Pipe Dreams

They're unseen but not unimportant, so take care of your home's pipes before they turn into a nightmare.

STORY BY: JILL BECKER

It's March—time to roll up your sleeves and start doing a little of that ol' spring cleaning. Or, more accurately, a spring home maintenance makeover. There are the gutters to clean, shingles to inspect, filters to replace, and the list goes on. But there's one area homeowners often forget to include on their to-do list. And it's an important one: your pipes.

A quick and painless inspection of your pipes by a licensed Mr. Rooter Plumbing technician is the first step toward preventing budget-busting repairs down the road. Not to mention the inconvenience of, say, having to haul your dirty clothes to the laundromat or worse—having to run to the nearest fast food joint to use the "facilities" because your lines are clogged, a pipe burst, or some other plumbing-related nightmare occurred.

One of the first things your Mr. Rooter plumber will do is inspect your water and waste lines for leaks, damage, and corrosion. Like everything else, your home's pipes wear with age, and gone unchecked, it could lead to trouble. Checking your pipes for wear and tear is particularly important if they're made of galvanized steel, which was popular for water and drainage piping in the 1950s and earlier. It was used mostly for drainage piping in homes built in the 1970s and has a lifespan of only about 30 years or so. We weren't math majors, but if it's 2006 now, then your pipes' demise may soon be near.

In fact, you may already be seeing signs of failing pipes and not even know it. "In water piping, your water flow will slow down for one," says Vinnie Sposari, owner of a Mr. Rooter franchise in Seattle, Washington. "You can also tell by the color of your water, which may have an orange or reddish tint to it when you first turn it on." Pinpoint leaks are a common problem with galvanized water pipes. Although you may not be able to see them, you would probably be able to hear the leaks as well as see a slight increase in your water bill.

If your pipes are a combination of galvanized steel and copper, also commonly used in building sites around that same time period, you may have a problem with corrosion.

If you're not sure what type of pipes your home has, check the pipes going into and coming out of your water heater. If the pipes are copper colored, then presumably you're in good shape. If they're metal or gray or silver in color, then they're most likely galvanized. But because the two materials may be mixed, we suggest having them inspected anyway.

Do you hear occasional loud banging in your pipes? You may have a situation called water hammer. Your washing machine, dishwasher, and ice-maker feature an electrically operated solenoid valve that directs the flow of water rushing from your pipes to the appliance. When full, the valve slams shut, and the momentum of any water left in the line slams the pipe forward as well. This can also occur with quick-closing fill valves in your toilet. While the banging noise may only be slightly bothersome, the pounding can put unnecessary stress on your pipes, and we all know what can happen when something is under too much stress. That's where a good shock absorber comes in handy. Or, to use the technical term, a water-hammer resister. Your Mr. Rooter repairman can install one in a jiff.

Another condition that can put your pipes in a world of hurt is root intrusion, which occurs when the roots of trees and other plantings in your yard go searching for nutrients that, unfortunately, can be found in the waste line that runs from your house to the sewer main. You're more likely to discover this yourself in the fall, after the dry season, but your Mr. Rooter technician can easily check for root intrusion by using a camera at the end of a long cable. If any of your roots have gone on a feeding frenzy à la Little Shop of Horrors, they'll send in another cable with a sharp root-cutting blade at the end.

Video inspection is also used to check for cracked, misaligned, or crushed pipes. This not only alerts you that there's a problem in the first place, but, thanks to a device in the camera head that sends signals back up to the surface, pinpoints exactly where the problem area is. Try doing that without otherwise digging up your front yard!

We hope this article helped persuade you to think about your precious pipes next time you're putting together your home maintenance checklist. If not, consider this cautionary tale from our friend Vinnie Sposari. "A buddy of mine was buying a house," the story begins, "and he decided to spend the $300 or so it costs to have the house's sewer line cameraed, and they discovered a break. While it wasn't good news that it needed to be repaired, my friend was able to take the information to his realtor, who negotiated basically splitting the cost of the $9,000 repair with the seller and getting the sale price of the house down $5,000." Now that's what we call smart plumbing crisis prevention.

Jill Becker is a freelance writer living in Atlanta. Her last home had perfectly maintained pipes.