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If you are planning on getting plumbing work done, or just have plumbing related questions, I am glad you found this site! I have over 15 years of extensive, residential and commercial new construction, remodel, and service plumbing experience, and I built this site to pass the knowledge from that experience on to you.
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 A slab leak can be one of the more frightening experiences a homeowner has to deal with when it comes to emergency plumbing problems. Actually, that is a bit of a misstatement, because they aren’t usually an emergency at all, although they are often thought of as one.
Quite often a slab leak isn’t even discovered until a homeowner finds themselves with a huge water bill. They will call a plumber out to try to figure out why, and the plumber will inform the homeowner that they have a water line leaking under the slab. That means that the leak has been there for around a month or so already – so much for an emergency.
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 In my last article I touched on what constitutes emergency plumbing.
In this article, I would like to approach emergency plumbing from a different angle. Today I would like to discuss some of the most common plumbing emergencies, and what you can do to sort of stem the flow (so to speak) until the plumber can get there.
Sewer main backup
This is by far the most common plumbing emergency the average homeowner experiences. It usually starts with a toilet that just doesn’t seem to want to flush correctly, followed by a sort of burbling, and finally the toilet overflowing onto the bathroom floor. The biggest problem with a mainline backup is that it can often be mistaken for a regular toilet blockage. The symptoms look almost identical at first, especially to the untrained eye. The easiest way to tell if it is your Main line that is backed up, is that often
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 The question of what constitutes emergency plumbing is an interesting one. It is also important for a number of reasons. Let’s start with the most broad definition, and its application.
Here in California we have a law that states that any time someone comes to your home to sell you a good or service that is valued at over $300, you have the right to cancel that transaction within 3 working days after signing the contract. That means that if someone comes to your home and you buy a vacuum cleaner from them (for more than $300), you can notify the seller in writing that you wish to cancel the sale up to 3 full working days after you bought it. The seller, by law, must accept the vacuum back and issue a full refund of
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 Diagnosing an upstairs plumbing leak can actually be a lot trickier than a lot of people may think. In fact, when I worked for Allstar Plumbing, one of the questions we asked every potential employee during the interview process was how to properly perform this diagnosis. Even when making the scenario fairly simple, almost everyone got it wrong. Here is the scenario that we gave:
“A home owner calls you out because they have a wet spot in their ceiling directly below the upstairs tub/shower. It’s getting worse over time. To make the scenario easier, we will eliminate the possibility of the leak coming from the toilet or lavatory sink. We will focus on the tub/shower combo.
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 As a service plumber, one of the most common plumbing problems that I have been asked to diagnose is low “water pressure”. The reason that I put “water pressure” in quotes is because what a customer thinks is low water pressure is quite often actually low flow. There is a difference, and that difference is very important when trying to figure out the best remedy for the problem.
So what’s the difference? Pressure is the amount of force behind the water, pushing it through your pipes. It is measured in pounds per square inch (psi). Flow is the amount of water that “flows” out of an open outlet, like an open hose bib or faucet. Flow is usually measured (in the US) in gallons per minute (gpm). The symptoms for low pressure and low flow can sometimes look similar, but it is usually pretty easy to diagnose.
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Plumbing 101|Residentail Drain Plumbing
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Know Your Plumber Part I
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