Plumbing questions, answered straight

We answer emergency calls round the clock and put them ahead of scheduled work. Shut the water off at the main before you call if you can: a property with the water off has stopped getting worse, and that changes what the plumber is dealing with on arrival.

Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. The ZIP codes we cover are 17042 Lebanon, 17046 Lebanon, 17016 Cornwall, 17078 Palmyra, 17003 Annville, 17010 Campbelltown, 17067 Myerstown, 17087 Richland, 17073 Newmanstown, 17088 Schaefferstown, 17038 Jonestown, 17026 Fredericksburg. If your ZIP is not on that list we will tell you rather than waste your time.

Lebanon County, in Central Pennsylvania, between Harrisburg and Reading. Mt. Lebanon is a separate municipality in Allegheny County, roughly 200 miles west outside Pittsburgh, and search results for the two get mixed up constantly. If you are in Mt. Lebanon we cannot reach you.

Yes, residential and commercial. Commercial work differs in ways worth mentioning when you call: grease loading in kitchen lines, flushometer fixtures rather than tank toilets, and the fact that a failure closes a business rather than inconveniencing a household. Tell us it is commercial so the plumber brings the right parts.

Every plumber we send is licensed and insured. Pennsylvania has no statewide plumbing license, so plumbing licenses here are issued locally, by the municipalities that require one. Contractors doing home improvement work also register with the Pennsylvania Attorney General under the Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act. Ask when you call and we will tell you what applies to the plumber coming to your job.

It can be either, and they do opposite things to plumbing. Hard water carries dissolved minerals and leaves white scale on faucets, in aerators and in the bottom of a water heater. Corrosive water is low in pH and takes metal out of the pipes, which shows as blue-green stains, a metallic taste and pinhole leaks in copper. Corrosivity is one of the most common findings in Pennsylvania private wells, and a softener does nothing for it. A water test tells you which one you have, before anyone fits treatment equipment.

Most of those letters say the material is unknown rather than that lead was found. A coin and a magnet on the pipe where it enters your basement tells you a lot in about five minutes, and our lead service line guide walks through it, along with which half of the line the utility handles and which half is yours. Call us with what you find.

Completely. There is no utility standing behind your water, so the pump, the pressure tank, the plumbing and the water quality are all yours. Nobody tests it but you. The most common call is a pressure tank that has lost its charge, which shows up as the pump snapping on and off every few seconds while a faucet runs, and it destroys pumps if it is left.

Regularly, and they have their own patterns. Original galvanized supply corroding inward, cast iron waste stacks roughening, supply lines run through unheated back additions that freeze every winter, and short front yards that make service line work quicker than it would be elsewhere. Access is usually the constraint rather than the plumbing itself.