Your sump pump is one of the most important components there is when it comes to your plumbing system. It helps prevent water damage from flooding, and goes to work automatically as excess water gathers in the sump (a pit). Then, that water is pumped out either into the municipal wastewater supply or a well.
Of course, not all homes in the Madison area have basements, and not all neighborhoods are susceptible to flood risks. However, sump pumps definitely have their place for the homeowners who do benefit from them. Whether it’s snowmelt or a plumbing burst, your home can certainly accumulate a lot of property damage without a functioning sump pump, from rotted wood and mold growth to other hazards caused by the excessive and stagnant moisture.
What if you already know all this and have a sump pump in place already? That’s great! Now is the perfect time to test it and make sure it’s ready for the coming season!
We could all use a bit of extra spending money, but those monthly bills get in the way. Often, homeowners are paying a lot more than they have to on home necessities without realizing it. Some small changes to the way you use and maintain your heating system can help it to run more smoothly and reduce your monthly spending on energy and fuel costs.
It’s certainly not a fun topic to address. But the more time you spend on preventing repairs for an essential item like a toilet, or addressing them the right way, the less you’ll have to worry about them. It’s so frustrating when something you use and need every day, like a toilet, is out of order or difficult to use properly. We want to help.
Your heater has started to act strangely, making weird noises or having trouble at startup, but you’re not sure you should get it serviced just yet. You don’t want to spend money fixing a heater that is still working, after all, and you feel you might as well wait and see what happens. But this logic is flawed: your heating system won’t fix itself!
When you’re shopping around for a new furnace, you might start to develop a new vocabulary. There’s the AFUE—Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency—that helps you determine the efficiency of your new system. And another set of terms you may see used often are as follows: “one-stage,” “two-stage,” and “modulating” furnace.
The boiler is an incredibly reliable heating system. Many people keep their boilers for decades (although this can be unsafe, and we recommend replacing them before their 15-20 year lifespan is up). Yet, boilers can still run into their share of trouble. One of the most common issues our customers come across in a gas hydronic boiler has to do with something called scaling.
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In general, we don’t recommend that you attempt to troubleshoot a boiler on your own, and certainly don’t believe the average homeowner should attempt to make repairs to a hot water boiler. This could be dangerous, and time-consuming when you don’t know what to look for. Technicians with the proper training can come to your home and make a quick assessment with all the tools they need to do so.
There are some things you own that you may replace well before they fail on you. For instance, you might replace your smartphone with the latest and greatest model primarily to take advantage of the camera. You replace your furniture even though it’s still in decent shape just to get a better color or upholstery.
Heating systems have improved in many ways since we first became a company in 1912. The most noticeable and needed improvement has been in terms of safety. Today’s heating systems don’t even require you to keep a pilot light lit. They can ignite themselves with electronic ignition systems, and only when the thermostat calls for heat.