Why Drain Cleaning Is an Important Plumbing Service

April 30th, 2018

bubbling-drainWhen we say “drain cleaning,” what first comes to your mind? Probably a clogged drain that you want unclogged. Unstopping clogged up drains is an important part of drain cleaning, and it’s a service people often call our plumbers to do. When you have a single drain or toilet clogged in your house, and a standard plunger won’t take care of it, that’s when you get in touch with one of our plumbers for the drain cleaning that will solve the problem.

Drain cleaning, however, is more than simple unclogging. It’s also an important maintenance job for your plumbing. If you’re right now in the middle of your annual “spring cleaning” rituals—whatever they may be—we recommend you make scheduling regular drain cleaning services in Cincinnati, OH with our professional plumbers one of those rituals.

Continue Reading

Call an Emergency Plumber If This Happens

April 16th, 2018

leaking-pipeA good plumber is available to help you with a wide range of scheduled plumbing jobs, such as doing leak detection to find hidden leaks, regularly cleaning drains, installing new fixtures, and replacing old pipes. A great plumber is also ready to help you out in an emergency with 24-hour assistance. There are plenty of ways household plumbing can go wrong, and below are situations where we recommend you get on the phone immediately for an emergency plumber.

Continue Reading

Sizing a New Tank Water Heater

April 10th, 2018

water-heater-tankYou’re in the market for a new tank water heater. You either want to replace the aging water heater currently in your home, or you’re moving in a new home that doesn’t have a water heater yet. Whatever the case, you’ll have plenty of questions about buying a new water heater. A major one is how big the water heater needs to be. Too small, and your household won’t receive sufficient hot water. Too big, and you’ll have a massive energy wasting appliance on your hands.

You shouldn’t worry about making the choice. Properly sizing a tank water heater is something to leave to plumbing professionals. They’ll make the calculations to determine the size and type of water heater to meet your family’s hot water demands without draining your bank account.

Continue Reading

Trenchless Technology: A Short History

April 2nd, 2018

Backhoe-bucket-with-pile-of-rocksAt Ken Neyer, we use the best available tools for all the plumbing jobs we take on. Staying up to date with the latest in technology is one of the ways we deliver the best quality work to all of our clients. If we take on a job requiring repairing or putting in a new sewer or water main, we won’t use the old excavation methods that take up time and make a mess out of the property. Instead, we’ll use trenchless technology, which allows us to laterally bore through the ground to re-line a broken pipe or fit a new pipe into place.

Continue Reading

What’s Better for Piping: Copper or Plastic?

March 19th, 2018

cut-pvc-pipesIn the ol’ days of residential and commercial plumbing, the most common materials for piping were cast iron, clay, and galvanized steel. If you have a home that was built before 1970, you may have galvanized steel pipes in many places—if not for your entire plumbing system. Even earlier-built houses (pre-World War II) can have cast iron pipes and a clay sewer line.

These are outdated materials, and if your home contains any of them, we recommend calling our expert plumbers for whole-house repiping in Cincinnati, OH or wherever you are in our wide service area. The pipe materials we use to replace aging pipes are copper and different types of plastic.

Continue Reading

Here’s the Biggest Myth About Plumbing

March 13th, 2018

wrenchesThere are so many misunderstandings about how plumbing works and how to fix problems with it that we could probably base our whole blog just on writing about them. These myths range from understandable confusions to the downright odd. Here’s some quick debunking of a few:

  • No, animals cannot swim upstream into your plumbing and out through the toilets.
  • Chemical drain cleaners are not an acceptable solution to getting rid of clogs. They can actually damage the drainpipes.
  • The kitchen disposal can’t chop up everything you put down it. Many food items and all non-organic waste need to be kept out.
  • Speaking of disposals, you can’t “sharpen the blades” of a disposal by pouring ice cubes into the hopper. Disposals don’t even use sharp blades!
  • Minor dripping faucets are a big deal: the cumulative water waste is enormous.

But we would like to focus on the biggest myth about plumbing, one that’s incredibly harmful: Most plumbing jobs are easy to fix and can be done DIY.

Continue Reading

A Pipe Burst! What Do I Do?

March 5th, 2018

leaking-water-pipeThe period at the end of winter is the time when plumbing pipes are at the highest danger of bursting. When any frozen pipes might start to melt from warmer weather is when the pressure in the pipe dramatically spikes and causes the lateral bursting. You always want frozen pipes dealt with by professional plumbers as soon as possible. But if you do run into a burst pipe emergency, you’re past the point of prevention or a planned remedy.

However, you shouldn’t panic. We’ll help guide you through what to do in the case of a burst pipe that is threatening to flood parts of your house.

Continue Reading

How Trenchless Pipe Lining Makes It Easier to Fix Sewer Lines

February 19th, 2018

pipe-decaySewer lines, whether they serve residential or commercial buildings, are one of the essential parts of a plumbing system. A broken sewer line leads to unsanitary conditions (this is especially a problem for a commercial building, which could be in violation of health codes) and the sewer line failing entirely—and that can bring your life to a standstill.

You must have professional plumbers to fix a leaky or broken sewer line, and you’ll need them on the job as soon as possible. A plumbing contractor can use excavation techniques to reach the damaged sewer line. This is the standard method of fixing or replacing a sewer line—but it’s time-consuming and disruptive, digging up landscaping and hardscaping and generally making a mess of property.

But there’s a better repair method, which is trenchless sewer pipe lining.

Continue Reading

What to Do When You Don’t Have Any Hot Water

February 13th, 2018

showerhead-hot-waterOne of the more unpleasant surprises you can have when you get up in the morning, ready for a new day, is to discover you can’t get any hot water in your shower. The new day is going to have to wait, because you may have an emergency on your hands with your water heater.

Let’s take a look at what you can do about that loss of hot water. It might be a simple problem—or you may need to call our water heater repair experts.

Continue Reading

The Power of Video Pipe Inspection for Drain Cleaning

February 5th, 2018

sewer-lineDrain cleaning is a plumbing job that people often connect with getting rid of tough clogs or annoying slow drains. Those are definitely important reasons to schedule this service. Frequently overlooked, however, is the importance of drain cleaning as part of routine maintenance for plumbing. The best way to deal with clogged drains is to stop them from happening in the first place, and arranging for annual drain cleaning from skilled plumbing professionals is the best way to get this done.

We often talk about hydro-jetting on our blog: it’s one of the greatest tools a pro plumber has to clean drains. We have more than forty-five years of experience with using powerful hydro-jetting for homes and businesses. But today we want to shine a light on another indispensable tool for our drain cleaners, and that’s video pipe inspection equipment.

Continue Reading