San Jose is home to several older neighborhoods with homes that may not have had their plumbing updated in years. If you’re living in one of these older structures, it would be a particularly good idea to consider having your plumbing thoroughly inspected and possibly upgraded. As the plumbing gets older, it can develop more issues that create some very common problems for you and the other occupants in the house.
Constantly Clogging Drains
If you look inside the pipes connected to your sink and shower drains, you’ll likely see a lot of scummy-looking buildup. This is a combination of soap scum, old toothpaste, dirt, limescale, bacteria, hair and bits of just about everything that goes down the drains in your home.
The older the pipe, the greater the chance that it will have a lot of this material essentially fused to its interior walls. This buildup can catch and trap more material as it flows down the drain. Eventually, the buildup will close off the pipe, and you’ll end up with a sink or shower pan that won’t drain.
Snaking the drain will create an opening, breaking up and pushing masses down toward the city sewer. Once you have that done, the clog will disappear. But in homes with old plumbing, that will be only temporary as snaking doesn’t really remove the majority of the buildup. The buildup will just continue to catch more debris, leading to another clog in a relatively short amount of time.
Removing the buildup seems like the obvious answer, but it’s not as easy to do as it sounds. You could have a plumber attempt to clean out the pipes, but replacing them with upgraded materials is usually an easier path to take. Sometimes the buildup is so cemented onto the sides of the pipe that removal risks damaging the pipe material. That’s why proper drain cleaning calls for professional help.
Tough Toilet Paper and Sensitive Sewer Lines
Old sewer main lines also suffer from the buildup problem, but they have an additional issue to deal with: thick toilet paper. Yes, your toilet paper could become the bane of your existence if it doesn’t dissolve quickly.
Thicker papers can take longer to dissolve form lumps as they flow down the toilet drain to the main sewer line. Those lumps, combined with other materials flowing with the water, can stop up sewer lines. This is especially true for older lines with more buildup.
Once again, snaking does help remove those clogs, but it doesn’t necessarily clean out the entire line. That means the line is still subject to more clogs. If you’re in an older home with an older sewer line, it really helps to use fast-dissolving toilet paper.
Pipe Bellies and Crushed Sewer Main Lines
Two common sewer line problems in older homes are not as easy to fix as a clog. One is called a pipe belly. The sewer line runs at a slight angle down toward its connection to the city sewer system. This downward grade helps water and waste flow away from your home.
A pipe belly is a section of the pipe that sags downward, forming a belly-like shape that extends below the rest of the pipe. This traps water and waste, and it’s a problem for extremely old pipes.
Another issue is a crushed or collapsed sewer line. You may not see any evidence of this when you look out over your yard. But your sewer line might keep clogging up right after you’ve had it snaked.
If you’re sure you’re not putting anything down the toilet that shouldn’t go down there (including that thicker toilet paper), a collapsed pipe section is a real possibility. You’ll have to arrange for a plumber to send a camera into the sewer line to verify what’s going on.
Lead Pipes and Solder
A real danger in older homes that have never had their plumbing systems upgraded is lead. Lead pipes were once quite common, and while they were eventually outlawed in newer construction, older homes may still have them hiding in the walls. Other homes with plumbing from a few decades ago could still have lead solder in the pipe connections, even if the pipes themselves are made another metal.
Lead-contaminated water is a health hazard. If you bought your home a long time ago or have inherited an older family member’s home, have the pipes inspected for lead. Then have them replaced as soon as possible if any lead is present, even in the solder.
Gnarly Amounts of Limescale Inside Fixtures
Hard water contains high amounts of minerals like calcium and sodium. As the water travels through your pipes, it can deposit those minerals on the insides of pipes and fixtures like faucets. This is the same stuff that forms those white spots on glasses and the film at the bottom of metal kettles. That scale can build up and gradually clog the pipes.
The service areas within the San Jose Municipal Water System get much of their water from lakes and groundwater sources like deep wells. Also, some areas receive treated water from two additional water districts, and another one receives water from the Hetch Hetchy Watershed.
The treated water, as well as the water from Hetch Hetchy, are not considered to be that hard. However, groundwater sources such as those used in the Coyote Valley and Edenvale service areas are extremely hard.
This means that many of the homes in San Jose have to deal with a substantial amount of limescale. The older the home, the more likely it is to have faucets and pipes that have a lot of debris stuck inside. Even the homes in the service areas with softer water can see buildup. This is especially true if it’s been a long time since the homeowners updated faucets and had the home’s pipes inspected.
Corroded Pipes
Just as extremely old sewer lines can corrode and break, so too can the pipes in your home. They can develop small tears or weakened spots after shaking from quakes, and the metal can also simply corrode over the years. It’s difficult to spot a lot of the smaller instances of corrosion on pipes inside your walls. Symptoms include faint dripping, discolored water and water pressure that seems just a little too low. Some pipes can be repaired, but systemic damage will call for full pipe replacement.
Outdated Aerators
Thankfully, a simple problem to correct in older plumbing is the outdated faucet or showerhead aerator. An aerator is an insert that controls the distribution of water as it flows out of the faucet or showerhead. This is the thing that can limit water flow to a certain number of gallons per minute.
California is forever reducing the maximum amount of water that can flow out. If you have an older faucet or showerhead that haven’t been replaced in years, though, those may have older aerators that allow more water through than current codes allow.
If you can remove the aerator housing on each faucet, you can easily replace the aerator insert. And replacing a showerhead with a newer water-saving model is a simple task, too. If you’d prefer not to tackle those yourself, you can always ask a plumber to do it. You may even want to look into getting completely new faucets, too. That will also eliminate the issue of scale buildup inside the faucet neck.
If you own an older home in San Jose, and you know that the plumbing hasn’t been worked on or updated in quite a while, don’t wait for something to go wrong. Contact Ribbs Plumbing Services to arrange for an inspection. The sooner you locate any problems, the easier it will be to fix them.
