Sump pumps are very common in Edmonton. Almost every house that I have gone into has a sump pump from the time the house was built.
The purpose of the sump pump is to take any water that is about 2 to 3 feet below your basement and pump the water safely out and away from your house. If you are installing a sump pump in your house for the first time make sure that the discharge pipe goes at least 2 feet past your house. Continue reading
If you are doing any sort of building work do you need a permit?
I was on a forum last night that people were talking about the costs of gas lines. Everybody was saying they hire guys off of Kijiji because those guys were the cheapest price. And better yet it these guys will do the work without a permit. Great! Continue reading
I received a call from a guy this morning to come do a service call for him. He asked how much the job was going to be and I explained that I can’t see what he is talking about, but most likely less than an hour plus travel time. He wondered why I would charge him travel time to get to his new house. I started to explain to him that all services that work at multiple locations per day need to charge travel time. Continue reading
Which system would you rather have in your house or garage forced air or radiant heat? Most people would say radiant heat based on efficiency and comfort while others will say forced air based on initial cost.
There is two types of forced air heating systems. The most common is using a standard furnace. The second type is using a fan coil or water furnace. Both of these use the standard duct system to transfer the heat from the medium to the room being heated. The reason the forced air system with the standard furnace is the most common is because of the cost to heat each room. Continue reading
As I do a lot of renovation, repair and replacement plumbing work in the city of Edmonton, I see a lot of people’s houses. For the most part they only have shutoff valves at the main by the meter and at each toilet. Most people are not happy about having no shutoffs underneath their sinks and think it is just because the builder was ripping them off. Continue reading
I am not a huge fan of tankless water heaters, but I have to say that I have only installed a couple of these. The first one I installed was quite a few years ago and after I had installed it I found that the flow rate was much to slow to fill the bathtub. The homeowners were furious. Not at me, as I did not sell them the product just installed the one they had bought. Continue reading