Can I Prevent Leaking Water Heater? | VIP Plumbing Plans

In this weeks Facebook Live Q&A The Potty Mouth Guys discuss water damage resulting from an old water heater, insurance claims, our VIP Memberships and more.

We’re live. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in the day. Richard Saad John Eccles. Hey John How are ya? Pretty good. How you doing? I’m doing fantastic today. We’ve got a great show for you today guys. We’re going to be discussing water heaters and we’re going to be discussing VIP maintenance program. These two questions came from was the first one. Um Melissa in the 77005 zip code. And then we got Dale in the 77008 zip code. Actually, that’s wrong. I Apologize, I looked it up wrong. It’s 77025 Okay. So right next to West University? Yes. Okay, that’s great. A little bit behind West U. Okay. That’s great. I like that. So today we got some exciting news and of course when we do these shows, we can’t cover every single item and I want to make you guys aware of that. This is going to be. We’re giving you a little bit of meat, but any questions or concerns that you have, you can always call me and you can call John. We’re literally here 24/7. Plumbing Doesn’t sleep kind of break when it feels like breaking. Right? That’s exactly right. So let’s get to the first question, Melissa, again, from 77005 says that she recently had a leaking water heater in her attic, which happened to cause some major damage. Her question is, is there any way that it possibly could have been prevented?

Great question. I like that question. Okay, so you guys, the number one insurance loss in the state of Texas is water damage. Now water damage is created from what? Typically plumbing. So plumbing is the number one insurance loss in the state of Texas. Is that incredible to think around that? That’s pretty incredible. It beats wind it beats everything there we people have no idea how much water has damaged the state of Texas insurance companies do not like plumbing companies. And that is because a whole lot of guys in our field have created that damage. Yeah. So let’s get more specific in into the meat of this question. Water heaters in the attic. So Texas is one of the states that allow water heaters to be installed in the attic and I actually disagree with that. I think, uh, they should not be in the attic but it doesnt matter of what I think and it would stop a lot of this damage water heaters last seven to 10 years and we hear people all day long.

We tell them that, hey, you need to replace your water heater and it’s 15 years old and they’re bragging. Why do I need to replace it? Oh, I guess they know more than what we know. So what are you going to do with somebody like that? I don’t know, but I hear it all the time. Oh, we are. Last water heater lasted 20 years. Well, fantastic. It’s a ticking time bomb once it goes past age 10. So at age 10 you should always throw away the water heater and that is why it’s extremely important to have a professional in your home. And when he is, they’re asking to look at the water heater. If you ever have a plumbing company in your home, right? A lot of people is, it’s plumbing is

not a heavy use call, you know, I mean, we might have the same client call us every five years maybe, or reactive in nature.

Yes, but there’s some things that you can do to help prevent this specifically yearly. It needs to be looked at, the fittings, the piping structures, all of that can rust in the attic a and you and we see that often, um, the connections can rust and the pipe coming out of the water heater can rust. Uh, the burner needs to be cleaned. Um, the manufacturer for the TMP valve mandatory two years or two years to be tested. You know what? I think it’s tested every two and you should throw them away every three no matter what. So I think it could be, but I know at three you need to throw away your tmp valve. Who does that? I would say less than one percent of Houston does that. You’re throwing away a. well, I went with a tankless. I never throw money away and I’m in the seven years.

Yeah, exactly. Um, but I, I went with a tankless so that’s a little bit different story. That was 12 years ago, um, because my water heater broke as well and luckily I can tell you guys this, my water heater was in the garage and if it had been in the attic I would have had up to $100,000 worth of damage as bad as this thing broke. When I got home from work, water was streaming out of my garage. I mean I’m not talking, it was just a little drip. It was over an inch deep in my garage throughout the whole thing. Well, and then it was evacuating out the garage door. Okay. So let’s talk about your situation. We’ll fast forward or how often did you check your water heater in your garage? Typical homeowner as we all are, and I didn’t check it, but my defense, it broke at age seven and they last seven to 10.

