Helpful Answers
Straight, no-jargon answers to the plumbing questions Northern Virginia homeowners ask us most.
Drain & Sewer
In Northern Virginia, a straightforward drain cleaning is typically a flat, upfront price for a single accessible drain, while tougher jobs — a main-line clog, hydro-jetting, or a clog that needs a camera inspection to diagnose — cost more because they take more equipment and time.
Read article →Water Heaters
Repair your water heater if it’s less than about 8 years old and the problem is a minor part like a heating element, thermostat, or valve.
Read article →Emergency
In a plumbing emergency, your first move is to stop the water: close the shutoff valve at the affected fixture, or the home’s main shutoff if water is flooding or you can’t reach the fixture valve.
Read article →Water Heaters
Yes.
Read article →Water Heaters
If your water heater is leaking, first shut off its cold-water supply (the valve on the cold pipe entering the top of the tank), then cut power — the breaker for an electric unit, the control set to “off” for gas.
Read article →Leak & Repair
A suddenly high water bill is almost always one of four things: a running toilet (the #1 culprit — it can silently waste hundreds of gallons a day), a hidden leak in a supply line or slab, an outdoor leak in irrigation or a hose bib, or a water softener or appliance stuck in a fill cycle.
Read article →Water Softeners
Much of Northern Virginia has moderately hard water — hard enough to leave white scale on faucets, spot glass shower doors, and build sediment inside water heaters, but not so hard that every home automatically needs treatment.
Read article →Leak & Repair
A pressure reducing valve (PRV) lowers the water pressure entering your home.
Read article →Drain & Sewer
In Fairfax County the sewer lateral — the pipe carrying waste from your home to the public sewer main — is the homeowner’s.
Read article →Water Heaters
Hot water is slow to arrive at a distant fixture because the water sitting in the pipe between the heater and that fixture has gone cold, and all of it has to be pushed out before hot water gets there.
Read article →Leak & Repair
Plumbing in a condo or townhome differs from a single-family home in three ways that matter: you may not control the shutoff for your own water, your waste may share a stack with the units above and below, and the boundary between what you own and what the association owns is set by your governing documents, not by a general rule.
Read article →Water Heaters
A heat pump water heater moves heat out of the surrounding air into the tank rather than generating heat directly, which makes it substantially more efficient than electric resistance.
Read article →Water Softeners
Fairfax Water publishes its PFAS monitoring data and reports that finished water from its Potomac River sources consistently shows PFAS below the EPA maximum contaminant level of 4.0 parts per trillion, often at non-detectable levels, while some samples from its Occoquan Reservoir source have slightly exceeded the MCL for PFOA and PFOS.
Read article →Get In Touch
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