Easy Furnace Maintenance You Can Perform During the Summer

During the summer, a furnace in Detroit isn't likely to garner much attention.  As temperatures rise maintaining your air conditioner naturally becomes a primary focus. However, there are a number of simple maintenance tasks you should consider performing for your furnace as well. Summer is the perfect season to check and repair your furnace, ensuring it’s ready to go long before you’ll need it, preventing rushed repairs later on.

Change Your Furnace Filter

Your furnace filter actually filters all the air in your home, not just the air that enters your furnace. Changing the filter regularly is necessary for both optimum air conditioner and furnace performance. Most filters are rated at 30-90 days, meaning you should change your filter after this time. Changing the filter prevents dirt and dust from accumulating inside your furnace, air conditioner, and ducts, improving their efficiency and raising the quality of your indoor air.

Clean and Check Around the Furnace

During the summer, it can be tempting to store unused winter decorations, sports equipment, and more around your furnace. However, equipment can easily fall on or against your furnace, causing damage or becoming a fire hazard. These items can also block airflow, reducing your furnace’s efficiency when you do begin to use it. Make sure the area around your furnace is clear for approximately three feet in all directions. Check that the air intakes aren't blocked or clogged with dust, and inspect the ductwork that vents heat and gases away from your home. If you spot any signs of disrepair, have them addressed by a HVAC professional.

Install or Check CO Detectors

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a common byproduct of combustion inside your furnace. This gas is odorless, tasteless, and colorless, but causes detrimental health effects that worsen with increasing exposure. If you don’t have CO detectors located near your furnace, install them for increased safety. If you do have detectors, check that they have fresh batteries and that the wiring appears intact.

Seal Leaky Ducts

Your furnace blows heated air up through a series of ducts to be dispersed throughout your home. Check your furnace’s ductwork for air leaks and seal them with duct tape or duct mastic. Seal open areas around where the duct enters the ceiling above it with expanding foam purchased from a home improvement store. Taping insulation rated for furnace ductwork around the duct where it emerges from the unit can reduce heat lost through this essential connection.

Caring for the furnace in your Detroit home before you need it will ensure that it’s ready to provide efficient, safe heating once temperatures drop in the fall. Click through our website to learn more about the full range of services provided by Andy’s Statewide. We also provide more HVAC maintenance and troubleshooting tips to help you determine when professional repairs or tune-ups are needed.

When Should You Address That Leak: Now or Later?

Unless you’re faced with broken pipes or a burst washing machine hose, you may not feel the need to call a plumber to your home in Flagstaff, AZ. A dripping faucet or a small leak in your water heater don’t seem like large problems, but left unaddressed they can lead to costly waster waste and damage your home. Keep reading to find out why you should call a plumber as soon as you notice a leak you can’t fix yourself rather than waiting it out.

Wasted Water

Water is our planet’s most valuable natural resource. Even small leaks can add up to a large amount of water waste over time; a single dripping faucet wastes up to 3,000 gallons of water per year. If the environment isn't your first concern, consider your pocketbook. You can save ten percent or more on your water bill simply by fixing leaks around your home or having a plumber fix them for you.

Water Damage

Although it seems innocuous, water can cause significant damage to your home, especially over time. Water trails damage paint, plaster, wood, carpeting, and linoleum. Water-damaged flooring and walls must be replaced, costing you money. If the damage is particularly bad, areas of your home could become structurally unsafe, requiring expensive repairs. Wet insulation doesn't work as well, meaning you may end up paying more to heat or cool your home if you have a leak in your attic or inside a wall.

Mold Growth

Mold is a common household problem associated with standing water that a plumber can fix. Within only 24 hours, mold growth can take hold and spread quickly. Mold not only damages the surfaces it grows on, it also contaminates your indoor air. Airborne spores exacerbate allergies and asthma, and may cause headaches, nausea, and trouble sleeping or concentrating on tasks. Left untreated, mold can also cause upper respiratory infections and illness.