So no matter what you should throw it, throw it away. I agree with that a thousand percent, but proper maintenance with at least if you eyeballs on it on a maybe not a, you still might fall into the category where something bad might happen, but that yearly maintenance would absolutely maybe catch something before it does. Correct. Now the things that we don’t have x Ray Vision on, if you’ve got connections that go into that tank, those are the failure point when it comes to that water holding in that tank, so when that occurs, that’s when you get that. It’s called the tank leak. Right, but we can’t tell if that’s ever gonna happen because it’s all covered. You can’t get to it, you can’t see it, but what we can do is look at everything on the outside, which could be a good indication of what’s going on on the inside along with cleaning the burner assembly and making sure everything is firing properly.

You are supposed to do this yearly is the same thing as changing the oil in your car. If you don’t change the oil in your car, what do you think is going to happen? I don’t think the outcome is going to be great over time. So what if I’m a homeowner and I know that I’m going to be lousy about the maintenance, right? I’m going to kind of take you down a path and I’m sure it’s a path that we’re going to go anyway, but is there a product that can help with this? Great question. I like that because there is a, they make a product that automatically shuts off the water to that water here because what happens when this thing gets a hole in it, it just keeps trying to fill. It never shuts off, but the water is going out of the tank.

Then it’s evacuating throughout your entire possible, possibly throughout the entire house. So there is a product and it is a fantastic product. We try to use it as much as possible, try to explain the benefit of it, but their flood prevention stops. So as soon as it detects water, uh, into that pan of that water heater, it shuts the water down immediately and that will prevent a, an insurance loss. No plumbing’s becoming just like any other, I guess, industry just becoming more technological, right and more smart and I mean there’s some fantastic products coming out and maybe we can discuss in the future one, but this is one that’s been out for awhile. It’s, it’s tested and proven and it absolutely works. You know, we try to recommend, especially for customers that have water heaters in the attic, it’s a really good addition to your water heater. That way if it’s going to prevent the loss, it’s just the bottom line preventing the loss and forget the, the monetary, the insurance because most people have insurance is gonna cover it. It’s just the time, the stress, all those things that go along with a big loss like that, that we actually had a technician here that his a water heater broke in the attic and that insurance it was on. He had two stories, so it was in the attic and it went down all two stories and it was a 70 something thousand dollar loss.

That’s crazy. Yeah, and that stays with you, you guys. That doesn’t come off your record. Just so you know, people are like, oh, it’s okay and we can have an insurance loss now. It’s not really. Okay. Eventually catch up. Okay. Question two. Yeah. So in saying this, if you guys have any questions, call me, email me or send it in through facebook and we will address it next week. Absolutely.

So moving on. Alright, so dale from 77025. And this is kind of an interesting one. He says that he was on our website kind of perusing and looking around and he came across our VIP membership. Right, which you hadn’t seen in the past. And his question is he understands quite a bit of the benefits of it, but he wants to know why we would, we would, we would recommend being a member versus just being like everybody, you know, most of the people and being reactive. I got a problem. Let me call him now. So we’re, we’re going to address that. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about it a little bit at the beginning. Uh, so, uh, not only does the VIP membership have tons of benefits as far as direct benefits, right? Cost savings on additional repairs, priority scheduling, all those great things that you read about.

Um, the biggest thing is, is we are very reactive in nature and we wait for something to happen and you’re normally at anything that is a reactive problem. If you catch it prior to in a proactive manner, normally it’s less expensive, right? Because you catch it before it becomes a catastrophe. It, uh, is less downtime because normally your scheduling on your, on your plan or on your schedule rather than, Oh man, I got a busted water pipe. I to have it looked at now. Right? Oh, we got this going on this week, that going on this week. Uh, this could not happen. When was the last time something bad happened at a good time? Just doesn’t happen or it happens on a Friday night at about 8:00. I ruined your weekend. So the reason why we recommend the membership is, is it’s, it’s going to be very maintenance.

