Author: infogenix

Those Too-Common Kitchen Plumbing Problems

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The kitchen contains an enormous amount of plumbing fixtures and they undergo a huge amount of work during the year, and especially during holiday seasons and other times when big meals are being prepared. When a plumbing problem starts in the kitchen, it’s a serious issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. And even if the problem seems minor, it will need to have a professional plumber address it.

Below, we’re going to look at the kitchen plumbing issues that happen the most often. The types that we’re used to dealing with. Although there are some simple repairs you can do on your own, we don’t recommend grabbing a set of tools and trying to go DIY on the problem. A professional can get the job done right the first time, and get it done fast.

A leaky faucet

This is one of the kitchen plumbing troubles that you may be able to fix on your own. The faucet head may only need to be tightened or the washer replaced. But if the faucet is leaky around its base, you probably shouldn’t attempt to disconnect the faucet to attempt to figure out what’s wrong. (It’s likely the O-ring that seals the faucet’s base has worn down.) Let a professional do the work.

Low water pressure

You turn on one of the faucets in your kitchen and find that the water pressure is extremely low. There are a couple of reasons this could be happening, and we recommend you check other taps in the house to see if the problem is occurring elsewhere. If it is, it may be a temporary municipal water problem—or it could be a leak in the water main, which is a big emergency that needs professionals right away. If you are only having trouble with the one sink faucet, check the aerator in the faucet. It can become clogged with minerals and cause the water pressure drop. Clean out the aerator and see if this fixes the trouble.

Broken garbage disposal

If a garbage disposal won’t turn on, press the reset button on the bottom of the unit. This is a circuit breaker that trips if the motor of the disposal creates a voltage surge. If the disposal trips the breaker again, call professionals. If the disposal is jammed, don’t put your hand down in it to try to dislodge something. It’s safer to let a plumber look into it. You may need to have a new disposal installed rather than keep fixing an old one.

Drain clogs

You know about these. They’re almost impossible to avoid in a kitchen at some point, no matter how careful you are about keeping food waste and fats, oils, and grease out of the drains. Kitchen sink drain clogs can be obstinate and impossible to remove using a basic plunger or hand-cranked drain snake. (Don’t use store-bought chemical cleaners at all!) Let professionals handle the drain cleaning to keep your kitchen plumbing in great shape.

The Frederick, MD plumbers to call when you need to conquer a kitchen plumbing problems are right here! We handle everything from simple kitchen plumbing repairs to more extensive jobs such as installing new sinks, pipes, and garbage disposals. We’re the local service contractor of choice!

Mallick Plumbing & Heating serves Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia with quality plumbing.

Proper Sizing for the Best Water Heater

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Here’s a question consumers often ask when it comes to purchasing a new residential water heater: how large a system is necessary? People want to be sure they have a water heater that will regularly meet their daily requirements, but they don’t want to spend more than necessary on a water heater that’s too large and may end up wasting energy.

It’s a balancing act to find the ideal size water heater for your specific circumstances. The easiest way to do it is to let the professionals handle the job. You must have professionals to install the system—it’s way too large and complex a task for either amateurs or as a DIY project—so it’s best to have them with you from the start to select the type of size of water heater that’s ideal for you.

Some of the basics of determining water heater size

We’ll show you a bit of what goes into the proper sizing for a water heater. Like sizing a heater or air conditioner for a home, sizing aims for a “sweet spot” of a system that’s large enough to meet demand, but not so large that it is inefficient. This is why no licensed plumber recommends a consumer impulse buy their own water heater and then call a professional to install it.

  • The first-hour rating: For a tank or heat pump water heater, the first-hour rating is the number of gallons of hot water the heater can supply per hour if it starts with a full tank of hot water. This is the first rating professionals look at since it combines a number of other factors such as tank capacity, the energy source (either gas burners or electric heating elements), and how much heating power it has.
  • Peak hour demand: This is the hour during the day when you use the hottest water, and how much hot water demand there is during this time. The professionals will work with you to make calculations based on how many people are in your house and what time of day the hottest water is used. For the majority of homes, peak hot water use is in the morning when people are showering. This number is used to determine the best first-hour rating. So if your peak hour demand is 40 gallons, the best match for a water heater would have a first-hour rating of 38 to 42 gallons.
  • Maximum temperature rise at given flow rate: If you are going to have a tankless (“on-demand”) water heater installed, the calculations are different since these water heaters do not store water but heat it up as it’s needed. The professionals must determine the flow rate and the temperature rise necessary for the whole house. This requires determining the number of hot water appliances/taps that might be in use at one time, then adding up how many gallons per minute they use. This determines the flow rate. Subtracting the incoming water temperature (the temperature of the water from the municipal supply) from the desired output temperature determines the maximum temperature rise. Once the professionals know these numbers, they can accurately size a tankless water heater for a home.

