Merry Christmas and Happy Hot Water Holidays!

Time to Upgrade your Water Heater?

Hoping you all had a WARM and Merry Christmas!

From your helpful friends at Budget Rooter Plumbing.





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Don't Pour Your Holiday Grease Down the Drain!

Now that cold weather is here – just a reminder – don’t dump a whole lot of garbage down your sink. And especially in combination with warm grease!

Warm grease will usually flush out, but if it hits cold pipes, it will solidify, creating a nasty clog. And then more gunk will clog up behind it.

Although we stand ready to clean your pipes at any time, you can avoid a holiday call to your friendly Budget Rooter plumber by pouring grease into jars and garbage into the trash or compost.

See here for more cheap plumbing tips.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope you all had a Great Thanksgiving Holiday!

If you have any post-dinner plumbing problems, you know who to call!

Halloween Plumbing Problem: Pumpkin Pulp Will Scare Your Disposal to Death

Americans will scrape millions of pounds of pulp from pumpkins throughout the Halloween season and plumbers across the country will remove gobs of it from clogged drains before the end of the Halloween season. Local plumbers have become as common a Halloween visitor as little vampires or ghosts thanks to sticky pumpkin pulp and seeds. Plumbers know that frantic homeowners will soon be complaining about pulp-clogged garbage disposals and stopped up kitchen sink drains in the two weeks leading up to Halloween.

Jack-o'-lantern carvers should remember that pumpkin pulp should never be put down drains or into garbage disposals. The slimy gunk is ideal for clogging sink drains.
It's stringy and sticky and when it dries and hardens it will choke-off drainpipes and garbage disposals creating all sorts of havoc.

For the past few years we've spread the word that carving pumpkins in the sink is a very bad idea. People think that when they shove the pulp down kitchen sink drain that it's gone but in a little while the sink usually stops draining altogether.

More plumbing questions answered here.

Use the "Save Water, Save Money" Calculator

The average household spends as much as $500 per year on its water and sewer bill. By making just a few simple changes to use water more efficiently, you could save about $170 per year.

If all U.S. households installed water-efficient appliances, the country would save more than 3 trillion gallons of water and more than $18 billion dollars per year! Also, when we use water more efficiently, we reduce the need for costly water supply infrastructure investments and new wastewater treatment facilities.

Use this simple calculator to estimate how much water you can save by installing WaterSense labeled products in your home or apartment building.

Calculate Here!

Tankless Water Heater Changes The Way We Heat Water

Bringing heated water into your faucets has never been cheaper.

A new and innovative technology that quickly heats water and pumps out at a much faster rate straight into your dishwasher, washing machine and hot tub all at the same time is changing the way we heat water at home.

The tankless water heater, which streams instantly heated water coming from the water distribution source without going through a sitting tank, is becoming the most recommended water heater installation today.

Also known as ‘on demand water heater,’ this revolutionary technology saves more energy and eliminates the hassles of heating by streaming water right into your household water system- when you need it, where you need it.

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Plumber Says He Helped Stop Gulf Oil Spill Leak

A Kansas man says he's the 'mystery plumber' who influenced the BP containment cap design that stopped the Gulf oil spill leak. BP says Joe Caldart's sketch may have been one of many it's used.

The identity of the "mystery plumber" whose homemade design for a new containment cap may have helped to finally stanch the Gulf oil spill geyser emerged Saturday.

His name is Joe Caldart, a married, 40-something blue-collar guy with five kids and three hound dogs living in St. Francis, Kan. Mr. Caldart has 907 Facebook friends. He likes the band Rednecks & Red Dirt, watches "Family Guy," and cites the 1978 Burt Reynolds flick "Hooper" as one of his favorites.

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Plumbing System ‘Makes House Eco-Friendly’

One couple have created an eco-friendly home with a special plumbing system in addition to insulation, it has been reported.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Zoe and Tim Bawtree have built in many energy-saving features into their home.

A ground source heat pump was installed by the couple, who had to drill 56 metres below the house so that a liquid named glycol could be forced down the pipe then back up to the surface – a process which transforms the fluid into a good material for heating their property.

"Whereas a fridge is hot at the core and cold on the outside, the pumped-up glycol is cold at the core and hot on the outside," Mr Bawtree explained to the newspaper.

"Basically, it provides us with all the hot water and heating we need."

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Copper Plumbing Leaks Common in Older and New Installations

Q: I own several apartment buildings, ranging in age from 20 to 50 years old. During the last couple of years they have been plagued by pinhole leaks in the copper plumbing, mostly around the joints. What causes these leaks to occur?

A: Corrosion and leakage in copper plumbing pipe is a more common phenomenon than is generally considered. It can occur in older installations, like yours, as well as in relatively new systems.

Though copper piping has an expected service life of 20-50 years, it is not considered a “permanent” plumbing supply system. Actually, nothing is. Where copper pipe fails along that time line (or before) can depend on several factors. In your case there might be a combination of troubles all coming together at once – age of the pipes, possibly aggressive water, possible problems with the flux used in the soldering process, and maybe a couple of more obscure things as well.

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