My Drain Company Blog : Archive for January, 2015

Why Do I Need Clean My Drains Regularly?

Friday, January 30th, 2015

Clogged drains are a frequent and frustrating problem for homeowners everywhere. They can be caused by a wide variety of factors, depending on the location of the drain. Regardless of the type of clog, however, none of them are good for your plumbing or your peace of mind. A lot of people hold off on hiring a plumber until the drain really starts to back up. While you probably don’t need to hire a plumber every few weeks, you should be cleaning out your drains yourself on a fairly regular basis. Let’s take a look at why you need to clean your drains regularly.

An Ounce of Prevention…

Cleaning your drains to prevent clogs is all about preserving the health of your plumbing, which also saves you money. A clog can cause a great deal of damage, depending on how bad it is. If a clog crops up that you can’t handle, which will happen if you don’t clean your drains regularly, you’ll need to hire a plumber to deal with it. The plumber will often be able to unclog the pipe using special equipment. However, the problem can sometimes necessitate replacing an entire section of pipe, which is a cost you don’t want to accrue.

Cleaning your drains on a regular basis also drastically lessens the frequency of major clogs occurring, saving you a call to the plumber and increasing the lifespan of your drains.

Procedure

So, how to you actually clear out your drains without the specialized knowledge and tools that a plumber possesses? Well, there are a couple of different ways to do it. The most popular way is to pour about half a gallon of hot or boiling water down your drains. This flushes out any detritus that might be building up on the walls of your pipes. Baking soda and vinegar are also quite popular solutions, and are excellent at removing grease and oils from the drains.

If you do have a clog that you can’t seem to get rid of, call My Drain Company and schedule an appointment with us today. We provide professional drain cleaning services in the Glendale area.

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Signs Your Plumbing System Is Worn Beyond Repair

Friday, January 23rd, 2015

Plumbing materials are made to be durable, but they don’t last forever. Depending on the age of your home and when your plumbing was installed, you may have plumbing in your Chatsworth home with a lot of miles on it. The good news is that new plumbing repair can help bring your plumbing fully up to date, making it more efficient and giving it a new lease on time. Not sure if you are seeing the signs of worn-out plumbing? Here are a few to be aware of:

  • Problems with multiple leaks – have you had to repair multiple leaks in various areas of your home’s plumbing? This can be an indication that your plumbing is wearing out in different areas and may be best replaced instead of constantly being repaired.
  • Signs of corrosion – are you seeing brown or yellow water coming through your faucets, particularly after being away for a few days? This can indicate that there is rust on the inside of your plumbing, which means there is corrosion present.
  • Flakes, dimples and other corrosion on pipes and/or tubing – any kind of significant corrosion on the outside of your piping indicates the presence of corrosion; let a trained professional tell you how much corrosion there is and whether or not repair or replacement is better.
  • Age – as mentioned above, the age of your plumbing can play a significant role in whether or not you need to replace failing plumbing.
  • Constant clogging – as with multiple leaks, if you are experiencing constant clogging from multiple drains, you may want to compare the cost of repair calls versus replacement.
  • Poor water pressure – if the various faucets in your home are all exhibiting signs of poor water pressure, this can indicate that your pipes are no longer up to the task of supplying you with needed water.

It is better to stay ahead of worn out plumbing than wait for a significant leak or other major plumbing problem to develop before making the decision to replace worn piping. If you are in need of professional plumbing repair in Chatsworth, call My Drain Company today and schedule an appointment with one of our plumbing experts.

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How Do Professional Plumbers Detect Leaks?

Wednesday, January 14th, 2015

Leaks are very often out of sight, making them difficult to locate until they create such a mess that you can’t miss them. No one wants to wait until serious water damage has occurred before finding out about an existing leak, so how do you go about finding one? Hire a professional plumber to perform leak detection and repair for your Glendale property.

Signs of a Leak

First, let’s take a look at signs that can indicate you’ve got a leak somewhere in your home:

  • Your water bill is unexpectedly high – has your water bill risen significantly but your water usage hasn’t? Water leaks are notorious water-wasters, so if your bill is suddenly sky-high, it is likely a leak has developed somewhere in your plumbing.
  • Sound of constant running water – are you hearing the sound of running water when there are no open faucets? Running or dripping coming from unknown parts mean water is escaping from somewhere, somehow.
  • Decrease in water pressure – your plumbing system needs to maintain a level of pressure inside it to help push the water to where it needs to go. A noticeable drop in water pressure means the air inside the system is no longer balance, and it is likely from a leak that is allowing the air to escape.

