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Plumbing problems occur when you least expect them, often during the most inconvenient times. That’s why having a reliable plumber that you can call on weekends or other times outside regular business hours makes sense for anyone who owns a home, including homeowners in the sleepy Fort Worth suburb of Burleson, TX.

Leaking Pipes

One of the most common problems for which plumbers find themselves called out is leaking pipes. Like a crime, a leak in a pipe rarely occurs in the open. Leaks stay hidden in ceilings and behind walls, or places where you rarely go. You may see signs of these leaks when your water bill comes with a noticeably higher amount due. Or you may notice the stains on the walls, the mildew forming, or a perceptible rise in humidity levels. But it’s unlikely without a professional plumber that you’ll be able to locate the leak.

A skilled plumber with the right tools will be able to find the leak and, with minimal damage to your home, reach the offending pipe and repair the leak. Professional plumbing companies use the following detection methods to find leaks:

• Visual: There are many visible signs an experienced plumber will pick up, including signs of warping, discoloration on walls, uneven floorboards, and bulges in wallpaper. While dripping water seems easy for anyone to discover, finding the exact spot takes an experienced plumber, who will determine the path the water’s taking then trace it back to its source.
• Sound: One key tool used in plumbing when searching for leaks is a listening device, particularly for slab leaks, which occur near a home’s foundation, underneath slabs of concrete. These sensitive listening devices help a plumber hear the sound of water dripping or otherwise escaping from your home’s pipes through all kinds of material, allowing your plumber to narrow the search.
• Infrared thermography: An imaging camera scans the area where you suspect a leak. This high-tech method creates an image on a monitor, pointing to temperature differences that show exactly where a pipe’s interior is exposed. It requires special training to interpret the results, but a trained plumber will be able to pinpoint the leak with precision.

You’ll most likely need a trained plumbing expert armed with the right tools and expertise to find a leaking pipe, though you won’t want to risk unnecessary damage to your home when looking for a single leak. To fix a pipe, plumbers often need to break through walls, ceilings, or sometimes even concrete.

Some Common Sink Problems

Another common plumbing problem occurs with sinks. Whether it’s your bathroom basin or your kitchen sink, clogged-up drains and leaky faucets are particularly annoying.

Sinks in kitchens, laundry rooms, and bathrooms become clogged for a variety of reasons. These include:

• Food
• Grease or cooking oils
• Hair
• Lint
• Soap scum

Now, there are countless other objects that can get stuck in your drain to cause problems, and any experienced plumbing professionals will be able to regale you with stories of what they’ve found in pipes, but those five substances are most often the culprits in the majority of clogged drain cases. Three common sink problems that occur with regularity, according to a number of unscientific polls of plumbing companies, involve garbage disposals, clogged drains, and leaky faucets. Though most of these can be resolved without calling out a plumber, it’s also important to know when you’ll need to call in professional help.

Like leaking pipes, leaky faucets are another reason people often call out a plumbing service. Though not as destructive as a leaking pipe, as it’s draining into a place where water goes in any case, a leaky faucet can cause extra expense, as well as make an annoying drip, drip noise. Sometimes it’s just the aerator, the part of the tap where the water flows out, that’s had sediment build up. This happens especially with mineral-rich water, particular from wells. Just inspect it by unscrewing it and, if that’s not the malefactor, then call an expert to assist.

Broken garbage disposals also often cause sinks to clog. It may be due to some fault with the garbage disposal, or it might just be broken. Most garbage disposals can be reset by pushing a red button underneath the disposal, and this usually is all it takes to get it running properly.

However, sometimes it takes something more than just resetting your garbage disposal. If your disposal still isn’t working properly, it’s best to call out a professional. Plumbing companies can conduct an internal video inspection of your sink to find out exactly what the problem is.

Whatever you do, don’t put your hand down the drain, as there’s always the chance it can turn on and lacerate your hand. Even when the system is turned off, the blades can cause injury, and even a trip to the emergency room. So, it’s usually best if the reset button doesn’t work just to call a plumber.

Meanwhile, back to all those debris that can get stuck in your drain underneath your sink. You can use a chemical agent to dissolve the blockage. You could also use a plunger to try and unclog it manually, along with the chemicals. Yet if you’re green like us, you won’t want all those nasty chemicals flowing into rivers and eventually into the sea. A professional will probably utilize a hydro-jet to break up whatever’s clogging your drain.

New Pipes 

While we’ve talked about leaking pipes and leaky faucets as well as clogged-up sinks, perhaps it’s time to talk about replacing old pipes with new ones and how this can help prevent other issues. If you’re calling out plumbing professionals on a regular basis to deal with leaks and other piping failures, it makes sense in many cases just to re-pipe your whole home. This is especially true for older homes.

Replacing the pipes in your home can also include drain pipes along with the pipes that actually deliver water throughout your home. It’s a big job, which makes many homeowners nervous when they consider the cost. Yet just like anything you do to improve your house, it’s an investment that can pay off in just a few years.

When Is the Right Time to Re-Pipe My Home?

