Your home plumbing system is one of the most integral parts of your home. It provides you with clean water for drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene. Your plumbing also supplies water to your essential appliances, including the refrigerator, water heater, and dishwasher. Finally, your plumbing system works to drain your home of sewage that can make you and others in your home very ill.
So you should do all that you can to protect your plumbing from serious flaws or damage. For instance, frozen pipes, cracks, leaks, and rust can destroy your plumbing system, leading to the need for expensive repairs.
As a homeowner, you should be aware of the top 3 things that can potentially harm your plumbing.
Water
Now whether you want to believe it or not, the water that plumbing is designed to carry can actually put it at risk. How is this possible you may ask?
If you have an old plumbing system built with materials such as galvanized steel or lead, which have been known to rust and deteriorate, water can break down the inner lining of the pipes themselves.
If your home has hard water, the minerals in the water can develop deposits in your plumbing and can interact with specific metals to break them down, potentially causing you to drink metal fragments from the tap and putting your health at dire risk. Furthermore, too much water pressure can put even more stress on your pipes and can cause them to crack or leak.
Temperature
Extreme temperatures also threaten your home’s plumbing system. Bitter cold can cause water to freeze in your pipes, especially exposed faucets and drain pipes. Moreover, ice inside of pipes will expand with such great force that it can damage the inner lining of your plumbing. At worst, frozen pipes can burst, which will be trouble when liquid water begins to move through them again.
Furthermore, extremely hot water can also damage your pipes. If you have your water heater set to an extremely high temperature, you may be harming the plumbing that runs out of your water heater, in addition to the appliance itself.
Poor Drain Treatment
If you overstuff your kitchen sink’s garbage disposal system or pour grease and oil down the drain, you may be stressing your drain pipes. In addition, flushing foreign objects down the toilet or into your bathroom sinks can put your sewer main, which connects your indoor drains to the municipal sewer system, at severe risk of damage. It is highly suggested by most experienced Long Beach Plumbers that you never flush foreign objects such as cotton swabs or feminine hygiene products down drains.
Finally, poor drain treatment also involves negligence. You should hire a professional Local Long Beach Plumber to inspect and repair your pipes at a minimum once a year. Overtime, this can save you money in the long run on what can be a some what pricey repair or replacement jobs. Identifying issues when they are not that big, saves you money. It is highly suggest that you call a local Long Beach Plumber near you today if you haven’t had your home plumbing system inspected in over a year.