Plumbing answers for Colorado Front Range homes.

Pipes are at real risk once the outside temperature drops to about 20°F or lower for several hours, and sooner if the pipe is in an unheated crawl space, garage, or outside wall, or if wind is reaching it. On the Front Range that happens several times most winters.

The trouble spots are predictable: hose bibs with a hose still attached, pipes in exterior walls behind kitchen and bathroom cabinets, crawl-space plumbing, and lines above an unheated garage. The fast temperature drops that come with Arctic fronts catch more homes than steady cold does, because the house has not been prepared.

Keep the heat at 55°F or higher even when you are away, open the cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls, disconnect garden hoses, and let a thin stream of water run from faucets fed by vulnerable pipes during the coldest hours.

Before winter, close crawl-space vents, seal the gaps where pipes and wires pass through the rim of the house, and insulate exposed pipe in garages and crawl spaces. If you leave town in winter, ask someone to check the house daily; a furnace or boiler that fails while you are away is how most whole-house freeze-ups begin.

Open the faucet the pipe feeds, then warm the frozen section gently with a hair dryer, a heating pad or a space heater kept clear of anything that can burn. Start at the faucet end and work back. Never use a torch or any open flame.

If you cannot reach the frozen section, if no water runs anywhere in the house, or if you see a bulge or split in the pipe, shut off the main water valve and call a plumber. A frozen pipe often does not leak until it thaws, so keep an eye on it and know where your main shut-off is before you begin.

Shut off the main water valve right away. In most Front Range homes it is in the basement or crawl space where the water line comes through the foundation wall facing the street, often near the water heater. Then open a faucet on the lowest level to drain the pressure.

If water is near outlets, a panel or appliances, keep away from it and switch off power to that area at the breaker only if you can reach the panel on dry footing. Move what you can out of the water, take photos for your insurance company, and call a plumber. If you cannot find or turn the main valve, your water provider can shut the water off at the meter.

Have the sprinkler system blown out before the first hard freeze, which usually means by mid-October in the Denver area; the average first freeze arrives in early October. Disconnect every garden hose at the same time.

The part of a sprinkler system that freezes first is the backflow preventer, the brass assembly that sits above ground near the house. It can split in a single cold night. If an early freeze is forecast before your blow-out, shut off the sprinkler supply valve inside the house and wrap the backflow assembly with insulation or towels and a plastic cover.

A frost-free hose bib only drains if the hose is removed. With a hose left on, water stays trapped in the long stem inside the wall, freezes and splits the tube. Nothing leaks until the first time you turn the faucet on in spring, and then the water runs inside the wall or into the basement.

If you see water inside when the outdoor faucet is running, turn it off and leave it off. The fix is replacing the hose bib, which is a common repair after every Colorado winter. Taking the hoses off each fall is what prevents it.

Shut off the cooler’s supply valve inside the house, disconnect the small water line at the cooler, and drain both the line and the cooler pan before the first freeze. The thin supply tube that runs up the outside wall to the roof freezes easily and will split if it is left full.

Evaporative coolers are common on older Denver-area homes, and the forgotten water line is a regular source of spring leaks. If the shut-off valve drips or will not close completely, have it replaced before winter instead of counting on it.

A tank water heater typically lasts about 8 to 12 years, and a tankless water heater can last 20 years or more with regular maintenance. Hard water and skipped maintenance shorten both.

The age is on the rating plate, usually coded into the serial number. Once a tank is past ten years, or shows rust at the fittings, moisture in the pan, or rumbling when it heats, plan the replacement instead of waiting for a leak. A tank that fails on its own schedule usually does it onto a finished basement floor.

Yes. Air at a mile high holds less oxygen, so a gas burner produces less heat than its sea-level rating. The traditional rule is about 4% less for every 1,000 feet of elevation, which is roughly a fifth less at Denver’s altitude unless the appliance is certified or adjusted for it.

