Month: November 2020
Building Inspections are good, but they don’t cover Plumbing.
Time and again we are now seeing customers moving into new houses and discovering major Plumbing defects.
The common thread amongst all of these people is that they say they paid good money for a Building inspection prior to their purchase. What none of them realised was that traditional building inspections do not check for Plumbing defects. They will never go to the level of detail that a Highlander Plumbing inspection will go to.
In our experience, there are a few major defects that do not rear their ugly heads until well into occupying your new house.
The first one is sewer.
If you are purchasing a deceased estate or a “renovator’s delight” then the sewer alarm bells should be ringing. Usually, a deceased estate has been lived in for its last few years by a single older person. What is the relevance of this you ask?
This person generally has not put the sewer under any load. If the sewer was defective, the person probably got away with it through minimal usage. What do you think will happen when a young family with a few kids buys the house and moves straight in, planning to renovate as they go? All of a sudden the sewer now has four or five people using it instead of one. What happens? You guessed it, a big mess, a panic and a great deal of frustration from the owners who honestly didn’t see this situation coming.
This could have been avoided with a Plumbing inspection prior to purchase. The Highlander Plumbing inspection includes the CCTV inspection of the sewer as a part of the inspection. Sometimes one little defect such as a broken pipe could have been identified and repaired prior to the problem causing a flood.
Some larger old properties may have long sections of sewer that are a hundred years old. If those long sections are beyond repair it would be a good idea to know if you were facing an expensive renewal of the sewer prior to purchase.
Hot Water
Hot Water is another regally overlooked item that is taken for granted. Hot water heaters in concealed places that burst can cause huge amounts of damage. Is the heater going to cost you a fortune to run? Is it gas, is it electric? Constant low or storage tank? Mains pressure or restricted?
If we had a penny for the number of times a customer says: the hot water system at our old house didn’t do this!
Shower Leaks
Shower waterproofing is another thing worth testing. Before you get out the colour charts and start planning your colours we think you should make sure the shower isn’t leaking into the walls. If there is leakage into the walls, the paint will peel and you will be very annoyed.
Landscaping is another common thing done as soon as people buy a house. It is a way of stamping your own individual flair to the property. We think if you are going to spend $100-$200 p/sqm on pavers, then you better have 100% confidence in the pipes below.
We have had to dig up many beautiful backyards to replace broken sewer pipes. This could have been very easily avoided.
Having the information from a professional plumbing inspection from Highlander Plumbing could save you thousands of dollars. As we say: “Do it once, do it properly”.
Sewer Renewals
Highlander Plumbing leads the field in sewer clearing, cctv inspections and routine foaming to kill tree roots.
There is a point when this isn’t enough and the war has been lost. We never see this as a defeat; sometimes the time to renew the sewer is just inevitable. Many older houses still have their original sewer pipes. These pipes are earthenware or terracotta. The fact is; these pipes were joined together with rubber rings. Over time the rubber ring perishes and lets roots through. Usually, we can clear the roots, but if larger roots get in and start breaking the pipe then its time to replace sections of the line, or the entire system, we also have the ability to insert stents as well.
We need to be very clear on what is required. We feel that sewer renewal is the best method for a permanent solution to sewer problems. Installing PVC sewer pipes cuts out the chance of roots growing inside the pipe as tree roots cannot penetrate a PVC pipe, especially the thick grade pipe that we use. The grade of PVC we use is known as DWV (Drain waste vent) it is very strong and is designed to withstand great pressure from external forces.
We also love the use of sewer patches. We call them; Sewer Stents. This is where we have the ability to fix a small section of broken pipe where the rest of the pipe is in good order. This method is a great money saver and can save a lot of digging too.
We have replaced many sewers the old fashioned way which is to dig them up and lay new pipes. This is one job where the new technology cannot match the old fashioned method for a permanent solution. When we say permanent, we mean permanent.
