Plumbing Contractor Serving Southwest Florida

Plumbing Services

How a Typical Southwest Florida House Is Plumbed

Most houses around here sit on a concrete slab, with no basement and no crawlspace. That matters more than people expect. Supply and drain lines run under the slab, inside the walls, or up through the attic, depending on when the house was built and whether it’s been repiped. When a pipe under the slab starts leaking, you usually can’t see it, and finding it takes leak detection, not guesswork.

Where the water heater usually sits

In a lot of homes the water heater is in the garage. Others have it in an interior utility closet, a laundry room, or now and then the attic. A tank inside the living space needs a working drain pan with a clear place to drain, because a failure there lands on drywall and flooring instead of a garage floor. If you don’t know how old yours is or where the pan drains, find out before it gives out. Our water heater and tankless water heater pages cover the options.

Main shutoff and cleanouts

The water meter is usually near the street or at the edge of the lot, and the utility’s valve is there. Many homes also have a house-side shutoff where the line comes up near the foundation, often by the garage or an outside hose bib. Sewer cleanouts are the capped pipes sticking up out of the ground near the house or out in the yard. Find both now, on a calm day. You won’t want to be hunting for them with water on the floor.

The First Ten Minutes of a Leak or Backup

What you do right away often decides how much damage there is. Here’s the order we’d suggest.

• Shut off the water. Use the valve under the sink or behind the toilet if the leak is there. If you can’t isolate it, close the main.
• Turn off the water heater. Flip the breaker on an electric unit, or set a gas unit to pilot or off. A heater running with the water off can be damaged.
• Keep water and electricity apart. If water is near outlets, cords or the panel, stay out of it. Only shut off breakers if you can reach them from a dry spot.
• Stop using drains during a backup. Every flush, shower or load of laundry adds to what’s coming up.
• Take photos and move rugs, boxes and furniture off the wet floor.

A few things we’d avoid: pouring chemical drain cleaner into a line that’s already backing up, forcing a stuck valve with a pipe wrench until something snaps, and cleaning up sewage without gloves. Once things are under control, call us at (239) 518-4198 or send a request through our contact page.

Signs a Small Problem Is Turning Into a Big One

Most plumbing failures give some warning first. The trick is catching it.

• A water bill that keeps climbing with no change in how you use water
• The leak indicator on the meter moving while everything in the house is off
• A warm spot on a tile floor, or the sound of running water when nothing is on
• Rusty or cloudy hot water, or popping and rumbling from the tank
• Several drains slowing down at once, or a toilet gurgling when the tub drains
• Sewer odor outside near a cleanout or inside near a floor drain
• Pinhole leaks showing up in more than one place

One slow drain is usually a local clog. Several at once points further down, toward the main or the sewer line. Repeat pinholes usually mean the pipe itself is wearing out, and patching one spot at a time stops making sense. At that point repiping is worth a look.

City Water, Wells and Septic in Lee, Charlotte and Collier

Not every house here is on the same kind of system, and that changes what can go wrong. Much of the region runs on municipal water and sewer. Plenty of homes still don’t.

In Cape Coral, the city has been extending water and sewer into neighborhoods that were built on wells and septic, so homes a few streets apart can have different setups. Lehigh Acres has a lot of homes on private wells and septic tanks. Rural and older parts of Charlotte and Collier counties are a mix as well.

Here’s why it matters. On a well, low pressure can be a pump or pressure tank issue and not a pipe problem at all. On septic, a slow house can mean a full tank or a struggling drainfield instead of a clogged line. Tell us which you have when you call. If you’re not sure, check the utility bill: no water charge usually means a well, and no sewer charge usually means septic.

Storm Season and Your Plumbing

Hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30. The plumbing side of storm prep is easy to skip and hard to make up for afterward.

Before a storm

• Find and test your main shutoff so it isn’t frozen in place when you need it
• Locate your sewer cleanout and make sure the cap is on tight
• If you’re evacuating, close the main and turn off the water heater
• Fill jugs or a clean bathtub for flushing in case service goes out
• Move stored items off the floor around the water heater

After a storm

Check for a boil water notice before drinking from the tap. Before you open the main back up, walk the house and look at the water heater, under the sinks and around the toilets. Then open it slowly and listen for running water.

If the property flooded, debris can end up in drains and sewer lines, and a water heater or other equipment that sat in floodwater needs to be checked before you rely on it. For drains that won’t clear after a storm, see drain cleaning. For a broken supply line in the yard, see water line repair.

Seasonal Homes and Snowbird Checklists

A house that sits empty for months is where a small drip turns into ruined flooring, because nobody is there to notice. Before you leave for the summer:

• Shut off the main water supply to the house
• Turn the water heater off, or use its vacation setting if it has one
• Open a faucet briefly after the main is off to relieve pressure in the lines
• Ask whoever checks on the house to look under sinks, behind toilets and around the water heater

When you get back, open the main slowly. On an electric water heater, make sure the tank has refilled before you turn the power back on. Run every sink, tub and shower for a minute to refill the drain traps and clear out air and discolored water.

Then take a quick look at ceilings and walls near bathrooms. If something looks off, get it checked now. A slow leak left alone for another month does a lot more damage than it did the first week.

What Happens When You Call Us

We’d rather ask a few questions up front than show up guessing. On the phone, expect us to ask what you’re seeing, when it started, what kind of property it is, and whether you’re on city water or a well.

At the visit, the goal is to find the cause before any work starts. That might mean checking the meter, testing fixtures, or looking into a drain line. Once we know what’s going on, we explain it in plain terms and lay out your options, including when a repair makes sense and when replacing something is the better call. You decide how to go forward.

When the work is finished, we clean up the area we worked in. You can see the kinds of fixes we handle on our plumbing repairs page.

Homes and Businesses Need Different Things

The pipe might be the same, but the priorities aren’t. At a house, it’s usually one household, a kitchen and a few bathrooms, and scheduling comes down to when someone can be home. At a restaurant, office, store or multi-unit building, downtime costs money, more people depend on the fixtures, and the work often has to fit around business hours or tenants.

Homeowners can start with residential plumbing, which links out to bathroom plumbing and kitchen plumbing. Business owners and property managers should head to commercial plumbing.