Finding Leaks

As mentioned above, many leaks are not readily visible to the eye. This is why professionals use different tools to help them locate leaky plumbing:

  • Audio equipment – professional plumbers have specialized listening equipment that allows them to hear the smallest drip through drywall, plaster, cabinets and even concrete. This equipment allows the plumber to pinpoint the exact location of a leak and commence repair.
  • Infrared detection – infrared technology can detect areas of moisture by temperature. Typically a leak will be cooler than the air that surrounds it, so infrared can be a fast, efficient way to find the source of a leak.
  • Video – using a camera placed on a fiber optic cable, professional plumbers can look deep into any plumbing system. The camera sends back real-time video of the inside of the piping, and many cameras are equipped with dye injectors that can help pinpoint any other additional leak problems.

As you can see, accurate leak detection entails training and using professional equipment that most homeowners simply won’t have. If you suspect you have a plumbing leak, call My Drain Company today and schedule an appointment for professional plumbing repair in Glendale.

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Signs You Have a Slab Leak

Friday, January 9th, 2015

Many homes are built on what is known as a slab – a concrete block that serves as the foundation for the whole house. It isn’t unusual for certain piping, including your main water line, to be embedded in this cement for protection. However, cracks can develop with the piping, usually due to poor installation or damage, and these cracks can create a leak inside your slab – aka, a slab leak. It isn’t all that easy to spot a leak inside a block of cement, so to help you, the experts at My Drain Company have put together a small list of signs that can indicate you have a slab leak.

Constant Sound of Running Water

Unless you have a stream on your property, you don’t want to hear the sound of constantly running water while you are in your home. This does not include the sounds of water running from a tap or faucet; instead, this would be a trickling sound coming from an unknown location. If you are hearing this sound, and can’t locate its origin, call an expert for help.

Significant Drop in Water Pressure

If you have noticed a uniform drop in water pressure throughout your home, and have no other plumbing issues of which you are aware, there is a chance it could be a slab leak.

Significant Increase in Water Bill

Seeing a large increase in your water bill when you haven’t changed your level of water usage is usually indicative of a leak somewhere; let an expert determine where the leak is so a plan can be made for repair.

Foundation Shifts

If the leak has been there long enough, or is big enough, it can cause shifting in your foundation. This is because the soil beneath the slab is wet and unstable and as a result of the weight from your home, is causing the concrete to shift and even crack. This is a serious problem and should be handled immediately.

Slab leaks are serious business; allowing one to continue can cause tremendous water waste and even damage to your home’s foundation. If you are seeing the signs of a slab leak, call My Drain Company today and schedule an appointment for slab leak repair in Glendale.

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When New Year’s Day Was Not on January 1st

Thursday, January 1st, 2015

Some holidays fall on shifting calendar days for every year, such as Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday in November) and Easter (the first Sunday after the first full moon to occur on or after March 21). Other holidays, such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween, are fixed. No holiday has a more solid calendar date attached to it than New Year’s Day. It has to fall on January 1st because it celebrates the first day of a new year. That only makes sense…

…except that, like most things that at first appear obvious, there is a bit more to the story. The beginning of the year was not always on the first of January. As with an enormous numbers of traditions in the Western World, the establishment of January 1st as the inaugural day of a new year goes back to the ancient Romans.

The modern solar calendar is derived from the Roman model, but the earliest Roman calendars did not have 365 days in a year spread over 12 months. Instead, there were 304 days spread over 10 months. The Romans believed this calendar originated with the mythical founder of the city, Romulus. If Romulus were a real person, we can credit him with a poor understanding of the seasons, as this abbreviated calendar soon got out of sync with Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Numa, one of the Kings of Rome (probably also fictional) receives credit for creating a longer year with two added months, Ianuarius and Februarius, bringing the number of days in the year to 355. The new month of Ianuarius, named after Ianus (Janus in contemporary spelling), the god of beginnings, would eventually be known in English as January. But when this new calendar was instituted, January was not the first month. March, named after the god of war, remained the first month, and March 1st was New Year’s Day.

This extended calendar still did not keep in synch with the seasons. In 45 BCE, Julius Caesar instituted reforms to align the calendar correctly according to calculations of astronomers, with an additional 10 days distributed across the year. January also became set as the first month, and offerings to the god Janus on this day started the tradition we now know as New Year’s. The date still fluctuated during the ensuing centuries, with a number of Western European holy days treated as the beginning of the year instead. It wasn’t until the next calendar reform in 1582, the Gregorian Calendar, that the date of the New Year was fixed at January 1st.

However you choose to celebrate the beginning of the current calendar, everyone here at My Drain Company you have a wonderful 2015!

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