Author: infogenix

Corrosion and Your Water Heater: What You Need to Know

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The word corrosion is derived from the Latin word “to gnaw.” And that’s a pretty good description of what corrosion does to metal: it gnaws it away. Corrosion starts when water is in contact with metal in the presence of oxygen, and it’s one of the main enemies of parts of your plumbing system. Even corrosion-resistant copper pipes can suffer from specific types of corrosion.

But we’re here to talk about your water heater, a vital appliance in your home necessary for day-to-day living. Because a storage tank water heater has water in contact with metal, it sounds like a prime candidate for corrosion. Let’s take a look at how corrosion does and doesn’t affect your home’s water heater.

Your Water Heater Is Designed to Resist Corrosion

First, we have some good news. Water heater manufacturers design their products so they resist corrosion for many years. A water heater that starts to corrode right away wouldn’t be much use to anyone! Here are some of the ways a water heater keeps away rust:

  • The inside of the tank is lined with glass, keeping the water from coming into contact with the metal.
  • Air is kept out of the tank to help prevent the oxidization process. An expansion tank on top of the water tank helps ease pressure inside the tank without allowing contact with air.
  • A sacrificial anode rod that runs down through the tank attracts corrosion to it, essentially “sacrificing” itself to corrosion to save the rest of the system. The rod must be replaced when it corrodes completely through, which can be done during regular maintenance.

A Corroded Water Heater Usually Must Be Replaced

Now we come to the bad news. If a water heater starts to corrode, it often means the system needs to be replaced. There aren’t any repairs that can save a water heater tank when it develops corrosion on the inside or outside. If the corrosion is limited to the heat exchanger, burners, or other parts that can be replaced, sometimes the water heater can be repaired. But if corrosion starts in on a system that’s more than 15 years old, the corrosion is an indication the system is too aged and should be replaced no matter what.

Tankless Water Heaters Can Also Corrode

If you have a tankless water heater, you might think that the above information doesn’t apply to you. It’s true that tankless water heaters are less prone to corrosion than systems that use storage tanks. But a tankless water heater can suffer from corrosion if water starts to leak down onto the burners. Rust flakes on the burner can lead to a drop in system efficiency and will require professionals to repair it.

We’re Here to Help

This is the most important thing to know, and the best news of all: when you need any service for water heaters in Chevy Chase, MD, from a minor repair to installing a new tankless water heater, we’re the people for the job. We’ve built our company on honesty and integrity, and we’ll see that every job we do is done right!

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Service Contractor of Choice throughout Silver Spring, MD & Montgomery County.

Can I Do Water Leak Detection Myself?

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One of the important services we offer to homes is detecting where leaks are occurring. A large number of residential plumbing systems suffer from leaks, and most remain hidden until they start to create visible damage—and by that point, the leak has already caused extensive damage and wasted enormous amounts of water.

We recommend homeowners arrange occasionally for leak detection services, even when they don’t have reasons to be suspicious of water leaks. This is especially useful for homes built before 1970, which have aging plumbing.

But is it possible to do leak detection on your own? Well, “yes” and “no.”

You Can Make a Simple Water Leak Test

It’s not truly “leak detection”—at least the way professional plumbers define it—but you can do a simple test to see if your house is secretly wasting water. All you have to do is check on your water meter and write down the current reading, then shut off all water using appliances for an hour. (We recommend doing this at a time right before your house is empty. That way you won’t have to worry that someone may have accidentally flipped on a tap somewhere.) After an hour, check the water meter to see if the reading has gone up. If it has … you’ve probably got a leak somewhere.

You Can’t Actual Detect the Location of Leaks Yourself

The job of professional leak detection isn’t only to find out if leaks exist. It’s to find exactly where they’re occurring. After all, if your home does have hidden leaks, you’ll want them repaired! To pinpoint where leaks are, licensed plumbers use high-end equipment that requires special training: ground microphones, listening discs, thermal scanners, and video pipe inspection equipment. It’s crucial to find the exact location of pipe leaks so plumbers can repair it while doing the least amount of disruption to a home.

