Wisler Plumbing and Air

Serving Roanoke and surrounding areas.

Menu
Schedule Online
or call (540) 483-9382

How Small Plumbing Issues Can Raise Utility Bills

Plumbing

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

One of the things I always like to mention when talking about utility bills is the word ‘overpayment’. We don’t think about our utility bills most of the time, and when we do, we accept that the utility bill is just what it is. But you may be overpaying much more than what’s necessary for your home. I don’t think any of us likes to overpay, so let’s look at how little issues with our plumbing fixtures could really be costing us each month.

If you pay for water, a dripping faucet—even if it’s just a drop every second—can add up to over 2,000 gallons a year. To get a better idea, there’s actually a pretty cool downloadable app that tells you how much water is being used by tapping your screen with the same timing as the drip. A lot of people don’t know about this, but if a dripping tub or sink faucet is using hot water, your water heater has to fill up and heat however much water is used. One drop per second is about 5 gallons per day. Imagine filling the water heater with 5 gallons of cold water that then has to be heated, even though you’re not actually using it. You’re not just using extra water at this point—you’re having to overpay on your electric or gas bill, too.

When we say a toilet is running, we don’t mean in the literal sense. It just means that the water is continuing to fill up or going into the overflow. A running toilet can use over 10,000 gallons per year, which gets very expensive if you’re paying for your water. Even if you don’t pay for water, a constantly running toilet or dripping faucet can damage the septic system. Septic systems are not made to receive a continuous amount of water. Instead, they’re only made to accept a few gallons at a time from a flushed toilet or from water going down the drain. Constant water will be enough to flood and leech out, or simply saturate the septic system and never give it a chance to dry.

Scale buildup on the water heater (e.g., an electric element with calcium buildup) is another area that causes homeowners to overpay their utility bills. On average, it leads to paying 30% more than what the bill should actually be. If you have one or two of these little plumbing issues going on in your home, you’re going to be overpaying way more on your bill every month. That’s real money you could be saving in your pocket.

We live in an area where energy is priced pretty reasonably, at least when compared to the rest of the country. Conservation might not be as much of a hot topic for us, but it’s definitely something which we should all be aware. I’d recommend people get their plumbing inspected no sooner than once a year, but no less frequently than every 3 years. Every 2 to 3 years is usually a good enough schedule. HVAC systems need to get checked twice a year, though, because they go from hot to cold depending on the season.

Diamond Club members can call to schedule an appointment for these inspections at no charge. Otherwise it will range from $150 to $200 depending on the situation. Our Diamond Club schedule is pretty full right now, so it’s definitely a good idea to call as soon as possible to set up an appointment. Reach out to the team at Wisler Plumbing by contacting us online or calling 540-483-9382.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

Let’s assume that someone already knows that they have a water leak. (The leak might have made a stain on the wallboard or produced a dripping sound.) Here are a few pointers to help pinpoint exactly where the leak is coming from.

One thing to consider is the fact that water is going to follow the path of least resistance. I’ve seen a stain show up in the ceiling of a home’s basement that was actually caused by a leak all the way up in the second floor. This happens because a lot of pipes run vertically, from ceiling to floor. Water that leaks from the top of a pipe can run all the way down to the bottom, so don’t assume that the leak is right where the water stain is showing.

The other thing I’d recommend is to listen carefully to see what the leak sounds like. If the cause of a stain is a water line leak, you might be able to hear a spraying sound nearby. A constant dripping sound is also more than likely a water line. If it’s a sporadic drip accompanied with an area that gets wet and dries up, it’s usually related to a drain. Water lines have water in them all the time and they’re always under pressure, whereas drains are only filled with water when they are being used. You might want to pay attention to the water meter outside your house, too. If you’re not using any water and the meter is still spinning, that’s an indicator of a leak somewhere.

You’re definitely going to be ahead if you get support from someone who knows how plumbing systems are put together and how the pipes run in a home instead of tearing into a wall yourself and hoping to pinpoint the problem. If you have a leak and want a professional to take care of it, the process is pretty simple. Give our office a call at 540-483-9382 or request an appointment online and we’ll schedule a visit with a 2 hour appointment window.

We do have a service fee of $79 to bring a technically capable, well-stocked truck to your home that’s ready to do the work right then and there. We’ll be prepared to give you a Straightforward Price once we diagnose the issue and know what we need to do. There are some occasions with a water leak where we do have to open up a wall (if we need extra information to locate the issue, aside from our knowledge of the whole plumbing system). But normally we’ll come out and be ready to solve the problem right at the first visit.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

I think there are a couple of primary reasons why people are dissatisfied or don’t feel like they got what they wanted from their plumbers. What I’m going to share is based upon my experience in the industry and feedback I’ve received from some of our clients. (Their feedback pertained to both us and other providers.) I don’t want to come across dramatic while addressing this subject, either. We’re not working on the human body and this isn’t brain surgery, so I don’t want to make it sound that way. However, plumbing is really important in ways we might not always consider.

