Ken's Plumbing | Blog

More than 8 out of 10 American homes are affected by hard water—that is, water filled with dissolved minerals such as calcium and magnesium carbonate. While these minerals aren’t harmful for most people to ingest, hard water can cause a lot of inconveniences in everyday home life.

Below are five typical problems caused by hard water buildup. How many of these symptoms have you noticed?

1. Fading Laundry

Minerals such as iron and calcium found in hard water can react with the chemicals in laundry detergent, compromising its effectiveness and wearing the colors out of your clothing prematurely. Hard water can even leave small chalky or rusty stains or make the fabric feel stiff or scratchy.

In our last post, we talked about natural bathroom cleaners that can help you keep your bathroom surfaces disinfected without using dangerous chemicals.

This week we’ll focus on how to unclog a drain without commercial drain cleaners such as Drano or Liquid Plumr.

Of course, the best step is prevention. To learn how to avoid problems in the first place, read our post on preventing clogs before they happen.

Why should I avoid chemical drain de-cloggers?

Using natural cleaners helps you remove unnecessary toxins from your home, plus avoid headache-inducing fumes. In the case of drain cleaners, however, there’s also another factor consider: Regular use of commercial drain cleaning products can actually damage your pipes!

Want to keep your bathroom clean but don’t want to expose your family to harsh chemicals and unpleasant vapors? While commercial cleaning products are popular because they do work well, you can swap them out with natural cleaning products that are gentler on your bathroom fixtures and better for your health.

Sometimes natural solutions take a little more elbow grease to reach sparkling perfection, but on the plus side, they’re easy (and cheap!) to make.

Here are some natural cleaner recipes for keeping your bathroom clean:

Spring is on its way, and we want to make sure your home is ready to look (and feel) its best when the flowers start to bloom!

With Ken's Plumbing, we are here for you 24/7/364, so just in case things don't quite go your way this spring, make sure you call The Picky People's Plumber for your every need.

Until then, hopefully these spring cleaning tips get you where you need to be.

When planning the layout of your home (in the case of new construction) or looking into renovations, you may find the space that seems to be the best fit for your laundry room is... upstairs.

Are you concerned about whether or not an upstairs laundry room could pose a risk in the case of a burst pipe or a flooding disaster?

Today, we'll take a look at those concerns and walk you through why an upstairs laundry room may just be the right choice for you.

Washing machine overflow is absolutely one of those worst-case scenarios you hope will never happen. Water all over the floor may seem like a fun slip-n-slide to your kids, but you already know the problem is going to be very messy... and expensive to fix.

We always say that the best offense in home plumbing is a good defense. Let's take a look at the causes of washer overload, before you're scrambling to call for help.

While we receive plenty of calls to service residents and commercial business owners in Upstate, SC, we answer a lot calls on drain clogs, too. Even at Ken's, we can EASILY attest to how annoying these clogs are, and many fall prey to having a tub drain clogged without realizing it until they're already taking a shower. In order to prevent this from happening in the future, take a look at some of our tips on keeping your sink or tub unclogged.

We know low water pressure is an issue, but have you ever thought of high water pressure being a problem with your plumbing? This can actually lead to some serious issues that could affect all the plumbing appliances in your home.

We all have bills and have witnessed the price of groceries keep creeping up within the last five years, so when it's time to stock back up on toilet tissue, it's understandable that you'd go for a cheaper brand to help save a little money. Well while you may prefer the fluffier, cushier brands, the cheap stuff might actually be a blessing in disguise! We're here to tell you why that is and what you can do to make sure your toilet paper is both good for your body and safe for your septic tank.