This sounds complicated, but we’re professional with experience handling water heater installations. We offer excellent service for water heaters in Bethesda, MD, and the surrounding areas.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating Is the Service Contractor of Choice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Youtube Videos Won’t Make You into a Plumber

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YouTube has brought some wonderful things into our lives, such as a wide array of opinions on almost any topic. And cute animal videos. Lots and lots of cute animal videos.

One of the downsides of YouTube, however, is that instructional videos have led many homeowners to believe they only have to watch five minutes of a professional performing a task, and presto! they become professionals as well! This can be extremely damaging when it comes to something like plumbing for a house. A YouTube video may help explain how your plumbing works, or show you a basic job like how to replace a washer in a faucet. But for almost anything else, simply watching a video doesn’t mean an amateur can then do the job.

Professional Plumbers—Better Than ANY Instructional Video

It’s not just that watching an instructional video won’t provide you the complete details about how to perform a plumbing job or an understanding of ­why you’re taking a certain action. The more serious issue is that these videos don’t actually give you the right tools to do the job or the knowledge of how best to use these tools.

Professional plumbers are trained on a range of tasks so they can bring numerous skills into a job and troubleshoot anything. They have the finest in high-end tools and know how to properly handle them. Licensed plumbers will see that any plumbing job is done right the first time so the issue doesn’t pop up again later and to stop the potential for water damage.

If you’re looking for a professional plumber in Potomac, MD, call on us—the contractor of choice. We’re here whenever you need us, 24/7, and it’s as fast to call us as it is to go watch a YouTube video. All of our staff are licensed by the WSSC (the Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission) and are members of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association. They’ll see any job is done right so you won’t incur additional costs later or even significant water damage.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating Is the Service Contractor of Choice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

If You Have Rusty Water, You Need Plumbing Help

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What happens when you see a rusty brown discoloration in your water? It’s obviously nothing good—fresh water should be clear and colorless. There are a number of possibilities for this happening. One is that a faucet hasn’t been used for a few weeks, and there’s dirty some collected in the pipes. You’ve probably seen this happen when you’ve been away on vacation and your plumbing has been idle. In this case, the discoloration should disappear in less than a minute.

But if the rust color doesn’t go away, or it happens to faucets and taps regularly in use, you may be facing trouble with rusty water. This is often a serious plumbing issue, and in that case, it needs the attention of a professional as soon as possible.

Why You’re Seeing Rust in the Water

Rust in water creates a distinctive appearance, odor, and taste. It’s possible you’re seeing dirt that has entered the water through a break in the mainline, but this is rarer and you’ll probably be able to tell the difference. Rust isn’t harmful to drink, but it indicates major issues elsewhere in the plumbing.

But it might not be your plumbing. Troubles in the municipal water system may be at fault. How can you tell that it’s from your plumbing? Do a test: Fill up a glass with water with cold water from one of your faucets and check if it’s rusty. Run the water for a minute, then fill up another glass and see if the problem is going away. Now fill up a glass with hot water from the same faucet. If you only see the rusty discoloration in the hot water or the rusty coloration is in the cold water and isn’t going away, then the problem is definitely in your plumbing, and you should call on a professional plumber right away. Otherwise, call the water company to report the issue—part of the municipal pipe system is rusting.

  • If only the hot water is rusty… you probably have a rusting water heater. This is bad news for a water heater and probably means that it must be replaced. Once corrosion sets in on the interior of the tank, there’s usually nothing that can be done to fix the problem that isn’t more expensive than getting a new water heater altogether. You don’t want a water heater that’s going to start springing leaks or suddenly fail. Call a plumber to get a replacement in right away.
  • If the rusty coloration isn’t going away… the issue is likely corrosion in the pipes. This is something that can happen to homes with older galvanized steel or iron pipes. These pipes are prone to rusting over time, unlike corrosion-resistant copper and plastic. A plumber can identify where you need new pipes, or if you need full repiping for your house.

For the service for your plumbing in Rockville, MD to fix problems that create rusty water, get in touch with us. Our licensed and trained plumbers are available 24 hours a day to take care of emergency services.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Contractor of Choice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

The Amazing Secret of the Water Softener: Ion Exchange

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Hard water is an unfortunate plague on the plumbing in many homes in our area. The minerals that create hard water—magnesium, gypsum, various calcites—seep into the pipes carrying water from the municipal supply to homes, which is why hard water gets past chemical treatment plants.

Hard water damages plumbing and appliances, create a filmy residue on surfaces and leaves skin feeling dry and itchy. If your home is suffering under the curse of hard water, the magic to make it go away is the water softener.

How a water softener works

A water softener isn’t a standard type of water treatment system that uses filters or UV radiation to clean the water. Filters are excellent at straining out many contaminants, but they rarely are any good against hard water minerals, and UV purifiers are only designed to target organic pollutants.

