Your Plumbing Pro - When To Call One

You like to do the plumbing work around your home but sometimes the smartest thing to do is to realize that you cannot do it all and to call a professional plumber. Just as you would not assume that you could diagnose an illness that a loved one was suffering from so you should not presuppose that every water issue in your home can be solved with your own hands. Let us look at some situations where getting a professional to come to your home is strongly recommended.

Work that needs to be done on gas lines is not for the average homeowner and it is better off left to a qualified and licensed plumber. In fact in many cities a licensed professional is required to work on this plumbing problem by code. The reason for this is because it can be a very dangerous job to work with gas and only those trained to do so should be dealing with this. Many people think that a leak in a gas line is easy to recognize by smell alone. The reality is that small leaks in gas lines can occur and there may be very little smell at all. A plumbing expert who is licensed and well trained should always make sure that he has the proper pressure-testing equipment with him in order to know for a certainty that no leaks exist in a gas line.

Gas lines sometime present another problem as well. There is a worry over the pipe threading and the fitting of the joints. The equipment that is needed to repair these problems is costly to buy and is not really something that the regular homeowner would use very often. It is also not something that most individuals could easily find at their local hardware stores.

A plumbing expert will understand how improperly threaded pipe can wreck havoc with connections and can lead to leaks. He will also understand the importance of not over tightening or under tightening fittings. Before finishing a job a plumber who is worth both your time and money will pressure test the lines to determine if the work has been done to the highest of standards.

Another type of water job that should always be left to the experts is when work needs to be done with the mainlines, which is to say water and sewer. Even turning the water off at the curb box or the street needs to be done with precision and skill and requires a special type of equipment that only the pros would have in their possession. To shut off the water the plumber would need a long rod that is equipped with a special tip referred to as a street key.

When dealing with main sewer lines if you are confident and comfortable in doing snaking then you could cope with this plumbing problem yourself. You could rent a sewer snake for a few hours and could use it to remove tree roots from the water line. However this is not a total guarantee that your service will go back to being perfect. You still may need to call a plumber in to check your work- and in some situations to redo anything that was not done correctly the first time around.