For leak detection in Silver Spring, MD, and the surrounding areas, talk to our plumbers today.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating Is the Service Contractor of Choice!

What Is Trenchless Technology?

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You may have noticed among our long list of plumbing services that we offer trenchless technology. This isn’t a service you’ll necessarily call specifically us to do. It isn’t like contacting our plumbers to fix a leak, unclog a drain, or repipe your house. Rather, trenchless technology is a method we use to handle a number of important jobs such as repairing and replacing damaged sewer and water lines. When you call us for assistance because you’ve lost water to your house or the sewer line has backed up, we’ll decide if using trenchless technology is the fastest and most effective method to solve the problem.

We’ll provide a short rundown in this post to give you an idea of why this technology is beneficial for home and commercial plumbing. If you want full details about trenchless technology in Bethesda, MD and throughout Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, get in touch with one of our plumbers.

The Basics of Trenchless Technology

Trenchless technology is actually an umbrella term for a number of installation and replacement techniques for pipes and other utilities (such as fiber optic cables and gas lines) that cause minimum disruption to the surface because of excavation. For example, the standard way of replacing a sewer line for a house is to use power digging equipment to tear open a trench to access the pipeline. This is disruptive to the property around the house and requires a large amount of labor and time. Trenchless technology removes almost all the digging work, which is why it’s often called “no dig” technology. (Although it may require a small amount of digging—just not enough to create noticeable disruptions.)

Trenchless technology originally started in coal mining, where lateral boring was used to access difficult-to-reach areas. It was soon adopted into civic engineering: lateral digging to lay down pipes and electrical lines means there’s no need to tear up large parts of streets and create massive disruption. Eventually, the technology found its way into the residential sector as an alternative to using digging equipment.

Here’s how the trenchless technology we use for pipe replacement works (this is only one example of ways we can use trenchless technology, but it’s a good overall survey):

  • Our technicians dig a small hole at the edge of your property where the sewer or water line crosses to the municipal system. We can access the end of the pipe and detach it.
  • From indoors, we located where the sewer line exits the house (or the water line enters it) and slide a pipeliner into the pipe interior.
  • A hydraulic device attached to the other end of the pipeline—the one we accessed by digging—then draws the pipeliner through the pipe and sets it into place.
  • A device called a “pipe-burster” the drawn threw the pipeliner, expanding the liner to shatter the exterior pipe, replacing it with the liner.
  • The new pipe is connected to the municipal system and the single small hole is filled in and landscaped.

This process takes only a few hours, rather than days like standard excavation methods. And afterward, the property looks virtually untouched!

Mallick Plumbing & Heating Is the Service Contractor of Choice for when Trenchless Technology is the best solution to your plumbing issues.

What Does a Water Softener Do?

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Hard water is a common problem in homes across the country. In fact, studies have shown that approximately 85% of homes have hard water in their plumbing.

But what does this actually mean? What makes hard water a problem, and how does a water softener fix it?

Hard vs. Soft Water

Right from the start, the terms “hard” and “soft” water sound strange to people who aren’t specialists in water treatment. (How can water be “soft”? And isn’t “hard water” just ice?) But the concept isn’t that complicated. The hardness of water, which can be determined by professional water testing, is the amount of magnesium and calcium grains suspended in the water. The more grains, the harder the water. Water is considered hard when it exceeds 3 grains per gallon (GPG). Less than this is considered soft. Unfortunately, water hardness here in Maryland homes often exceeds 10 GPG, which is considered “very hard”!

Hard Water Problems

Hard water isn’t harmful to drink. The minerals in hard water are in much of the food you eat. The trouble from hard water comes from what it does to the plumbing in a house. The minerals can dissolve from the water and create build-up along with the interior of pipes. Over time, this build-up reduces the volume available for water, leading to spikes in water pressure, leaks, and clogs. Worse is what hard water mineral can do to a water heater: the heat inside the tank will turn the minerals in hard water into limescale along the tank walls. This will significantly reduce the service life of the water heater.