That matters most when sizing a tankless water heater or boiler, and when setting up a new gas appliance: many need a high-altitude setting or parts so they burn cleanly. Water also boils at about 202°F in Denver instead of 212°F. A plumber who works at altitude every day sizes and sets equipment for it; a chart written for sea level will undersize it.

It often is, for households that run out of hot water or want the floor space back, provided it is sized for Colorado conditions. Winter water arrives much colder here than in warm states, and a tankless heater delivers fewer gallons per minute the more it has to raise the temperature.

A good installation looks at three things before a price is given: the gas line (tankless units draw far more gas at full fire than a tank does), the venting route, and how many fixtures you really use at once. Tankless heaters also need descaling, more often where the water is hard. Jason at Waterworx is a certified Rinnai tankless water heater technician and can tell you whether your house is a good fit.

Rumbling and popping come from sediment on the bottom of the tank. Minerals settle out of heated water, and steam bubbles forming under that layer make the noise. It is a sign of age and scale more than an immediate danger.

Sediment makes the burner work harder and shortens the tank’s life. Flushing can help a newer tank; on an old tank that has never been flushed it sometimes does little, and the drain valve may not reseal afterward. If the noise comes with leaking, rusty water or a relief valve that drips, have it looked at.

When only the hot water smells, the cause is usually a reaction between the water heater’s anode rod and bacteria that occur naturally in some water, more often well water. It produces hydrogen sulfide gas, which smells like sulfur.

A plumber can disinfect the tank and change the anode rod to a different type, which normally solves it. If cold water smells as well, the source is the water supply or the drain, not the heater. A sulfur or rotten-egg smell in the air that is not coming from the water should be treated as a possible gas leak: leave the house and call your gas utility or 911 from outside.

Water coming from the bottom of the tank itself means the tank has failed and needs to be replaced; it will not seal back up. Close the cold-water valve on the pipe above the heater to stop it refilling, and call a plumber.

Check first where the water really comes from. Drips at the pipe connections on top, at the drain valve, or from the relief valve’s discharge pipe can often be repaired. If a gas water heater is leaking heavily, shut the water off and call; do not try to work on the gas valve or burner yourself. If you smell gas, leave the house and call the gas utility or 911 from outside.

In nearly every Colorado city and county, yes. Replacing a water heater involves gas or electrical connections, venting and a pressure relief valve, so it requires a permit and an inspection.

The permit comes from your city or county building department, or from the State Plumbing Board where there is no local program. The inspection is there for your benefit: it checks the venting, the gas connection, the relief valve piping and thermal expansion protection. A licensed plumber normally pulls the permit as part of the job.

About 120°F is the usual recommendation for a home. It is hot enough for showers and dishes, limits scald risk, and saves energy compared with higher settings.

Homes with small children or older adults should be especially careful about settings above 120°F, because scalds happen in seconds at 140°F. If you never seem to have enough hot water at 120°F, the answer is usually a larger or different heater, or a mixing valve installed by a plumber, not simply turning the dial up.

Once a year, ideally in early fall before the heating season starts. An annual service checks combustion, the venting, the pressure and expansion tank, the relief valve, the circulator pumps and the safety controls.

Boilers are durable, which is why they get ignored until the first cold night. A yearly visit catches the small things, such as a waterlogged expansion tank or a weeping relief valve, that otherwise turn into a no-heat call in January.

Most home hot-water boilers sit around 12 to 15 psi when cold and rise to roughly 20 psi when hot. The relief valve on a residential boiler is normally set to open at 30 psi.

A gauge that climbs toward 30 and makes the relief valve drip usually points to a failed expansion tank or a fill valve that is letting water in. A gauge near zero means the system has lost water, which often shows up as cold radiators upstairs. Both call for service; do not cap or plug a dripping relief valve.

Air trapped in the piping is the most common cause. Air collects at the high points of a hot-water heating system and blocks the flow, so one room or one floor stays cool while the pipes gurgle.

