Plumbing Maintenance

Flushing and draining your hot water heater at least once a year is an important maintenance item every home owner should have on their household checklist. This is critical because it extends the life of your water heating system and allows you to ensure the condition and quality of your household water supply.

Why flush your system?

Over time rust and various mineral deposits can find their way to the bottom of your water heater. This buildup of sediment causes the tank to rust through prematurely, reduces the volume your water heater holds, creates a variety of interesting noises such as gurgling, popping and banging, and blocks heat from the burner, making it less efficient. The buildup of sediment at the bottom can harden and sometimes clog the drain valve.

The Preventive Program from Bel Red

Our hot water tank maintenance service includes all these functions, performed by our expert techs:

• Drain tank
• Open burner compartment and vacuum and brush burner assembly
• Vacuum and clean outside of tank and flue
• Open cold water inlet to tank and flush tank until water runs clear
• Bleed air and sediment out of water pipes in house
• Relight pilot light and set temperature gauge properly
• Adjust tank thermostat if a temperature variation is noted

As a tankless water heater can last up to 20 years – most storage-type water only last 10 to 15 – routine maintenance is key to extending the heater’s life and savings. Manufacturers recommend that a tankless heater be serviced once a year.

The key to proper tankless water heater maintenance is flushing the entire unit regularly to remove any mineral deposits (such as calcium) that may have built up inside. This process is called “descaling.”

Our expert techs will do all this to enhance the performance of your tankless system:

• Clean burners and entire unit
• Check and test safety controls
• Pump descaling solution through the system to remove potentially harmful deposits
• Check all connections for integrity and repair if necessary
• Conduct a carbon monoxide test

To keep your drains free of build-up and head off potential clogging issues, we recommend a Bio-Clean drain treatment.

Bio-Clean is a special combination of natural bacteria and enzymes that digests dead organic waste found in your plumbing system: grease, hair, soap scum, food partials, paper and cotton. Bio-Clean does no damage to inorganic materials such as plastic pipe. It does not produce heat, fumes or boiling like chemicals can do. Bio-Clean is safe for people, plumbing and the environment.

A single toilet leak can waste almost 22,000 gallons of water per year! Wasting water is not only bad for the environment, but also costly to your budget, as it leads to increased water bills. So it’s smart to regularly check toilets for leaks.

If toilets are allowed to leak they can cause structural damage to the floor at the base of the toilet. Sometimes leaks are not obvious and may go undetected. These leaks can be found using our toilet leak detection tabs testing.

• Technician places tab into toilet tank and waits 30 minutes
• Then bowl is checked to see if tab color has entered the toilet bowl
• Technician then replaces parts, corrects leak(s) to save you water and money