There are many other nuisances hard water creates: soap scum on surfaces, spots on dishes and shower doors, difficulty creating soap lather for cleaning, faded fabrics in the laundry, and a generally icky feeling on your skin after you bathe or shower.

The Water Softener at Work

The solution to hard water is an installation of a water softener in Gaithersburg, VA. You must have a professional take care of the job of attaching the water softener onto where the main water line enters the house.

Water that enters the water softener passes through a chamber filled with resin beads. The beads are negatively charged and covered with positively charged sodium ions. As the hard water moves over the beads, ion exchange takes place: the sodium ions, which are harmless for plumbing, swap places with the magnesium and calcium ions, which instead attach to the resin beads. Once all the sodium in the tank is used up, the water softener goes into a regeneration cycle. A salty brine solution washes over the beads, replacing the lost sodium ions while removing the magnesium and calcium ions. The hard water minerals are flushed out of the water softener and the system is ready to start the process again.

Because hard water is such a common problem, we recommend all homes arrange for water testing. You can contact us to set up a convenient testing appointment. After we receive the results, we can advise you on whether you need a water softener and then handle the work to install one.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Service Contractor of Choice for Silver Spring, MD, and the Surrounding Areas.

How Does Trenchless Technology Work?

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If you’ve looked around our website, you may have noticed we offer a service called trenchless technology. This isn’t actually a “service,” it’s a way of providing different types of services, such as sewer line repair, sewer line replacement, and water main replacement.

People are often curious about trenchless technology and wish to know how it works and why we use it for plumbing service in Rockville, MD.

Trenchless Technology: A “No Dig” Plumbing Solution

The standard—and for many years only—method of working on buried sewer and water lines is to use excavation equipment to dig down to the pipeline. This is time-consuming and really does a number of the property around the house, making it look like a construction site. Trenchless technology allows skilled plumbers to perform work on sewer and water lines without ripping up trenches.

This is often called “no dig” technology, but there is some digging involved. If the plumbers are replacing an entire sewer line or water main, they dig a single hole near where the pipeline crosses under the property line. They detach the pipe from the municipal system and then place a hydraulic device onto it. From inside the house, a pipeliner is inserted into the older line, and the hydraulic device draws the pipeliner into place. Afterward, a “pipe burster” is sent through the liner, expanding it to shatter the old pipeline and replace it with the new one. Voila! A new pipe is in place, no major trench digging required.

The process is similar for repairs, except the plumbers will target a smaller area of the pipe, digging holes on both sides of the affected section to insert the liner and pipe burster. The process only requires a few hours (as opposed to days with regular digging methods) and when it’s done only one or two small spots need to be filled in and landscaped.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating: Your service contractor of choice! We use the best trenchless technology to serve your sewer and water main needs.

Use Summer to Replace Your Boiler

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During the heat of summer here in Maryland, you probably don’t want to hear the word “boil” in any context. It just makes you feel that much hotter. But summer is often a good time to have work done on the heating system in your home, especially if it’s a big job like taking an old boiler out of the house and putting in a new one. You won’t need your boiler during the summer, so you can take your time to pick a new model and work with your local contractor for boiler services in Potomac, MD so you’ll be ready to go in fall when the cooler weather returns.

Is Your Boiler Too Old?

The first question you’ll probably have about a gas boiler replacement is if it’s necessary. To start answering that question, consider the age of your boiler. If the boiler was already in the house when you moved in, it might already be at an advanced age where it is in increasing danger of becoming a money waster, ineffective, and possibly even a safety hazard. (Boilers are designed with safety uppermost in mind, but aging gas systems are more likely to become unsafe.)

