Know Your Home’s Plumbing And Your Plumber With A Plumbing Inspection Visit | Irving, TX

Getting a plumbing checkup for your home can help you manage an aging building, ensure your family has fewer disruptions, and check on your water supply and drain systems before you remodel or plan an addition. At Tioga Plumbing & Electric, our expert plumbers also get to know you and your Irving, TX home, while you get to know them under more relaxed circumstances than typical emergency plumber calls. It’s important to know the condition of your pipes and any concerns there are because, of course, it’s much easier to schedule a plumber appointment for maintenance and repairs than it is to deal with emergency drain cleaning service and hunting for hidden water leaks behind the walls or under the concrete foundation slab.

Plumbing Knowledge Gives You Power

Most homeowners don’t realize what to look for when examining plumbing systems. For example, those rubber washing machine hoses are under constant water pressure and can decay over time. A quick suggestion from your plumber to replace them with stainless steel hoses can prevent a potential flood. It’s this kind of insight that makes a plumbing inspection invaluable.

If you’re thinking about making broader home upgrades, consider combining services. For example, if you’re upgrading your outdoor space, you might also want to explore options for landscape lighting to enhance both functionality and ambiance.

Video Inspection

There was a time when inspecting your home’s plumbing above basement level involved cutting holes in walls that later had to be repaired. It was expensive and generally reserved for active leaks or other known concerns. Now, if there’s a less compelling reason such as the age of your home or the type of pipes used in some areas, it doesn’t take much to run a video inspection camera and, with an experienced eye, inspect a length of water supply or drain pipe, or even your sewer pipe, from the inside without tearing apart walls. You can see drain clogs, pipe cracks, even degrading PVC material or corroding metal pipe. It’s a simple way to get a lot of valuable information that will help you make repairs now or get an idea about how long it might be until you’ll need to consider work from pipe repairs and replacement to overall repiping, common in homes after a few decades of service.

Checking Shutoff Valves

A simple but critical inspection task for you and your plumber is to make sure that your shutoff valves are present and working properly. In some homes, they aren’t available where they might be useful in a plumbing emergency, and we can install one quickly for future use. Existing ones might not have been used in decades, and need some loosening up before use. The main water shutoff for your home is important to be able to locate, and get to, but in many homes it’s in the basement behind bicycles, boxes, and whatnot. When time is of the essence, you might need to be able to run to it and turn it quickly. It might also be buried in your yard in an access box, or even deep down for some homes, and there are cases where shared installations where neighborhoods were built at once provide water shutoff in a neighbor’s yard rather than your own. Now’s the time to find out.

Surveying for Leaks Electronically

In addition to the video inspection methods for checking pipes, there’s a tool specifically for locating leaks that uses ultrasonic detection to identify and even calculate the distance to the leak, using a sensor placed on the pipe. This is great for avoiding destroying parts of walls to locate and repair water leaks that could cause even more damage if they were left unrepaired. We can go right to the source of the leak in many cases and get the job done. Of course, even if there’s no known leak, this technology can be useful in inspecting your plumbing for unknown leaks.

Pipe Age and Materials

From galvanized iron to aging copper or degrading PVC, the type and age of your pipes matter. Water quality also affects pipe lifespan. For homes with outdated or problematic materials, like lead, we recommend prompt replacement. Curious about eco-friendly solutions? Our team also educates homeowners about water-saving features like low-flow showerheads that can cut utility bills without sacrificing comfort.

Plumbing Issues Like Dissimilar Metal Joints Can Cause Future Trouble

Another of the issues that your plumber is likely to notice but homeowners might not think of is dissimilar metals. Making a simple plumbing repair, such as some homeowners might undertake on their own, using metals that interact chemically, can produce ongoing corrosion at an accelerated rate, followed by damage and leaks simply from lack of this somewhat esoteric knowledge. Even hanging a pipe on a bracket of the wrong kind of metal can cause trouble.

Drain Cleaning as a Preventive Measure

Running our video inspection gear down your drain pipes, can be a great way to recommend regular drain cleaning service for your whole house. What you’d see there, if left for years without cleaning, is a variety of growing clogs, all the way down the pipes horizontally on each floor and between floors, along with rings of grease waiting to accumulate more material. It’s no wonder some homes have frequent emergency drain cleaning needs.

For those managing water line concerns or upgrades, it’s worth exploring how water line repair can benefit your home’s efficiency and longevity.

Your Partner in Plumbing and Home Management in Irving, TX

Stay ahead of your home’s needs with the help of our expert plumbers at Tioga Plumbing & Electric. Whether you’re planning maintenance for your home over the years, or upgrades for luxury or expanding your family, we can help put you in charge of your future with the benefit of our experience and information from a careful plumbing inspection.

Looking to make your space shine both inside and out? Explore how our team can light up your world in Euless, TX.

Call us today to schedule your plumbing inspection. We look forward to being part of your home maintenance journey.