Love Your Pipes - Part 1

Nathan Pfahler:             Hello, my name's Nathan Pfahler. This is our first episode of Love Your Indy Home. Today we're here with Bob Gallup of Mr. Rooter and we're going to learn a few more things about how to make the plumbing in your house work better for you, and maybe some maintenance tips that you didn't necessarily know about already. So, Bob, thank you for coming today.

Bob Gallup:                   Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Nathan Pfahler:             Yes, awesome. Welcome to Love Your Indy Home.

Bob Gallup:                   Yeah, it's what we do. We want to help all our customers and your clients love their homes, as well, and prevent some of the most common things that can happen that you don't even think about. So, hopefully we'll be able to show them that today.

Nathan Pfahler:             Bob, let's start with something that most homeowners, unless they had actually been at their inspection and listened to what their inspector was actually telling them, may not know about and it's a very important piece, and that's the shut-off valve for their plumbing.

Bob Gallup:                   Yeah, let's talk about that. Many times when our plumbers will go into a home, Nathan, they'll ask the customer, "Mrs. Jones, do you know how to shut the main water off to your house?" and we get that look in their face, and we say, "Well, remember December of last year in January with a polar vortex in Indiana?" A lot of our customers had the floods, pipes broke, things of that nature, so learning where your shut-off valve is in your house is one of the most important preventative things you can do.

Bob Gallup:                   Most of the time they look somewhat like this, it could be a little different size, maybe a little different handle, but it's a very simple shut. That quick, that easy.

Bob Gallup:                   Believe it or not, a copper line comes into your house that is not any wider and rounder than what's in here and that supplies all the water at a very high pressure to all of your appliances in your home. And it's important to kind of label that, too, so I put this on here as an example because, in the heat of the moment, you're saying, "Where is that shut-off? Where is that shut-off valve? How do we get that done?" So, a shut-off valve is very, very important. So, if you don't know anything else about your house, you want to learn where that is.

Nathan Pfahler:             Where are some of the common places a homeowner would find that shut-off value?

Bob Gallup:                   Sure. Well, if you have a basement, many times it's going to be downstairs in the basement kind of near where all of your other appliances might be, your water heater, your heating unit itself, or your sump pit, because they kind of bring all the piping in on one side of the home and then they diffuse it throughout. So, you want to go downstairs and see where all the pipes are, and the odds are you're going to see a shut-off valve like this.

Bob Gallup:                   You might see one with a little handle on it as another example. You might see a couple of them because, sometimes, the plumbers have piped in different things. If you have a sprinkler system that has its own separate way to shut that off, in addition to supplying water to the home. But start with that.

Bob Gallup:                   If you do not have a basement, then most of the time it's going to be in a closet, either in your garage or within the home itself, once again, where your water heater is. So, I always kind of go ask the question, "Where's the water heater?" Start there and the odds are you'll be able to find it.

Nathan Pfahler:             Okay. Every once in a while I've also had it come where it's actually in the crawl space of the house, which is really not too conducive for a homeowner crawling down there.

Bob Gallup:                   That's interesting. There are some homes where, depending upon where you live in the city, the actual shut off valve is outside at the water meter pit-

Nathan Pfahler:             Oh right.

Bob Gallup:                   Which is in the middle of the yard under one of those little grates. So, imagine trying to do that and you got two feet of snow and ice. So, those are one of those things. You really need to know where it is, and if you happen to have one outside, then have some professional licensed plumber come in and locate it where you can shut it off. All right? Because, once again, you don't need it until you need it, but boy, when you need it, I'm telling you, because of the pressure that can come out of that can flood a home in 20 minutes and then you've got tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage. If you only knew how to shut it off, it could really, really help all kinds of issues there.

Nathan Pfahler:             Awesome. That's kind of the point of this segment, is what can we do now to prevent disasters from happening in the future, or just make your home more livable in today's world?