The question is, when do you as a homeowner choose re-piping over repairing the pipes in your home? And we’ve actually got some very straightforward answers. You should replace your pipes when:

• They leak too much.
• Corrosion becomes a problem
• You have hard water issues.

To expound on these answers, the first one seems obvious. Pipe repairs cost money, and with new pipes you shouldn’t have a problem, as long as they’re professionally installed. If you’re calling out a plumber to repair your pipes several times a year, it’s time to call in a reputable plumbing service to give you sound advice, and to probably give you a quote to replace your household pipes. This is especially true for older houses.

Sometimes corrosion can build up in your home’s pipes. Particles within them actually start to eat away at the pipe, creating weaknesses, which eventually lead to leaks. This corrosion inevitably will require you to re-pipe your home.

For homeowners in Burleson, TX hard water can be a real problem. Like most of Texas, the Fort Worth area has high amounts of minerals in its water supply. Dissolved calcium and other minerals often get absorbed and form a hard, chalky substance. This builds up, forming mineral concentrations in pipes called limescale.

This mineral build-up can create huge problems for those without water filtration systems, as the mineral build-up hinders the flow of water. If you don’t catch it in time this scaly substance hardens to a point that no amount of cleaning will rid your pipes of it. A professional plumbing expert can help you identify the problem and recommend appropriate solutions.

CCTV: Catching Plumbing Problems in the Act

While we’ve briefly mentioned infrared cameras when locating leaks in household pipes, CCTV cameras can work similarly to resolve issues with sewage systems in homes, businesses, and municipalities. It makes sense. To properly diagnose any plumbing problems, getting inside the pipes can help. When used by trained plumbing technicians, CCTV offers the most wide-ranging and economical solution for discovering what’s wrong with your sewage pipes.

CCTV can identify:

• Cracked & broken pipes
• Water infiltration
• Blockages from roots
• Grease build-up
• Sagging pipes
• Dislocated pipe joints
• Broken lateral connections

Sending a television camera into your sewage system is much like a surgeon inserting a camera into a patient to pinpoint the health problem. With a camera, a trained plumbing expert can diagnose exactly what’s wrong with your pipes. It can identify a hole or other break, saving you money by doing a trenchless spot repair, which keeps you from having to replace the whole system.

When groundwater or storm water gets into sewer systems, it’s known as water infiltration. With the aid of television cameras, a trained specialist can tell when you have a water infiltration problem. Sewage systems are designed strictly to transport wastewater from toilets, sinks, tubs, and showers, so when other water infiltrates it, there can be serious issues.

Roots commonly cause problems with sewage pipes. As roots by their very nature seek out water and nutrients, they find these in abundance in sewer pipes. Trees can spread their roots through hard stone and soil, so it’s unsurprising that they can stress out sewer systems too, causing sewer pipes to break. Television inspection can quickly and easily identify such problems.

In restaurants especially grease builds up, causing blockages that can disrupt their operations. Professional commercial plumbing experts can easily solve this problem with hydro-jetting, which effectively blasts water through a clogged or slow-draining sewage line.

Sagging pipes, or bellies as they’re known in the plumbing industry, happen because of age, wear and tear, or invasive roots. These bellies hold water and debris, and can periodically and habitually cause blockages and back-ups. A trained expert with a camera can identify the cause and propose solutions.

The only way to fix this issue involves replacing the sagging section. This will restore a proper slope and restore normal flow. Once identified, a plumbing company should be able to provide you with an estimate at no additional fee.

Pipe joint dislocations too can have a variety of causes, but they all result in sudden and unsanitary flooding of sewage and water. Besides the smell and obvious health hazards, it’s a costly thing to correct. That’s why preventive maintenance is so important. Annual plumbing inspections can keep pipe joints from becoming dislocated.

When the pipes leading from your home out to the sidewalk – called laterals – and into the municipality’s sewage system burst, things can go really wrong. Besides the obvious bad smells such a breakage can emit, a trained plumber using a television inspection system can protect your landscaping and paved pathways.

With these television techniques and regular inspections, you can often prevent problems before they arise.

An Affordable Burleson Plumber 

We know your time is valuable. That’s why we say, “If there’s any delay, it’s you we pay.”™

We promise punctuality because we believe in our business and our customers. Our employees believe in it too, and it’s become a part of our culture. Using technology, including the most modern software, the customer service staff that answers your call can promptly schedule a skilled plumber to arrive at your home or place of business with a fully-stocked truck to deal with any plumbing issue.

Call us today at 817-983-7876!

We’re happy to advise you on your situation, handling any plumbing issues in Tarrant County, TX.

Emergency Plumbers for Burleson, TX

If your pipes have sprung a leak, we can fix them. If you need to replace the pipes throughout your home or business, we can replace them. For any plumbing repairs, major or minor, call our Fort Worth area plumbers. We can resolve all your commercial and residential plumbing problems as well as offer our expertise and knowledge so that you know your options.

We offer emergency plumbing services in Burleson, TX and throughout the Fort Worth area. We can handle anything from simple household pipe repairs to complex, building-wide commercial plumbing issues, and even plumbing emergencies.

You can reach Benjamin Franklin Plumbing at 817-983-7876.