toilet, take a moment to listen to it. What do you hear? If you hear a bubbling noise, that might mean that a sewer backup is not far away.

When you have a clog in your sewer line, air often gets trapped in the pipe. As water flows past the clog (clogs do not always completely block water from passing through) the air can escape, causing bubbles and gurgling noises.

Sometimes you can even see these air bubbles escaping. To test it out, fill up your sink with a few inches of water. Next, drain it. As the water goes down the drain, look for small bubbles coming up from the pipes.

Don’t Let a Sewer Backup Ruin Your Day—Get Professional Help Before It’s Too Late!

The day your sewer backs up into your home is a day that no one wants to experience. Do you suspect that you might have a clogged sewer line? Contact us today so we can schedule a home visit.

Posted on Author Vince VinceCategories Emergency Plumber, Residential Plumbing Services, Toilet repairTags

A water leak in your hot water heater is never fun and always inconvenient, no matter if the leak is a trickle or a deluge. Even if it does not seem very bad, you should schedule a water leak repair.

Do you know what to do if your hot water heater is leaking? If not, you could be facing massive water damage—and hundreds or thousands of dollars in repairs—in the near future.

If you want to be ready in case you experience a leak in your water heater, keep reading until the end of this article.

Turn off the Water Supply

When you notice water coming from your water heater and pooling on the floor, the first thing you need to do is turn off the water supply. Your water heater should have a shutoff valve attached to it. Inspect your water heater near where the cold water enters it. Once you find the valve, turn it off.

Some valves are shaped like a wheel. If that is the case for your water heater, turn it to the right until it stops moving. Other valves are shaped like handles, in which case turn yours 90 degrees from the position it is currently in.

It is possible that you either won’t be able to turn off your water heater supply valve or you won’t be able to find it. If you come up against this obstacle, turn off the main water supply valve to your home.

In the rare event that you cannot turn off either valve, contact an emergency plumber as soon as possible.

Inspect Your Hot Water Heater for the Source of the Leak

Once you have the water turned off, you can start to inspect your water heater. First, clean up any water that is on the water heater and on the floor. After you have the spills cleared, turn the water supply back on, and try running some hot water from a nearby tap. If you do not notice any new leaks forming, the water that was pooling on the floor and dripping from the heater was probably condensation and you don’t have to worry about fixing anything.

If the leak starts again, however, try to isolate the exact point it is coming from. Depending on where the leak is coming from, you may be able to tighten a connection to complete the water leak repair. It is important to know that working on a water leak repair on a water heater can be dangerous. If you do not know what you are doing, it is critical to call a professional.

Call a Water Leak Repair Expert

If you feel in over your head, there’s no need to worry. Call the plumbing experts at Custom Plumbing of Arizona. We don’t close, so contact us day or night, any day of the year. We will diagnose and fix your problem and be out of your hair so that you can get on with your day.

Posted on Author Vince VinceCategories Blog, Emergency Plumber, Residential Plumbing ServicesTags