A water softener instead works through a process called ion exchange. The short version of ion exchange is that it swaps the hard water ions for sodium ions, which “softens” the water. Yes, trading magnesium and calcium for salt.

Now here’s the long version:

A whole-house water softener it attached to the water main where it enters a home, so all the water from the municipal system must pass through it. The water goes through a chamber that is filled with beads made of resin. The beads are covered with sodium ions. Because of the difference in charge of the sodium ions and the hard water ions, they naturally change position. The magnesium and calcium are drawn to the beads, and the sodium is released.

The beads in the chamber can’t carry on this ion exchange indefinitely—they’ll run out of sodium eventually. The chamber is thus recharged regularly from a brine tank, which contains a solution of water and sodium. The brine washes away the collection of hard water minerals (basically going through ion exchange again, but the other direction) and leaves the resin beads “recharged” with sodium. The brine in the tank will need occasional refilling to ensure the water softener can keep doing its job.

“What if there’s too much sodium in the water?” This is something people are concerned about with water softeners. Can the water become too soft? Yes, it can. However, professional plumbers will size the water softener so there is little danger of this happening. If the high sodium problem can’t be avoided, plumbers can install a reverse osmosis filter to reduce the sodium levels and balance out the hardness in the water to the ideal levels for a home.

Professional Water Softener Installation

To take care of your plumbing in Hyattsville, MD, whether it means installing a water softener or any other job, you can depend on our team of licensed plumbers. We’ve built our business on honesty and integrity, offering great work at a fair price. We work with water softeners as well as other water treatment systems like reverse osmosis systems, UV water purifiers, and water filters.

It’s Not a Ghost, It’s … Water Hammer

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To have us reassure you that those thumping noises you hear in the walls don’t mean you live in a haunted house, they just mean you have water hammer, might not actually feel assuring. Water hammer sounds sinister. Possibly dangerous. What is it?

First, it’s not dangerous—at least, not to you or your family. It can be a problem for the plumbing, however, and if it happens frequently, it’s an issue you’ll need a professional plumber in Potomac, MD to fix.

How water hammer happens

The thump noise you hear that either surprises or annoys you is the abrupt stop of water flow in the pipes and an equally abrupt change of direction. This can occur when a tap somewhere, such as a faucet or in a water-using appliance, cuts off the water flow. If the pipes don’t have air chambers to cushion the water when the demand cuts off, the water force will create that distinct sound.

If you only hear water hammer now and then, you probably don’t have a serious issue. Water pressure can sometimes spike in residential plumbing because of an issue with the municipal water supply. If water hammer is a routine occurrence, however, it poses a threat to the pipes. High pressure inside pipes can cause damage to them, even resulting in burst pipes.

Call a professional plumber to fix the problem

There are different ways to approach habitual water hammer, and it requires a skilled and licensed plumber to find out which one is right for your situation. Air chambers may leak and lose their air, so a plumber must seal and restore them. The plumbing could require a water pressure regulator; this is a common fix to any issue plumbing has with high pressure. Another option is to use mechanical water arrestors.

You can trust our plumber to fix whatever plumbing problem you have!

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the service contractor of choice in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Water Stain on the Ceiling? It May Be an Emergency

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It’s not something you want to see on the ceiling: a circular stain of discoloration marring the pleasing décor of a room. But when you notice a ceiling stain, the solution isn’t to get a can of paint and brush over it to disguise it. A ceiling stain is often an indication of a more serious problem that will require calling on a professional plumber to repair it.

What Might Cause a Ceiling Stain?

The likely cause is a leaking pipe. It doesn’t take much water to create damage to the drywall of most ceilings. Even a small buildup will rapidly begin to eat through the drywall, as well as create mold and mildew that cause further damage. If the stain is located beneath an upstairs bathroom, then leaking pipes are almost certainly the source. The bathroom has more plumbing pipes concentrated in it than any other room in the house (this includes the kitchen) so even a small leak in this spot can mean a lot of water.

It can also mean a lot of trouble: the leak might have been going on for a while before you noticed it. The water damage weakens flooring material with wood rot, and this can lead to parts of the ceiling starting to fall in. The worst case scenario—and yes, this does happen—is for the toilet to crash through the floor. You don’t want to hesitate when it comes to finding out if you’ve got a plumbing leak.

There are other possibilities. The problem may be a leaking roof that’s allowing water down into building materials. The leak might be coming from the bathroom, but not from a leaky pipe: deteriorating caulking around sinks and showers can allow water to seep through the floors.

What Needs to Be Done

First, don’t worry about the stain itself—it’s not the current priority. It will get taken care of later. Worry that you may have leaking plumbing. If you live in an older house (built pre-1970), this could be a major warning that your old pipes are starting to decay. Galvanized steel pipes are prone to corrosion, and if you still have these types of pipes in your home, you may need more extensive repiping than fixing that single leak. Call a plumber no matter what so you’ll have the problem correctly identified and fixed.