Carama have been world leaders in the development of their “Smart flush” range of toilets. The Smart flush range used a measly 4.5 litres for a full flush. The idea was brilliant. The only flaw was for this range of toilets to work, they had to be mated with a perfectly installed PVC sewer line. Smart flush toilets are already giving us lots of work in drain clearing when they have been installed to a hundred-year-old Federation house with an original sewer. We don’t blame Caroma, we blame the Plumbers that installed them with an inappropriate sewer line. So if you want to be Eco-friendly and use the great Smart flush range, then sewer replacement should be on your agenda.
If you plan on making the house your live in your “forever” house, then make sure the sewer is in good order.
A Big Stink Is Looming…..
Cisterns, how many litres is enough?
It’s November and we see a big problem slowly rolling towards us. In fact, this problem is rolling too slow and may stop along the way. No, we are not talking in code; we are worried about a basic issue of how many litres it takes to flush number ones and number twos.
Before we dive into this problem (sorry, that image in the film “Slum Dog Millionaire” flashed in my mind) we have to let you know that we are certified enviro plumbers, we care about water wastage, so what we are about to write is in no way “green bashing”.
Around the late nineties we were told that no longer would 11 litre flushing cisterns be sold. The 11 litre single flush cistern was the most common cistern around. Very soon after that we were told that the next step down, being the 9 litre cistern was being taken from production too.
The government insisted we start installing dual flush cisterns. The new dual flush cistern used 3 litres for a half flush and 6 litres for a full flush.
What a lot of people didn’t realise was that their new dual flush cisterns wouldn’t work when they were retro fitted to an old pan that was designed to take 9 or 11 litre flushes. This would cue the customer call:
When I use the toilet I have to flush it five times for everything to get flushed away!
This really defeated the purpose of saving water.
The fact was: an entire new toilet suite was required – the pan and the cistern.
So why did we have to bang on about a very brief history of flush capacities you ask?
Well, the problem is, there are still lots of old water-wasting 11-litre toilet suites out there, there are still plenty of 9-litre water-wasting toilet suites around too. And even worse, there are plenty of miss-matched dual flush toilets and 11 litre pans!
This problem is now about to get worse, a lot worse.
You see, as a drain clears, we are noticing our drain repair plumbers are busy, very busy. We thinks it’s no fluke that sewer blockages are on the way up as these new water saving toilets appear in more locations.
In about 2007 Caroma introduced its “Smart Flush” range. This new range of toilet suites were only going to use, wait for it, 4.5 litres for a full flush and 3 for a half flush.
We could be cynics and declare the Smart Flush toilets the greatest thing to ever happen to drain clearers, but that wouldn’t do the customer any good.
What is needed are some facts right between the eyes, Caroma may bury some of these in the fine print section, so we will just give you some basic tips.
If you have an old house with original sewer, do not even consider installing a Smart flush toilet suite. Stick with suites that use 6 litres for full flush. We think even 6 litres for a full flush is pushing it for a house with an original sewer.
If you live in a new house or an old with a new, perfectly graded, PVC sewer system, then go for it, knock your socks off and install Smart flush gear everywhere. You will be saving bucket loads of water.
We have just learned that Caroma and Fowler are fazing out a lot of their 6/3 dual flush cisterns. In fact, at the time of writing, we have found that Caroma are only manufacturing 2 styles of 6/3 cisterns and everything else will be 4.5/3. This cuts down the customers’ choice significantly.
We had a customer accidentally break a ceramic cistern last week, it was a 6/3 Caroma. She didn’t want a plastic cistern and didn’t like the look of the new Caroma cistern that we could have retrofitted. Her house already had a dodgy sewer history, so in the end, so we supplied and installed a new Kohler toilet suite that was a 6/3.
Conclusion
The moral of the story is before you buy something speak to us. See what will work in your house first. We think the Smart flush options from Caroma are fantastic, but we are annoyed they are not running more styles in the 6/3 range.
We want you to be thinking about possible blockages. If you really want to install water-saving toilet suites and you have an old sewer system, then give us a call to quote you a new sewer system. Removing drain blockages costs and the potential water savings are two things to consider.