If you have someone come to work on your home’s plumbing system, you shouldn’t minimize the value of hiring a professional. Part of that involves taking the time to make sure all the details are covered. Someone who works on electrical or water in your home could cause a huge amount of damage by causing a water leak or flood. Gas lines or gas water heaters involve carbon monoxide, which can be a silent killer. A sewage backup in your home could cause you to come into contact with disease-ridden waste. The bottom line is, we have to protect the safety and health of homeowners, which should never be underestimated.

A lot of times, though, I think the reason people become disappointed is because of the lack of adequate communication. A lot of homeowners fall short by just leaving the door open for a plumber to take care of a small issue in the home. Even though it might just be a dripping fixture, that kind of thinking can really set the stage for mistakes to happen. We always want to have someone at home if possible when we make a visit. That allows us to make sure we discuss the situation as effectively as possible. We can also ask questions about what’s going on, which is really crucial to resolving the problem correctly on the first visit. After all, nobody wants to have multiple visits from a plumber if it could have been taken care of properly the first time.

I’d recommend that you communicate clear expectations and also make sure the plumber has communicated exactly what results you should expect. As a company, we should explain when we’re on our way to someone’s home, what we found after investigating the situation, and how much everything is going to cost in a straightforward way so that you have no unanswered questions. Clear communication across the board is the most proactive way to prevent disappointment.

Sometimes people in the plumbing industry don’t value training and staying at the cutting edge of innovation. Items like tankless water heaters can be very difficult to diagnose if someone has never had any training with them. Homeowners also might not like paying big dollars for plumbing, and therefore might choose someone who charges less. (The trades are not inexpensive if you hire a qualified professional.) But I highly recommend against spending a couple of hundred dollars for someone who’s likely to do the job incorrectly. Not only will this lead to dissatisfaction, but it will end up costing twice as much in the long run when you throw your money into the wind.

If you have any questions or you want to work with the team at Wisler Plumbing & Air, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

The most important thing for us to do as a company is make sure the right person goes to the right call. Everyone loses when that doesn’t happen. If we send a technician who doesn’t have the relevant competency out to someone’s home, they will be frustrated because they struggled to complete the task. The client is going to be very frustrated, too, because their concern was not efficiently resolved. Time is very important to everyone, so if we have to go back to do something twice, it’s absolutely no fun for anybody involved. We’re very much keyed-in to trying to get the right tech on the right job so these things don’t end up happening.

It can be very challenging to pull this off sometimes, though, because we may not fully understand the issue that we’re sending someone out for. Sometimes we’re making educated guesses about what potentially could be going on, so we have to compensate when we’re assigning the job to a technician. We also have a lot of technicians who specialize in a certain area. For instance, our plumbing technicians don’t cross over to HVAC and vice-versa. Our maintenance technicians specialize in maintenance and are not service technicians.

We always look at the skill level of the technician and the skill level required for the actual task being requested and try to match them up. That way we can divvy out jobs and tasks to the individuals who are specialized in those areas. If they do a specific kind of task day in and day out, they’re going to be much better at it than someone who might run three HVAC calls, four plumbing calls, and a couple of water treatment calls every week. If a technician was constantly doing different tasks, they’d never find a groove. We think the best strategy is to have specialties within our techs so we can field the right person for the job.

We also look at the priority of the call. For instance, no-heat calls and no-water calls are very important and generally are given a higher priority over a dripping sink faucet. We also give priority to our Diamond Club family members as one of the benefits of the program. When one of our Diamond Club family members calls in for service or maintenance, we try to give them priority over someone who isn’t a Diamond Club family member.

We have a role in our company that is entirely dedicated to dispatching technicians. Kresta is our dispatcher here, and she has a couple of people who back her up while she’s away. (She’s been with us for about 7 or 8 years now.) She’s very capable of getting a handle of any situation and knowing how to match a technician’s skillset with the task. The dispatcher’s role is ultimately to get the right call to the right tech as the calls come in.

If you have any questions, reach out to us today by giving us a call at 540-483-9382. You can also request an appointment online if you’d like to get a technician out to your home for plumbing or HVAC maintenance or repair.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

One of the most frustrating things for a homeowner is setting up an appointment for a service person to come to their home and they don’t show up, show up late, or don’t follow directions. We focus on being on time, and we give a two hour window in which we will arrive. We also try to notify people when we’re on our way. I really think meeting our client’s needs comes down to dispatching correctly. It’s important that the people fielding the customers’ requests are well-trained in asking the right questions so we best understand the issue you’re dealing with, how serious it is, and exactly what we need to do. Asking the right questions is vital to making sure someone’s needs are properly met.

