Plumbing Services in Richardson, TX

Most repairs run $150 to $600. A toilet or faucet repair is $150 to $400. A drain clearing is $150 to $350, and a main line clearing is $250 to $600. A water heater replacement is $1,200 to $3,500. A slab leak is $1,500 to $15,000 depending on where it is and how we have to reach it. We quote a flat rate once we have looked at the job, not before.

Much of Richardson was built in the 1950s and 1960s, which means cast iron drain lines. Cast iron lasts 50 to 75 years, and it fails by corroding from the inside until the interior surface goes rough and starts catching everything. The symptom is not a dramatic collapse, it is repeat clogs. If you are clearing the same line every few months, you may not be buying drain cleaning, you may be renting time on a pipe that is finished. A camera inspection, $150 to $400, tells you which.

That combination almost always means galvanized steel supply pipe, which is very common in 1950s and 1960s Richardson homes. Galvanized rusts from the inside out, so the opening narrows every year. There is no repair that fixes it, because the whole system is closing off at the same rate. Fix one section and another leaks next year. That is when a repipe stops being an upsell and starts being the answer.

Usually a slab leak, a hot water line failing under the foundation. North Texas clay swells and shrinks with the weather, the slab moves, and the copper underneath moves with it until something rubs through. Other signs are a water bill that jumped and stayed up, the sound of running water when everything is off, and new cracks in the slab or drywall. It is the most commonly overlooked serious plumbing symptom in this area.

Not necessarily. We locate it first with acoustic listening equipment and thermal imaging, which narrows it to a small area before anybody touches anything. From there there are usually options: open the slab in one spot, tunnel underneath from outside, or abandon the bad line entirely and reroute it overhead. Which one is right depends on where the leak is and what shape the rest of the plumbing is in.

No. We are Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and if you call before noon we can usually get out the same day. After hours and weekends carry a flat $199 dispatch fee, quoted on the phone before anyone gets in a truck. If what you have can wait until morning, we will tell you and save you the money.

Sometimes, and sometimes we will tell you no. Hydro jetting is powerful, and if a cast iron pipe has corroded thin enough, the jet can go straight through the wall of it. Then a $500 problem becomes a $6,000 problem. We camera it first and tell you honestly what you are looking at rather than jetting blind.

Run the meter test. Turn off every faucet, appliance, ice maker, and irrigation zone, then look at your water meter and find the small triangle or dial that spins when water moves. If it is moving with nothing running, water is going somewhere. One caveat: a leaking toilet trips this test. Put food coloring in each tank, wait twenty minutes without flushing, and if color appears in a bowl, that is your answer and it is a $15 flapper.

In Richardson it is often at the street rather than the garage, in a rectangular box in the ground near the curb marked WATER. A lot of the older houses here only have the street one. Go find it today, turn it off, and turn it back on. You learn where it is, and you find out whether it still works, because sixty-year-old valves seize. A meter key for the street box is about $15.

If one sink or tub is slow and everything else works, it is that fixture. If the toilet backs up when the washing machine drains, if the tub gurgles when you flush, or if more than one fixture is backing up, the problem is in your main line. If it is the main line, stop running water anywhere in the house, because everything you send down is coming back up.

Much of Richardson went up in the 1950s and 1960s, and that shows up four ways. Cast iron drain lines at the end of their 50 to 75 year service life. Galvanized supply pipe rusting closed from the inside. Slab leaks, because the clay soil moves and takes the copper with it. And original shutoff valves that have seized and will not close when you need them.

Yes. Cities require permits and inspections for water heaters, gas work, repiping, and sewer repair. A lot of the market skips it, because a permit means an inspector shows up and looks at the work. It becomes a problem later, when you sell the house and the buyer's inspector finds it. We pull them, itemize them separately, and do not mark them up.

Leave the building. Do not flip a switch, unplug anything, or use your phone inside, because any spark can ignite it. Get everyone and any pets out and leave the door open behind you. From a safe distance outside, call 911 and Atmos Energy at 866-322-8667. Atmos runs a 24 hour line and will come shut the gas off at no charge. Call us afterward at 214-918-6109 for the repair.