Kind of like the water year that we were just talking about, right? We want to address and find things in your home, uh, that might be a problem for you in the future. And, and hopefully the best thing is that we come out to your own and we tell you, hey, you got an a plus home. Everything’s great. There’s not a problem in the world. You shouldn’t have anything come up, right? It should be awesome. Um, it’s very far and few between, unless you’re in a new home that happens. Normally there’s little things that turn into big problems, you know, supply lines that the lighter about the bust or corroded pipes that you’re not aware of because you never go in the attic. All sorts of different things that can go on and your plumbing system that we just don’t look at. So let me tell people truly what this is going to give you.

I think I can read your mind right? Is it three words? It could be. Okay, got it. But probably not. Uh, you know, me, I can’t ever say three words. It goes a lot longer, but this without me coming to moving into your house, this is the closest thing that you can get because we’re going to be there immediately. This is the VIP plant, right? They’re paying for this. You get priority scheduling, right? So this is actually the closest thing you’re going to get besides me moving in, right? We’re going to be quick, we’re going to get you fixed and it’s going to be done and over with, and you go along with your life and not have to worry about these maintenance issues or flooding issues or whatever other issues you’re worried about around the plumbing side only folks and you get to know your home and get to know your home.

You haven’t, we, we explain a lot of that. We show you where the shutoff valve is. We show you different items so you know what to do. So in case numbers and see does happen. These, this is the process and we go through that. So what other benefits are they going to get besides me almost moving in with them. You know, the three words that I thought you were going to say, I thought you were saying it gives you peace of mind. It does. It gives you peace of mind. Say, Hey, that, you know, we get a professional out there to go through your plumbing system, show you what’s going on. Again, you get to know your home a little bit better. So if something does go wrong in the future and even if it’s at the next house, the next house, right? You kind of have that education the back of your head of hey, these are the things that look for, this is how you need to react to this situation. You know, along with all that, with the VIP program, obviously, right? Uh, we check your sewer line for you. If you have a ground accessible, clean out that stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do no matter who you were going to put a camera in your line and were basically free. Yeah. We’d take a telescopic lens attached to a snake and send it out on the shoreline. So that way you can see what underground, which your is looking like, kind of like a colon exam.

That’s a good example. Hopefully the pipes are clean, good with that. But um, you get, you know, we have 10 percent off then service with no Max. So that’s one of the benefits. That’s a huge benefit. So if you are needing the service, the water meter. Yeah. Oh yeah. We checked the water heater and clean it. We do a visual inspection of the entire house. Yeah, I’m talking from top to bottom. We make sure that everything’s acting right and if we do find a problem while you’re there, right? We’re normally there. We normally have the parts on a fully stock truck to take care of any normal plumbing problem that comes up. So if we do find an issue, we can go ahead and take care of it. That way it’s on your schedule, so on your time. A lot less headache, a lot less stress and hopefully, but less money.

We catch it before it becomes something bigger. Crazy. And so that’s the benefit that I’ve, you know, that’s why we encourage our customers to enroll in it. You know, it’s um, you know, this world is becoming more of a maintenance place anyway where, you know, a long time ago everybody was reactive in nature. Yeah. Everything. Well now everything’s proactive. We want to be proactive. We want to, we want to take care of small problems before they become big problems. Do you know how to be proactive? Put us on speed down. I like that. I like, that’s being proactive and put us on speed dial because it’s not. If something happens when it happens, right. That’s your bottom line. That is true. I mean, something was gonna happen. I mean, we’re not going to go through her whole life for that. Okay. Plumbing problem. Yeah, it’s true. It’s when you put us on speed dial and if you do the VIP plane then you get moved up on the line and we’re there. Yeah, absolutely. Did we skip over anything and you want to add anything to it? I think we’ve covered all that VI plan. This is on our website. You can go read about it, you can understand it, and again, let’s go back to any questions that you have. John and I are here. Don’t hesitate. You can pick up the phone and call. You can message us. Our email addresses are on our website so you can get either one of us. We’re always accessible for you.

Okay. This is how we have this week. That’s all we got. Thank you guys. We’ll see you next week. See Ya next week and it’s up with questions.