Next, we need to make sure we send the right person to your home. We’re very much aware of how the technician we send could make or break the customer’s experience. (Nobody likes it when a technician seems incompetent or when it’s the first time they’ve ever seen the issue.) We assess the task that needs to be done and assign it a skill level. We also assign a skill level to every technician (because everyone is slightly different). Then we try to match up the right technician with the right task to make sure we’re sending a competent person to every home.

A lot of times people think that a company will dispatch its technicians to cover a certain radius. A technician in South Roanoke would just run all the calls in that area for the day, right? Well, not exactly. We do not focus primarily on the location of the call as much as we do the skill level necessary to do the job correctly and meet the customer’s needs. So we may have technicians passing each other by on the way to calls. This is all about making sure the customer has a satisfactory experience.

We make these choices when coordinating our technicians because our time is valuable and our homeowner’s time is valuable. We want to make sure that we’re doing our absolute best. Sometimes we do have to make multiple visits, and sometimes we don’t get everything quite right over the phone. But I’d like to think that the vast majority of the time we’re able to do it well and make sure that the customer’s problem is solved.

If you have any issues with your plumbing or HVAC systems, you can always reach out to the team at Wisler Plumbing. Just contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

by

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS

 

There are times when you need to call a plumber and discuss what’s wrong with your plumbing.  That discussion may include terms specific to the plumbing trade and those terms can be confusing if you have never heard them before. The trades use very technical language, and plumbing in particular has a lot of weird names for things. Here are some of the most common terms that you might not already know.

 

Stop valve – You’ll find these under the cabinets or under the toilet. Right where water comes out of the wall or floor, there’s a little valve you can use to turn the water on or off before it gets to the fixture. Anytime someone mentions a ‘stop’, ‘stop valve’, ‘emergency shutoff valve’, or ‘emergency stop’, they are referring to this shutoff valve located right at the fixture.

 

P-trap – This is generally found underneath the sink (kitchen sink, bathroom sink, etc.). It’s the funny looking pipe segment right under the drain. Plumbers will say something like, “I need to take the p-trap off to get the object that got stuck in there.” It gets its name because it looks like a P if you take it apart and stand it up on its end. The p-trap’s job is to hold water in order to prevent sewer gas from coming back into your home.

 

Drain cleaning – This is a term that’s frequently taken for granted. Drain cleaning is not simply unstopping a drain. If you have a stopped-up drain, yes, putting a cable down will unstop it. However, as the name indicates, drain cleaning is where the pipe or drain is actually cleaned. This can be done with a cable or with high-pressure jetting. Remember, when a plumber references drain cleaning, they’re actually referring to something other than just unstopping the drain.

 

Ball valve – A ball valve is generally a shutoff valve. It has a lever, and is frequently found where the main water comes into your home. When someone refers to the ball valve, they may be talking about that main water shutoff—but not necessarily.

 

Gate valve – You can differentiate a gate valve from a ball valve by checking whether it uses a lever or a round handle. A ball valve uses a lever, whereas a gate valve will have a round handle.

 

Fill valve – A fill valve is a component in the back of the toilet tank. The water connects to it, and it’s what fills up the toilet tank so you can flush it.

 

Flapper – Most people probably know what a flapper is, but there are some who don’t. A flapper is a component located in the back of the toilet tank. When you push down on the toilet handle, the flapper lifts up to allow water to flush the toilet. Sometimes you’ll hear a plumber say, “The flapper is leaking,” or “The flapper went bad.” That means the rubber component in the toilet tank needs to be replaced.

 

Wall hydrant, hose bib – These devices are located on the outside of your home (generally speaking), where a hose is attached. A wall hydrant is different from a hose bib, because wall hydrants are designed to be frost-free or freezeproof. In other words, they don’t need to be winterized. Wall hydrants go into the home and the water is shut off, preventing ice that would cause the pipe to burst. Hose bibs are much simpler devices that do need to be winterized.

 

Supply line – A supply line is the water tube that goes from the stop valve at a fixture up to the actual faucet, toilet, or even washing machine. (The lines that go to washing machines are often just called washer hoses.)

 

Cleanout – This is basically an access point to your drains. Sometimes you might see a plug or cap that can be unscrewed somewhere in your basement, or maybe a crawlspace under your sink. The cleanout is used to allow cables or cameras down the drain.

 

Water meter – Normally located on the street, a water meter is what the municipality uses to measure how much water you use during a curtain period of time in order to regulate your water bill.

 

Now that you know these commonly-used plumbing terms, you’ll be able to decipher the Greek language that plumbers use. Hopefully this knowledge comes in handy next time you’re getting service or talking about what’s going on in your home. If you have any questions, contact us or give us a call at 540-483-9382.

Diamond Club

Our Ads

Jobs

Blog