And please, don’t try to cut through part of your ceiling to reach the pipe and attempt a DIY fix. You might end up causing even more water damage—possibly to other parts of your house. A licensed plumber will have the job done right and done fast, with no mess. Then you can worry about taking care of the unsightly stain. That’s usually the easiest part.

If you need an emergency plumber in Rockville, MD—you’ve found one! Let us take care of the plumbing work you need to be done right away, including bathroom plumbing and leak detection.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Service Contractor of Choice for Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Why You Need Kitchen Sink Drain Cleaning

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The bathroom is the room in your house that contains the most plumbing and the most fixtures. It also uses the most water, accounting for around 40% of the freshwater used in the house each year. (Even short showers take up a lot of water.) But the bathroom sink isn’t the sink that gets the most use in the house or the harshest use. That “honor” belongs to your kitchen sink. Not only does more water go down it, but it also has to deal with cooking oils, fats, grease, and food waste.

Your kitchen sink drain leads a rough life, and it needs help sometimes. You can do your best to keep fats, oils, and grease out of the drain, but you should also have professionals help you out with regular drain cleaning to see that the kitchen sink drain is restored to its best condition.

No, put away that liquid drain cleaner!

Your eye might have skipped over the professionals part of that last sentence and gone straight to drain cleaning. If you looked around for a plastic bottle of chemical drain cleaner, we’re glad we stopped you. No licensed plumber recommends using these chemical concoctions on drains—they certainly would never use them on the job. Chemical drain cleaners are only a way to eat through a clog, not a way to clean away the debris that created it. These cleaners can also harm drainpipes with their caustic action.

A drain snake won’t do the job either

Hand-crank drains snakes are great for fast unclogging jobs for bathroom sinks—they’re good at removing hair from the drains. But they don’t provide cleaning, only a way to break through a clog to allow water to flow again. The debris that created the clog in the first place will stay there, helping to start the buildup all over again.

Professionals cleaning your kitchen sink drain

Keep in mind the kind of buildup that affects a kitchen drain: lots of food waste and fats, oils, and grease (a.k.a. F-O-G) that tenaciously cling to the pipe walls. These aren’t easy to remove with most standard drain cleaning methods. Even motorized rooters—basically powered drain snakes—can’t completely clean away a kitchen sink drain.

What you can expect from the best professional plumbers for kitchen drain cleaning is a hydro-jetter. This device blasts high-pressure water from a nozzle down in the drainpipe. The water force scours the interior of the pipe in all directions, removing any buildup from the pipe. After hydro-jetting, your kitchen sink drain will be in “like-new” condition, and you won’t have to worry about buildup for a long time to come.

We’re your drain cleaners of choice!

When you’re ready to schedule your drain cleaning in Frederick, MD—no matter if it’s in the kitchen sink or elsewhere in the house—turn to the local professionals who will get the job done. You can trust to our plumbers: our company is built on a foundation of honesty and integrity, and we aim to get each job done right the first time.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Service Contractor of Choice for Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Rusty Water: What It Means, What to Do About It

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You come back from an extended vacation and turn on the faucet in the bathroom for the first time in weeks. You’ll expect the water to have a brownish-red tint to it, but it will soon fade as the sink gets back into action. But when you spot this ruddy color in the water at other times, it may mean you’ve got rust in the plumbing system. The water will give off a metallic odor as well.

Is this unhealthy?

With the exception of a condition called hemochromatosis, people who drink rust in water won’t suffer ill health effects. Rust is oxidized iron, which isn’t harmful. But this doesn’t mean you should tolerate having rust in your home’s water. It looks ugly, for one, and it also can cause staining to fixtures, surfaces, and your dishes.

The source of the rusty water—and the solutions

The big concern is not so much the rusty water itself as what is causing it. It might be a problem with the municipal water supply. If you find rusty water flowing from all the taps in the house, both hot and cold, that often means an outside source of contamination. Call the water company to inform them of the problem.

If the reddish water is only coming from the cold water line or the hot water lines, the problem is somewhere in the house’s plumbing. If the discoloration is coming from the hot water lines, your water heater is probably dying. When corrosion starts to gnaw away at a water heater, the system needs to be replaced. Call a professional plumber for this service right away.

Rusty water from the cold water lines doesn’t bring much better news: the trouble is likely the pipes that have corroded with age. This is common in older homes that have plumbing of steel or cast iron. We recommend contacting a professional plumber to see if you need to have repiping done to replace this material with copper and plastic.

When you need professional plumbing in Silver Spring, MD from a contractor with experience and training, call on us. We offer all the above work and more.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating Is the Service Contractor of Choice! We serve Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

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