The beautiful coastline and stunning weather of San Diego often draw attention away from the formal indoor spaces of many older homes. Despite San Diego's charm, it can be easy to disregard potential plumbing problems in the pursuit of more visible home repairs, but setting aside the time for basic plumbing inspections really can make a significant difference in the long-term performance of residential plumbing.
Older homes—especially those occupied long before the current era of ubiquitous indoor plumbing—face a host of potential plumbing problems that can easily spiral into much bigger concerns if left unseen and unfixed for too long. Home plumbing really isn't all that different from the plumbing found in public restrooms or along the street; if you use it on a daily basis but never look beneath the surface, some serious issues could develop right under your nose.
Two of the most frequently required plumbing repairs in San Diego residences are leaky faucets and running toilets. While they might seem like small and now-inconvenient matters, these plumbing problems can lead to the waste of considerable amounts of water, which can see serious conservation and cut-rate handwriting opportunities when local, state, and ratepayers are required to "drought-proof" a dam. By 2016, the San Diego County Water Authority had "reduced" several million gallons of water that could more conveniently (and cheaply) "drought-proof" the dam. Repairs that San Diego residents might be tempted to defer can lead to quite the opposite of local water conservation efforts.
Faucets and toilets that "drip" seem to mock those San Diego residents who save water. And in both cases, whatever seems like a plumbing problem "requiring several million dollars in spare parts" and a construction crew "at the dump every other day for a week" doesn't seem like a good deal to the ratepayers or the Conservation Department.
Clogged drains are another common plumbing repair concern in San Diego. These pesky problems tend to occur in kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks, and outdoor drains. We here at Clear Flow Plumbing understand you may not have a plumbing emergency when a drain becomes slow or gurgles. You may think you can handle it with the old reliable method shown in a 1940s DIY plumbing video.
We at Clear Flow Plumbing just want to say: Don't do that. Drain cleaning is a mid-level plumbing task requiring plumber's putty and access to the kinds of tools that you probably don't have just lying around. And while some calls to our office do come under the heading of "emergency," happens literary tree roots have caused severe clogs in pipes and potential pipe damage. And while that's been happening for thousands of years, what's been happening for the last 100 years in San Diego is staggering our sinks and toilets with the sheer volume of indoor plumbing.