The average lifespan of a boiler system is 15 to 20 years. Some boilers can even last 30 years if they receive routine maintenance ever fall. But it’s a wise idea to plan to replace a boiler that’s more than 20 years old. This is the point where corrosion may start to take hold and the wear on the other parts lead to poor operation. We recommend contacting our team to look over your boiler and offer an opinion about a replacement if the boiler’s been in service for more than two decades.

Is Your Boiler Too Expensive?

One of the reasons many homeowners prefer using boilers rather than forced-air systems like furnaces is that boilers can help save money. Boilers heat rooms faster and more evenly, and water is a more effective heat transference medium than air. But when a boiler is getting up in years it will start draining extra power to operate. Check on your heating bills for the last few winters. Are they rising steadily, even though you aren’t using the boiler any more than usual? If they are, it’s wise to have us give your boiler a check-up.

Easy Summer-Time Scheduling

We’re happy to help put in a new boiler during the summer. Our plumbers are skilled with selecting the right new system to replace an old one, and they can handle any changes to the piping that may be necessary to adapt to the new boiler system. They’ll guide you toward a boiler that has higher energy efficiency than your current one did even when it was new.

This is a big job, and we hope you haven’t even considered trying to do it yourself. But don’t trust it to an amateur who makes big promises either. Working on any system connected to a gas line is illegal in most jurisdictions unless a licensed professional handles it. Have the job done right, and keep your family safe, by relying on our experienced team.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the Service Contractor of Choice in Silver Spring, MD & Montgomery County.

Ways Your Home Might Be Wasting Water

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You can find plenty of tips online for how to cut down on the amount of water you consume in your home. You’re probably already familiar with many of them: take shorter showers, only run dishwasher and laundry machines on full loads, don’t let the water run while you’re brushing your teeth, defrost food in the refrigerator rather than running hot water over it, etc. All of these are good ways to see that you aren’t using more water than necessary.

But your house might be the one doing the water wasting, and you can’t get your house to read online tips and follow them! We’re going to look at some of the places where your house is the source of water waste. With the assistance of our professional plumbers, you can have these problems fixed and your water bills reduced. The environment will thank you as well!

You have a leaking toilet

The leaking toilet is one of the most insidious water wasting sources in a house. It’s often difficult to notice when water is slowly leaking from the tank of the toilet in the bowl, but it’s common and can mean wasting up to 200 gallons of water per day. If you’re unsure if your toilet is leaking, place a few drops of food coloring into the tank, then wait 20 to 30 minutes. If the color has seeped into the bowl, you have a leaking toilet. Arrange to have plumbers repair the toilet right away.

There are hidden pipe leaks

The pipes behind the walls and in the floor can have sprung leaks, which is hard to notice at first. Unfortunately, by the time it becomes apparent, not only will the pipe leaks have wasted large amounts of water, they’ll probably have caused extensive damage as well. According to the EPA WaterSense Program, if water use for a family of four exceeds 12,000 gallons a month, it almost certainly means hidden leaking. To find the hidden leaks, arrange for professional leak detection with our plumbers. We’ll locate the leaks and have them fixed.

You have leaky faucets

A leaky faucet might seem like its minor when it comes to water use. How bad can it be? Well, pretty bad! A faucet that leaks one drip per minute can add up to 3,000 gallons wasted per year. If you have any faucets, showerheads, or other plumbing fixtures that are drip, drip, dripping away, don’t delay at having them repaired. It’s a simple fix that makes a big difference.

You have an aging toilet

Older toilets use 5 to 6 gallons per flush. “Is that a lot?” you ask. Yes! Modern toilets use around 3 gallons per flush, and special low-flow toilet models only use 1.3 gallons per flush. That’s a tremendous difference. Old toilets are more likely to clog and develop even greater water-wasting behavior, so have plumbers remove aging fixtures (more than 20 years old) and put in new ones.

