Do You Know What Lives Behind Your Walls?

By Billy Aldridge

Unless there is a water stain on the sheet rock most people do not even consider what lurks behind their walls.  That’s a shame, since if your house is more than twenty years old there can be any number of nasty 

Cast Iron and copper DWV (Drain, Waste and Vent) Piping in a Timber Residential Building in Mission, British Columbia, Canada in the 1980s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

things that can happen with old pipes that can cost you way more than a simple repair if they should either leak or burst.  While a burst pipe can get your attention fast, slow leaks can cause as much or more damage if left unchecked, since these can cause mold. Of course, just because your house was built before 1960 doesn’t mean that the pipes are the ones originally installed when the house was built.  To find out what’s living behind your walls you need to remove an access panel or two in order to do a little detective work.

Sherlock Homes to the Rescue

Homes built during the twenties and thirties were fitted out with galvanized pipes, which are easy to detect since they are battleship gray and have knobby joints.  If you detect these lines in your walls, you need to look for corrosion, since steel rusts.  You also need to test for flow since galvanized pipes tend to rust from the inside out.  To do this, turn on the taps one at a time, since the hot water side tends to rust faster than the cold water side.  If the flow for one side seems slower than the other, this is a sure sign of internal corrosion slowly but surely  clogging the pipe.

If your house was built in the 1950’s then your pipes could very well be copper.  This is good and bad.  It’s good because copper pipes practically last forever, since they are highly resistant to corrosion.  It’s bad, because copper is very expensive to repair.  In fact it’s so expensive that it isn’t unusual for houses with copper piping to have the pipes stolen if left vacant for any length of time.

Newer homes on the other hand have plastic pipes that never rust, are easy to install and repair and are even color coordinated (red for hot water and blue for cold).  It’s still a good idea to eyeball these at least once per year since they tend to leak at the joints and connections when they do leak.   

Speaking of connections, the larger pipes that carry the water from your drains, sinks, tubs, dishwasher and 

English: Under Slab Leak Repair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

washing machine also bear scrutiny.  These are known in the industry as waste pipes, and they live beneath your home.  Homes built before 1970 typically have cast iron pipes which people back then thought would last forever.  Since iron like steel rusts, these waste pipes tend to get rough with age which can start to restrict the flow.  They also tend to get what are known as pit holes that can slowly but surely bore completely through the pipe until they begin to leak.  Repairing these pipes can be expensive, since cast iron waste pipes are heavy and difficult to work with.

If your home was built in the 70’s, then PVC waste pipes came into vogue.  Since these plastic pipes are much lighter than cast iron, they are much easier to repair.  Since plastic never rusts, they are also much more reliable and less likely to clog.  The only downside is that roots can find egress into these pipes through even the tiniest of crack which is why you need to contact a plumbing professional if water seems slow to drain or starts to back up.  Particularly here in Florida where afternoon gulley washers are the norm, the last thing you want to do is let your waste pipes clog before a major storm comes to call.  Then you’ll really find out what lives behind your walls, since flooding almost always requires the removal of water damaged sheetrock. 

Billy Aldridge is one of the Doctors of Plumbology with Aldridge and Sons Plumbing.  For mor helpful tips and how-to videos visit http://plumbers-jacksonville-fl.com