Bigger Plumbing Problems

Sometimes, a leak is a symptom of a larger plumbing problem lurking just around the corner. Failing gaskets or fixtures often leak before they break completely; fixing a small leak is infinitely easier than handling a large-scale flood in your home. Water leaking from your water heater may have many causes, but the two most common are a faulty temperature-pressure-relief valve or a corroded tank. If your temperature-pressure-relief valve isn't working correctly, it could cause your water heater to explode. A leaking tank is a sign that mineral scale has corroded the tank walls and your water heater needs to be replaced.

To learn more, visit our website for a list of our services, available 24/7 in Yavapai, Coconino and Maricopa Counties. You can also find some excellent tips, from the pros, on plumbing issues you can and can’t handle yourself on our blog.

Water Conservation 101: Simple Ways to Reduce Your Water Use at Home

Memphis and the entire state of Tennessee have been experiencing drought conditions for several years now. With rainfall so scarce and supplies of groundwater from aquifers dwindling, it is more important than ever for homeowners to conserve all the water they can. By optimizing your Memphis plumbing system not only will this reduce your monthly utility bill, it will also help preserve our local water supply and ease the load on Memphis’s municipal waste-water treatment plants. The tips below can help you reduce your daily water usage.  

Fix Dripping Faucets

A tiny drop-by-drop leak from your kitchen or bathroom sink may not seem like much, but over the course of a year it can add up to several gallons of clean water that needlessly go down the drain. Often, you can correct a drip simply by ensuring that the spigots or handles on the sink are closed tightly, but you may need to call a professional plumber if the leak persists. You can replace the fixtures with new low-flow models if they are beyond repair.

Install Flow Restrictors

Older homes often feature faucets and bathtub spigots with high pressure and flow rates, which use more water per minute than more modern plumbing fixtures. If you don’t want to replace the entire fixture, you can install flow restrictors that will help reduce water usage. You don’t even have to change your hand washing or tooth brushing habits in order to benefit from this simple modification.

Upgrade Your Toilet

Aside from your shower, your toilet accounts for the largest percentage of your daily water usage. Older toilets use several gallons per flush, which can add up to dozens of wasted gallons over the course of a single day. Also, if your toilet plumbing valves leak, a constantly running toilet can waste hundreds of gallons per day. Upgrading to a new low-flow toilet can drastically cut your water costs.

Check for Hidden Plumbing Leaks

Over the years, pipes corrode, so the older your plumbing is, the more likely you are to have hidden pinhole leaks in your pipes. If the leaks develop in your basement, crawlspace, or garage, you can visually inspect for condensation, drips, and other signs yourself. Peeling paint on walls or ceilings, mold growth, and buckling drywall can all be signs of plumbing leaks inside your walls.  

Don’t Wash Half-Loads

This advice applies both to your dishwasher and your washing machine. Even if these appliances have water-saving settings, it is more efficient to run them only when you have a full load of dishes or clothes to wash. If you absolutely need a specific item before you have enough to run a cycle, you can hand wash it, but be sure that you don’t leave the water running while you are scrubbing, and try to rinse your item as quickly as possible.

For more information about Memphis plumbing upgrades, you can consult our Ask the Expert page. To learn more about topics such as water heater repair, drain cleaning, sewer line repair, and more, explore our main site. 

Water Heater Woes: Signs That It's Time to Replace This Vital Appliance

Water heaters don’t just allow you to take comfortable baths and showers, they also allow your dishwasher and washing machine to quickly and efficiently fight stains and grease with hot water. Like any major appliance, however, water heaters in Houston can and do break down, and they have a limited lifespan. If you wait until your water heater fails completely, however, you may have to go several days without hot water until a plumber can come replace it, and you risk water damage to your home if the tank leaks and causes a flood. Keep alert for the following signs of water heater failure:

Discharge in the Hot Water

The water supply in most cities, Houston included, contains a certain amount of dissolved minerals. While these minerals do not affect drinking water safety, over time they can build up inside your water heater. As they precipitate out of solution, minerals in your water supply can form a deposit of sediment inside your water heater. When the sediment layer becomes very thick, it may be near the end of the water heater’s life. You may notice that your hot water is extra cloudy or that it even contains fine particles of silt or rust. If this happens, and the cold water doesn’t have any discharge in it, this is a clear sign that it’s time to have a professional plumber come take a look at your water heater.

