Ken's Plumbing | Blog

Does your home have a septic tank? If so, you’re not alone—nearly one in five American households uses a septic system instead of connecting to a city sewer system, and it’s especially common in rural areas.

Relying on a septic tank means you’ll have to take a little more care of what you put down your drains, plus make time to do some regular maintenance to prevent problems down the road.

One in five American homes runs on a septic tank instead of a community sewer line.

Is your home one of them? If so, there are several things you need to know about how to keep your septic system running smoothly.

Today we’ll be looking at the simple step of using an enzyme formula to keep the good bacteria in your tank working well!

Why your septic system needs good bacteria

Your septic system relies on natural processes to break down organic solids until they are safe to release into the soil (and thus the groundwater). Naturally occurring bacteria in your tank are primarily responsible for doing the heavy lifting here. When the processed liquid (called effluent) is released into the drainfield, other natural and physical processes break down remaining organic matter from there.

Winter temperatures in Greenville don’t regularly get below freezing—but when they do, it can cause trouble for your plumbing. Unlike for homes in colder climates, Southern builders sometimes skimp on insulation around pipes, particularly for those connected to the outside of your house.

This means that when temperatures do drop, you’ve got the potential for freezing pipes. As you may remember from high school science class, when water freezes, it expands. If the water in your pipes freezes, it increases the pressure on the pipe itself—which could result in a nasty burst.

Occasionally you’ll discover a pipe that’s frozen but hasn’t yet burst. (One sign is that you turn on the faucet or flush the toilet but no water comes out.) You’ll want to help the pipe thaw ASAP, before worse trouble follows. Here’s how to do it:

Ah, evening on Thanksgiving Day.

Dinner’s over, the whole family is full and happy, and it’s time to load up that dishwasher and clean the kitchen before the big game (and serving up dessert, of course!).

You pack up the leftovers and now you’re ready to take care of that oily turkey roasting pan.

Here’s where things can go very, very wrong.

If you’re distracted by your nephews and nieces or in a hurry to get to the pumpkin pie, you might just put the pan in the sink and wash all those turkey drippings right down your kitchen drain—not even realizing the huge problem you’re about to create.

Did we ever mention that the day after Thanksgiving is one of the days we plumbers get the most home calls?

TV commercials make cleaning your home look so easy, don’t they? Just spritz on this magic formula, and in seconds your bathroom is sparkling clean! If only.

One of the hardest things to clean in a bathroom is tile—specifically, the grout in between tiles. Grout stains relatively easy and it’s porous, meaning it’s easy for dirt and other gunk to get trapped deep down inside.

In a warm, humid environment, grout can also become a harbor for mold and bacteria. Good thing our showers are warm and humid environments!

Cleaning your bathroom tiles, particularly those in your shower, is important so you can avoid the health issues associated with biofilm and mold growth.

Do you dream of a comfortable yard filled with mature shade trees in the summer and a show of foliage in the fall? Trees are a beautiful addition to your home’s landscape. But as with many things in life, keeping trees comes with a price—in this case, occasional maintenance costs.

You probably know the importance of keeping branches trimmed away from your roof. But did you also know that root growth can spell (expensive!) trouble for your home’s plumbing if left unchecked?

Tired of the sound of your toilet running long after you flush it? Not only is this common household plumbing issue annoying, but it can waste up to 200 gallons or more of water in a single day. That comes out to about wasted 6,000 gallons a month—waste that you have to pay for!

Thankfully, a running toilet is often a simple and inexpensive fix that many cases you can handle yourself. So stop throwing your money down the toilet and get ready for a little DIY home maintenance:

In a previous post, we covered how to repair a dripping tub faucet. Now we’re going to turn our attention to another common household issue—a leaky kitchen faucet!

In many cases, stopping an annoying drip for a kitchen faucet is simple enough for you to handle yourself without the help of a plumber. Here’s how to tackle it:

Tired of the shower going cold before you finish, or trying to ration the hot water among multiple family members every morning? Perhaps you should consider a tankless water heater.

Rather than keeping a finite amount of heated water in storage, as a traditional water heater does, a tankless heater heats water on demand, by running cold water through a pipe heated with an electric or gas-powered unit.

To determine whether a tankless heater is for you, let’s look at some of the pros and cons for installing this appliance.

If you want to have a satisfying career, you have to spend four years in college racking up tons of student debt—right?

Not necessarily.

In fact, in today’s post-Recession economy, it’s the skilled trades—those that require only technical training—that are in the greatest demand, and they often offer a more satisfying (and financially smarter) career path.

Here’s why:

Skilled trades are in high demand

As Mike Rowe (host of the show Dirty Jobs) points out, unemployment for college graduates is extremely high, with many never ending up with jobs in the fields they studied for.