MN Plumbing Guide

With the high number of emails sent about drain bathroom sink issues I decided to write up a post devoted to some issues related to my most common bathroom sink jobs.

There are such a wide variety of problems with bathroom sink drains that I'm not surprised at all to see how all the questions out there on them.

If you think about it, these poor drains are taking one of the most brutal attacks of all drains. With all of the wide variety of things going down these drains, it usually causes issues.

Clogged Drains:

Call Your Local Plumber: Yes, snaking pipes with a snake is not hard but more times than not the average home owner is going to snake a pipe the wrong way. Do you know what happens to a wrongly snaked pipe? I have had to replace so many pipes in walls because people break their pvc pipes with huge snakes that they thought were needed.

There are so many little things that can go wrong when just snaking a pipe. I would say the most common thing done wrong when snaking a pipe is the homeowner renting a huge snake from a general rental place and tearing apart their pipes in the walls. Bad news.

Second most common problem is using drano or drain cleaner. This is a very common thing for women to do I've learned. Their hair is stuck in the drain really bad, so lets go get drain cleaner. Some of these drain cleaners wreck the darn pipes they are hazardous. No drain cleaner liquid is going to break down a clod of woman hair and we all know that.

Leaky Drain Systems:

These drains are bound to leak because frankly.. anything with enough use is going to wear down and become less effective. A leaky drain can either just leak water through while your in the bath or it will leak water through the floor from the upstairs to the downstairs. Hopefully it is not leaking through your ceiling that is drywall..

To fix this, can be very simple of very difficult like most things in the plumbing field.

Bottom Floor Bathroom Drain of Tub: The bathtub will have to come completely out to change out the drain. Yes there may be tiles and everything surrounding the tub that will have to be removed too so that the tub can be taken out. Hopefully this is not your case.

Bathroom sink drain: Easy fix. Buy a new replacement drain and unscrew the bottom nut holding the bottom drain on and install the new bottom drain. If your talking about the actual drain with the  pvc drain and trap than that is a totally different topic. I know it is hard to understand the difference at times though. Please refer to the pvc trap section of the site for that info.

Upstairs bathroom drain: Now that the bathroom upstairs we can get to the drain from the basemetn to remove it. There is a nut that needs to be unscrewed from underneath the tub to remove it. If your lucky you can just cut out a chunk of drywall and get your hands in there with some tools to remove it. Easy as pie.

Upstairs bathroom Sink Drain: Same goes as for "downstairs sink drain."

Learning how to fix faucet leaking problems is no science breaking task. As long as we have had faucets in our homes, we have had leaky faucets.

Dripping water faucets are a huge waste of water to this planet earth. Just to give you an idea of how much water leaky faucets waste I will give you an example I like to share with others.

A leaky faucet that leaks 10 drops of water an hour adss up to 14,400 drops a day and 3 Liters of water in a complete day.

Three liters of water a day wasted is sort of a big deal if you think about it. I'm sure that people across the world would kill for an extra three liters of water a day. So fact of the matter is, wasting water is not cool on any level and should really be looked into.

How To Fix A Faucet That Is Leaking:

1. Before jumping into fixing anything, I think a variable should be looked into. So many people look at fixing their existing faucets and are willing to pay the price of fixing them.

But in all reality most of the time when people pay a plumber to fix their faucet, its most likely more than half of what a brand new faucet costs. And who doesn't want a brand new faucet versus their cruddy old fixed one.

2. The odds of fixing their old faucet completely are pretty darn slim. Yes, seals can be fixed and yes I was a plumber for years and fixed a bunch of them BUT I push for the brand new faucet idea to my customers. With the time and money involved, it is usually the best choice.

3. In order to fix a leaky faucet, the seals are usually what goes bad in the faucet hardware. There is a seal in the actual exit point where the water comes out and two more in the handle portions of the faucet. The handles need to come off and then once there off, there will be a set of seals that need to be replaced.

Secondly, if your looking to do this yourself you will have to find a product distribution company that sells the equipment you need. These seals are not going to be fun to find and I wont sugar coat that. I hate bringing down people's hopes of fixing things "themselves" because I love to do it myself and save money but this is a tough aspect to do yourself.

This isn't an easy fix like draining a water heater or something but instead somewhat of an intricate fix. Sorry to not have an easy answer for ya, but I would sum it up into two different categories

     1. Call your local plumber to fix the faucet and seals.

     2. Buy a brand new faucet. Fixing the old one will be 3/4 of the price of buying a new one.

The MN plumber is a needed necessity in Minnesota more than not. It is obvious that everyone may need a plumber at some state in your life. And if you have done any work with plumbers, you will find that their work is not cheap by any means. The state
of Minnesota really has a need for plumbing due to its extreme weather change in climate.

I myself worked in the plumbing industry for a couple of years and have decided to leave due to certain reasons. And during my years of time with different plumbing companies in Minnesota, I have come up with a small checklist for you as a customer to look at while trying to find a reputable company with a descent cost.

So many people get ripped off by plumbing companies marking up different aspects of their company. I have been there and done that. I myself worked with a company where we brainstormed how we could make more money off our customers with us doing less work involved. It is only smart for a company to try and do this, but as the customer you need to be aware of the idea and find the company that is in between the cost versus quality idea.

...........................................................................................................................

The MN plumbing spectrum is a vast operations that will always be needed. This is what basically gives the companies a right to dramatically over price. Companies in such states where the weather keeps to a more steady average, the plumbing somewhat averages out on pricing. In the state of Minnesota,the drastic weather change causes for emergency plumbing fixes more often.

