The question every replacement call starts with When a water heater dies, the clock starts. Nobody wants to research plumbing with cold showers running, so the tank-versus-tankless decision usually gets made in a hurry, under…
A clog that keeps coming back is telling you something Almost everybody who has lived in an older Bowie home has fought the same drain more than once. You clear the kitchen sink, and a…
The first few minutes decide how bad it gets When a pipe lets go in your Bowie home, the difference between a mess and a disaster comes down to the first few minutes. Water spreads…
A sewer line rarely fails without warning Most Bowie homeowners never think about their sewer line until the day it backs up, and by then it is an unpleasant, expensive surprise. But the truth is…
Bowie storms and the basement that pays the price Anyone who has owned a home in Bowie for a few summers knows the pattern. A storm builds up along the US-50 corridor, dumps an inch…
The water heater in your Belair basement is older than you think If you live in one of the Levitt-built Belair sections of Bowie, there is a good chance the water heater tucked in your…
The hardest-working appliance nobody thinks about A garbage disposal gets used several times a day, every day, for years, and most people never give it a thought until the morning it hums instead of grinds.…
The rule that protects the water everyone drinks Most property owners first hear the word “backflow” in a letter. WSSC or their local water authority writes to say a backflow prevention assembly on the property…
Our winters are exactly wrong for pipes People from colder places sometimes laugh at how the DC area handles winter, but here is the thing they miss: our winters are harder on plumbing than theirs…
The gray pipe hiding in half the neighborhoods we work in Between 1978 and 1995, builders across Maryland, Virginia, and the DC suburbs plumbed millions of homes with a flexible gray plastic pipe called polybutylene.…