Increased Gas or Electric Bills

If you have an older home equipped with a holding tank-style water heater, then it most likely uses either gas or electricity to operate. Tank-style water heaters consume a certain amount of energy every day even when you are away from home, because they must hold the water in the reservoir at a constant hot temperature. Check your utility bills each month and carefully compare spending across different seasons. If you see a spike in your spending, even when you have subtracted the cost of heating or cooling your home, an aging water heater may be the culprit. An insulating blanket can help reduce the amount of energy your water heater uses, but it cannot make up for a failing appliance.

Reduced Hot Water Volume

This is the most obvious sign that your water heater needs to be replaced. If it is correctly sized for your home and the number of occupants, a properly functioning water heater should provide you with enough hot water for at least 30 minutes of continuous use, which is enough time for three people to take showers of a reasonable length. If you find that hot water is turning cold, even during the first person’s shower, or if you cannot run the hot water in the kitchen for even a second without giving the person taking a shower a blast of cold water, it’s time to replace your water heater.

In addition to new high-efficiency gas and electric tank-style models, new tankless models that use little to no standby energy are also available to replace your aging water heater in Houston. Visit our main site or consult our Ask the Expert page for more information on water heaters and other plumbing topics. 

Reasons to Call a 24-Hour Plumber: Emergencies That You Shouldn’t Ignore

As you may know, home-ownership goes hand in hand with many maintenance responsibilities. The plumbing, which consists of dozens of feet of piping running beneath the floors and inside the walls of your home, can present you with a host of problems. While some are minor and can be fixed easily with do-it-yourself solutions, others are more serious and require the immediate attention of a plumber.  By keeping the phone number of a good all-hours plumber on hand, you can be sure to get the help you need fast when you experience:

A Burst Pipe

Pipes can burst in your home for two main reasons. Age-related wear and corrosion can eat through the wall of the pipe and cause it to break, or an overnight freeze can cause ice to form inside a pipe, cracking it. The pipe will then begin to leak and flooding can occur when the ice melts. Either way, a pipe burst requires immediate attention from a plumber, because flooding can damage your walls and flooring materials and also cause mold to grow inside your home. Make sure you know where your main water shutoff is so that you can stop the flooding while you are waiting for your plumber to arrive.

A Clogged Drain

Your home’s drains carry waste-water from your sinks, dishwasher, washing machine, toilet, and bathtub to the main sewer line. Unfortunately, although the pipes are not designed to handle anything beyond water and toilet paper, other types of waste often end up getting washed down the drain. Food scraps, grease, facial tissues, cotton swabs, and other types of waste can stick inside your pipes and cause backups, which eventually lead to clogs. You should call a plumber to inspect and unclog your drains, because commercial drain cleaning chemicals can be very dangerous, and they may not effectively dissolve all blockages.

A Leaky Toilet

When the rubber seals that prevent water from flowing out of your toiler tank and into the bowl deteriorate, a slow leak of fluid causes water to constantly run. Toilet leaks can waste hundreds of gallons each day, so if you hear your toilet running, you should determine if there is a leak. Add a few drops of food coloring to the tank and wait about an hour to see if it leaks into the bowl. If it does, call a plumber to fix the problem so that you can avoid elevated water bills.

A Collapsed Sewer Line

The sewer line that runs beneath your home and connects it to the municipal waste-water system is very vulnerable to collapse. Shifting soil can exert uneven pressure on the pipe, minerals in the water supply may corrode it over time, and tree roots searching for water can attack it and expand any existing cracks. If your sewer line collapses, your crawlspace, basement, or home can fill with contaminated, disease-causing water. You will need to hire a plumber immediately to replace the sewer line.

For more information on common plumbing concerns or to schedule for a plumber to come check problems in your home, visit our main page and consult the Ask the Expert section of our site.