Everyone hopes that it will never happen to him or her but statistic shows that nearly every homeowner sooner or later faces a water leak problem. It is especially true for old homes, which have copper piping installed. If you experience broken pipe damage in California, you shall immediately refer to water damage restoration services in your area.
What should you do when you find a plumbing leak?
When any water leak like a flowing fountain of water, puddle formation, or gathering water where it shouldn’t be gathered happens, this is a true sign of burst pipes. There is a sequence of actions that you, as a homeowner, shall immediately do after plumbing leak detection:
- Shut off all the electricity in your home (if it is possible and safe).
- Turn off all the water faucets, which are installed on the pipes inside and outside the house to prevent the water flow inside the leak pipes.
- Remove any belongings, which may suffer from the water leak.
- Call an expert emergency service company & the insurance company.
- Snap pictures of all the damages to the property, belongings & leak pipes themselves to attach them later to the case opened by the insurance company (a tip: this might also help the specialists of your restoration services company to understand the nature of water leak, find it, and eliminate it in the best possible way).
When the specialists of a water damage repair company are already being on their way to the place, there is unlikely enough time for the homeowner to dry out their home. But if it is possible, it must be started to be done right away.
What causes broken pipes?
There are numerous reasons, which potentially cause a water leak:
- Broken seals or connectors of installed appliances that utilize water
- Pipes clogs and corrosion
- Normal aging and wear-and-tear of pipes, connections, joints, etc.
- Periodical temperature swings (winter/summer, cold/hot water)
- Natural events and disasters, such as growing roots of trees, landslides and land shifts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.
- Renovations of the house, which might have unexpectedly pierced the pipes.
- Swings in the water pressure.
No types of pipes are secured from a water leak 24/7, including water supply lines, sinks, and sewage, which can be located in the ceiling, floor, basement, walls, or in a crawl space. More modern types of pipes made of plastic materials are less prone to broken pipe damage while the metal ones, which were common in the 19th and 20th centuries, are more prone to a water leak.
Pipe leak damage, remediation, and restoration
When leak pipes are detected, this sadly doesn’t mean they happen out of the blue: they might have been unspotted for days, weeks, months, or even years before they manifested themselves as burst pipe water damage. Depending on the location of pipes in one’s house and the severity of the water leak, the result can be anything from a tiny puddle on the floor to damaged bearing structures of the building, including falling-off pieces of walls, ceiling, or a completely flooded basement.
Since a water leak can stay unobserved by a homeowner for a really long time, the cumulative damaging effect that burst pipe water damage brings can be very high until leak detection really occurs. So it would be a wise idea to find some time to inspect all reachable parts of the entire house water system (it perfectly would be once a year, ideally, before the cold season begins).
You save more when you hire a water damage restoration company
When you spot any water leak, cracks in the pipes (even hair-thin), water condensation, puddles of any size (especially in the area of household appliances, faucets, connections, joints, seals), or see as the water bill for a period increased out of the blue, these all are good reasons to call repair services. A tip: a really good company in your area must be available round-the-clock for emergencies that require leak repair.
One of the best pieces of advice is to do preventive inspection and maintenance to never face leak pipes (or, at least, minimize such experience in your life). To fence oneself off any unexpected water damage, such periodical inspections are the best measure for plumbing leak detection, finding even those possible leaks, which are not immediately seen by the naked eye. If you aren’t absolutely sure you can cope with the task on your own, the wisest solution is to contact a company that has specialists with extensive hands-on experience & all the necessary inspection equipment, which is able to find even the smallest cracks, leaks, and water condensation spots.
Tips to prevent broken pipes
It is fairly easy to prevent broken pipes by doing an annual visual inspection of the entire water supply and plumbing system of the house (no matter what size it has). If an inspection shows that certain sites of pipes look different from others, there is water-dripping, accumulation of mold, mildew, water condensation, or changes to the form of materials adjacent to the pipe, these all are good reasons to call a water leak prevention company.
If you live in an old house, one of the first things you should do is to change all metal (copper) piping to a newer one to prevent any possible water damage (which can be actually huge if such a pipe suddenly bursts).
If there are winter temperature flings in your California area, which are more than 40 °F during a year, it is better to winterize your home (which basically is heat insulation and sealing the entire space to prevent water freezing in the pipes and their damage because of that).
Think of the help of modern automation — moisture alarm sensors will inform a house owner when there is something wrong with the humidity levels, which makes it possible to promptly react to any possible problem with leaking water or condensation forming.
Make sure you have as many water damage bullet points in your insurance policy as possible — some standard contracts do not cover just all of the possibilities.
And in any case, contact a reliable water damage contractor in your area when a problem with undesirable water appears.