With the first official day of summer being just a few weeks away, we thought now would be the perfect time to start discussing some summer plumbing advice! While it’s important to be mindful of your home’s plumbing system throughout the year and make sure to remember the various maintenance tasks that need to be done, different seasons can present unique challenges for your plumbing system. After all, I’m sure you’re well aware of the potential plumbing problems that can accompany the winter season! Think of tasks that you have to do like disconnecting outdoor hoses, letting faucets drip when it’s extremely cold outside and so on.
Nonetheless, in this week’s blog post, we’re going to be diving deeper into the complete opposite of winter weather and that happens to be the summer months. For all of our fellow homeowners in the Kansas City area, you likely know that we’re no strangers to warm weather. Throughout this week’s blog post, we’ll touch on a few items that you’ll want to add to your plumbing to-do list during this upcoming summer season.
For anyone that may be dropping by our plumbing blog for the first time, welcome to Stine-Nichols Plumbing! Located in North Kansas City, MO, our team of plumbing experts provides residential, commercial and new construction plumbing services throughout the Kansas City area, along with many of the surrounding cities. If you live in or near KC and need some plumbing help, don’t hesitate to give us a call at (816) 348-3481.
Test Your Sump Pump
During the summer months, Kansas City can experience its fair share of rainfall. While rain certainly isn’t a bad thing to keep our grass looking green and make sure all of our plants look beautiful, the rainfall can potentially be troublesome (if your plumbing system isn’t ready to go). If you’ve ever dealt with a flooded basement, you likely know exactly what I’m talking about! There’s no doubt that any interior flooding can cause quite a bit of damage in a hurry! Anything you can do to limit the odds of this occurring will be well worth the investment.
With that being said, our first task to complete will be testing out your sump pump. Hopefully you will have done this before the rainy spring season, but if not, better late than never! A sump pump is an incredibly useful plumbing piece to have installed in your home. However, if it’s not ready to go when needed, it doesn’t do you much good, right? So…it’s always a good idea to perform some routine maintenance on your sump pump to confirm everything is working like normal. A couple of great tasks here would be a visual inspection to make sure the pump is standing up and that there’s no debris anywhere capable of causing some issues. Secondly, in terms of testing out the sump pump, you’ll simply need to pour some water in the pit and make sure it kicks on and sends the water out through the discharge piping. It won’t take you much time to complete these tasks, but it will provide you with the peace of mind that everything is ready to go! As an added tip, it wouldn’t hurt to also look into having a battery backup installed. If you happen to lose power, you don’t want to also lose your sump pump too!
Miscellaneous Plumbing Headaches
As you can likely guess, many of the common plumbing problems are capable of popping up during any season. The winter is certainly unique due to the fact that the colder temperatures can present some different challenges to your plumbing system! Nonetheless, I wanted to take a moment here to discuss a few miscellaneous plumbing issues capable of arising during the summer months. If you have kids and they’ll be home more during the summer, this can potentially lead to increased usage of your washing machine. Just to be safe, it would be a good idea to keep the loads of laundry to a standard amount and avoid putting too much added pressure on your washing machine. Furthermore, keep an eye on the hoses from time-to-time to make sure there are no leaks there!
What other common plumbing problems can pop up from time-to-time and are worth mentioning for the summer season? Are you planning on having any cookouts this summer with family and friends? If so, make sure to remember what your garbage disposal can and can’t handle! While garbage disposals are great to have, they can get clogged up if something goes down them that shouldn’t be there! Other than that, a great rule of thumb is to simply look out for anything that seems out of the ordinary and avoid letting plumbing problems sit un-repaired for extended periods of time. Even on the small repairs, they’re potentially capable of costing you money on your utility bills and can even gradually get worse over time!
Headed on Vacation?
No matter if you’re headed to the beach, visiting family or any other type of traveling, it’s safe to say the summer season is a popular time for doing just that. While you’re enjoying vacation, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to plan ahead to ensure you’re not greeted with plumbing issues when you get home! In regards to that, what things should you complete before heading out of town?
Turn Off Main Water Shut-Off – On the topic of plumbing emergencies, you’ll notice that something we’ve discussed previously is the importance of knowing where the main water shut-off valve is. In the event that you were to have a significant water leak inside your home, it’s extremely important to know where the main shut-off is to at least limit the overall damage. Headed out of town and want to ensure there’s no chance of something significant occurring while you’re gone? Well…shutting off the water in the home is a great place to start!
Vacation Mode Settings – Another popular topic of discussion on our plumbing blog are water heaters. Unsurprisingly, they are an extremely important component of a home’s plumbing system. The reason I’m mentioning them here is because several water heaters have a vacation mode setting. The primary thing that this does is allow for your water heater to utilize less energy while you’re away. In any case, this would definitely be something worth doing before heading out of town! Don’t have a vacation mode setting? Consider lowering the water heater’s temperature before leaving.
Fix the Small Stuff – If you have a little bit of time before you head out of town, this could be the perfect time to take care of those small repairs so they don’t continue to cost you money. Think of items like a running toilet, dripping faucet and so on!
Call Your Friends at Stine-Nichols Plumbing
Here at Stine-Nichols Plumbing, we understand that plumbing issues can pop up at any time. Winter, spring, summer, fall, it doesn’t matter which season it is, you need to be mindful of your plumbing system and understand the importance of routine maintenance. Throughout this week’s blog post, we’ve highlighted a few things you’ll want to complete ahead of (or during) the upcoming summer season. We hope you’ve learned a thing or two and feel more comfortable managing your plumbing system for the quickly approaching summer months.
As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, our team provides plumbing services throughout the Kansas City area. Whether it be installing new water heaters, repairing sewer lines, clearing clogged drain lines or anything else plumbing-related, we’re always ready to help with any of your plumbing needs. Feel free to fill out the form linked HERE and we’ll be happy to discuss your project in more detail!