For professional plumbing in Chevy Chase, MD, we’re the service contractor to call on! We pride ourselves on our honesty and integrity, and we look forward to helping you and your family save on water and enjoy better plumbing.

Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the service contractor of choice throughout the Greater Washington Metro area.

The Benefits of a Sewage Pump

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A sewage pump is an installation that can benefit both homes and commercial businesses that rely on septic systems rather than a connection to a municipal sewer system. But they can also be useful to buildings with a municipal connection. Below we’ll look at the major benefits of sewage pumps in the situations where they are most often used.

Sewage Pumps and Septic Systems

Sewage pumps often work in connection with a septic system. There are a number of difficulties involved in using a septic system, and one of them is creating an even flow along the sewer line to the tank. Waste buildup is often a major trouble with a septic tank, and a sewage pump can solve this. If you rely on a septic tank of any size, we recommend you look into having a sewage pump installed. Arrange with our plumbers to look over your septic system and make recommendations on which sewage pump can best handle the job.

When Gravity Isn’t Enough

Sewer lines usually work through a simple force: gravity. The standard set-up for homes and businesses is to have the municipal sewer line placed at a lower level so gravity takes care of the job of moving sewage to its destination. But sometimes it’s unavoidable that the sewer line is up higher than the home or commercial building. The sewage needs to be pushed uphill against gravity in these cases, and this is what the sewage pump is for.

Our plumbers can handle installing commercial and residential sewage pumps, as well as repairing them. These are essential jobs to make sure you don’t have sewage starting to back up into your business. If you have a sewage pump in need of repairs or maintenance, or you think you need to have a sewage pump installed in Silver Spring, MD, contact us and we can help you out.

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

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Repairs a Tank Water Heater May Need

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A water heater is an appliance you rely on daily, no matter the season. In fact, a water heater can account for 40% of all a home’s heating bills during the year. That’s means a great deal of work pressure placed on a single appliance.

Even though water heaters today are built to last for many years, the stress can cause systems to need repairs from time to time. In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the more common repairs you may need for your water heater. Only rely on professional service for these jobs—especially if you have a natural gas-powered water heater. Our technicians are ready to help you with any water heater service you may require.

Note: All the repairs below are for storage tank water heaters, which are the most common type found in homes. We also repair and install tankless water heaters and heat pump water heaters. If you’re interested in having one of these installed, or you have one needing repairs, contact us to learn more.

Replacing a Broken Dip Tube

This repair is less common than it used to be because of improvements in the construction of dip tubes. But it still turns up, and it’s one of the reasons for a water heater apparently losing its normal volume of heated water. The dip tube is the tube carrying cold fresh water down through the tank of the water heater and depositing it at the bottom, where heat from the heat exchanger warms it up and causes it to rise to the top of the tank. If the dip tube breaks, it means cold water will be deposited at the top of the tank, leading to a drop in water temperature. Repairs involve replacing the whole tube.

Flushing the Tank

Over time, sediment starts to gather at the bottom of a water heater’s tank, and if it builds up enough it can lead to the water overheating or problems with limescale. Flushing the tank removes this problem. This is sometimes done as part of routine maintenance, but it can also be scheduled as a repair if the water heater encounters problems.

Fixing the Circulator Pump

A water heater contains few moving parts, but one of the critical mechanical parts is the circulator pump. This pump is responsible for pumping hot water from the tank and into the hot water lines. If the circulator pump breaks, there won’t be any hot water flowing. Technicians can either repair or replace the pump.

Repairs to the Expansion Tank

The expansion tank is a small air tank sitting above the main tank. The tank contains an air cushion inside it to relieve water pressure in the main tank without allowing oxygen to get in, which would promote corrosion. If the membrane of the air cushion in the expansion tank breaks, it can lead to a pressure spike in the water heater.

If you’re looking for service for your water heater in Bethesda, MD or the surrounding areas, our plumbers are experts at providing fast and accurate repairs. We’ve built our business on honesty and integrity.

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

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