Minnesota is known for their / our huge amounts of plumbing jobs. With the extreme temperature changes, it reallymakes for an interesting time for plumbing disasters. There are some really helpful tips and guides to helping you find a good plumber or plumbing company to fulfill your plumbing needs.

If your looking to find a super cheap plumbing fix, it may just not happen or else you  will usually have more problems down the road. There is usually no quick fix that is cheap. Plumbing parts are not cheap and that is that. In my plumbing past, I have learned that is the biggest wake up call for customers, price.

I would say that around half of the plumbing materials are high priced and the other half are so low that it would blow your mind. "Mark-up," is what plumbers like to call their money maker. A pipe that costs them twenty cents a foot is going to cost you the customer two dollars a foot. If your afraid that you may pay that mark-up cost then the
only thing to do is do your homework on pricing.

Here is my Review on "Neighborhood Plumbing" out of Foley, MN.
    
1. Neighborhood driving up to my house.
First of what I noticed was how nice the vehicles were. Most people would thing or say, "Wow, what a good
company with very nice vehicles. With myself working in the construction industry I thought differently. I know
usually with a small company like that, they are either under paying their employees or over pricing their customers..

     2. Employee knowledge
On top of everything this company has going, their company knowledge is very high. I'm sure they do lots of training and
teaching of their products. They seem to get the idea of knowing what the hell is going on to where it impresses the
customer to go with their company. I give them credit in this category of the review.

     3. Price quote / Pricing guide
To replace my sink was going to cost me above 300$. Fair enough. I know plumbing is expensive and thats just how it is.
Their "base pricing" guide should be called, "My Millionaire Price Guide." I'd love to meet the owner of the company,
because he is probably sitting on a beach somewhere. Congrats to you my sir. He is not rich from ripping people off,
but instead for implementing a perfect correlated business technique. But I will touch base on this later on.

     4. More to come : based on scheduled appointment

List of help guidelines:

1. Find a list of your local plumbers.
This is very easy for anyone to find a list of your local plumbing companies or just plumbers. The first place I would look would be the internet. Not that I am against the old fashion phone books, but because the internet unlike the phonebook has tons of online reviews but I wont jump the gun on the review idea yet. So use your local phonebook, newspaper, or the internet.

     2. Search for reviews via online or through people you know.
Word of mouth is probably the most popular in this day and age. Ask your neighbors, or call your relatives and just ask what companies they have tried. Older people are great for this because most likely they have gone through a solid number of plumbers or different companies and have already filtered the bad ones out from the good ones. Online reviews  are a great place to check too. A lot of your Dex.com have company reviews you can check out.

     3. Get FREE quotes!
So many people do not take advantage of the free quote coupons found online and in the newspaper and such. Now REMEMBER, plumbing companies usually always charge a "service charge," for the trip out to your house so a coupon most companies display is a must have. Take advantage of them coming to your home for free though and chat with the guy/s to see if is who you want to work for or not.

     4. Judge the company and the actual plumber.
A lot of people say judging is wrong and it shouldn't be wrong. In the business world, judging is everything.. RIGHT.. yes. This is just a basic judge of "who you want in your household." Everyone likes the look a well off, sharp looking employee versus the cracked out meth head that will be later on breaking into your home. Sorry, it that sounds mean but I believe when it comes to your family, it is needed to take the precautions needed ON TOP of quality work.

     5. Find quality versus cost.
I know that this is the idea behind buying everything in life but a huge way to help you is to just get atleast five different quotes from companies and pick the one directly in the middle. This just means that you are picking the happy medium between cost versus quality. The only reason you have the quality in that is because in the field of plumbing, quality is the variable that is unknown until he or she is done with the project.

-- Well there you have it. This is the average household citizen's guide to finding a plumber. If you think that maybe you want to get a more in depth about finding a plumbing company based on more in depth ideas, then visit some of my other help guides. Thanks for visiting!

Plumbing in MN experience this year.

It was a nice summer day in August summer in Minnesota. I went into the kitchen to make something for the kids and everything just like every other day and noticed a somewhat of a weird smell. I went in a search for the smell and couldn't find it at first. It was then when it hit me that we havent gone downstairs for days. Our family really never uses the downstairs, and it is somewhat vacant except for boxes of junk and stuff we stuffed down there for now.

I took a journey downstairs and opened the door to 3 inches of water that was backed up from the sewer. It was one of the most vivid scenes I had ever seen in my life. I looked over to the toilet and realized where the source of most of it was coming from. Pretty much all of our boxed things were wrecked, not to mention the drywall and the carpet on the ground.

It was a tough time for the family financially but I knew we had to call a plumber as soon as possible. They showed up real fast and I'm sure it was because they got payed sixty dollars service charge just to show up and I knew the economy in our area was a bit slow around that time.

The bill came to a couple hundred dollars to fix and that was after wheeling and dealing the plumber down on price. The company was fairly commercial or else I think I could of talked him down a bit more but it didn't happen. What I wish I would of known before hand, was that they offered loans and financing for projects like ours.

I learned that I should train my kids not to stuff socks and objects down the toilet drain for fun. Who would of thought the small children would of thought of this and thought of it to be fun for them. This is my plumbing in MN story/nightmare. It took us hours to dry out the smell of sewage from our stuff but most of it was garbage afterwards.