Other causes are a zone valve that is not opening, a circulator pump that has failed, or low system pressure. Bleeding the air out and finding why it got in, usually low pressure or a leak, is part of a normal boiler service.

Check that the thermostat is calling for heat and has fresh batteries, that the boiler’s power switch is on and its breaker has not tripped, and what the pressure gauge reads. Those three account for a good share of no-heat calls.

Do not try to relight, adjust or take apart the gas burner yourself. If you smell gas, leave the house and call your gas utility or 911 from outside. If a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, get everyone out and call 911. In freezing weather, tell the plumber the heat is out: a house with hot-water heat can freeze its own heating pipes.

Repair it when the problem is a part: a pump, a zone valve, an igniter, an expansion tank. Consider replacing it when the heat exchanger itself is leaking or cracked, when parts are no longer made, or when repairs are adding up on a boiler that is decades old.

Cast-iron boilers commonly run 20 to 30 years or more, so age alone is not the reason. Efficiency is: a modern high-efficiency boiler can use noticeably less gas, but it has to be sized and set up for altitude and matched to your baseboard or radiant system. Ask for both numbers, the repair and the replacement, before you decide.

Most occupied homes on the Front Range run plain treated water. Glycol antifreeze is used when part of the system could freeze, such as a snow-melt loop, piping through a garage or crawl space, or a cabin that sits empty in winter.

Glycol has to be the right type for heating systems, mixed to the right strength, and tested every year or two because it breaks down and turns acidic. It also carries heat a little less well than water, so the system needs to be set up for it. Never add automotive antifreeze to a boiler.

It depends on who supplies it. Water that comes mostly from mountain snowmelt, like much of Denver Water’s supply, tends to be on the softer to moderately hard side. Communities and private wells that draw on groundwater often have noticeably harder water.

Your water provider publishes a water quality report each year that lists hardness, and it is the right place to start. White crust on faucets and shower heads, spotted dishes and a water heater that rumbles are the household signs. Hard water is not a health concern, but scale shortens the life of water heaters, tankless heat exchangers and fixtures.

You may, if your water tests hard and you are seeing scale on fixtures, spotted glassware or shortened water heater life. If your provider’s report shows soft to moderately hard water, a softener is usually optional.

A softener protects water heaters and tankless units, makes soap work better and keeps fixtures cleaner. It also adds a small amount of sodium to the water and needs salt and a drain connection. Many homes leave the kitchen cold tap and the outdoor faucets unsoftened. A plumber can test your water and tell you plainly whether it is worth it.

It is possible in older homes. In Denver Water’s service area, homes built before 1951 are the ones most likely to have a lead service line, the pipe that runs from the main in the street to the house.

Denver Water runs a Lead Reduction Program that identifies these lines, provides water filters to affected households and replaces lead service lines over time at no direct charge to the customer. Check your address with your own water provider. Inside the house, older galvanized pipe and old brass or soldered fittings can also contribute lead, which a plumber can identify.

Most homes should run between about 50 and 70 psi, and plumbing code caps house pressure at 80 psi. Many Front Range neighborhoods have street pressure above that, so the house has a pressure-reducing valve near the main shut-off. When that valve wears out, pressure creeps too high, drops, or swings.

High pressure is hard on water heaters, supply hoses, toilet fill valves and faucets, and it often shows up as banging pipes or a relief valve that drips. Low pressure at one fixture is usually a clogged aerator or cartridge; low pressure everywhere points to the reducing valve, a partly closed valve or a leak. A plumber can put a gauge on a hose bib and read it in a minute.

Both are plastic water pipes with a record of failures. Polybutylene is a gray flexible pipe used in many homes built from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Kitec is a plastic-and-aluminum pipe, often orange for hot and blue for cold with brass fittings, installed roughly from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.

Neither fails on a schedule, but both can split or corrode at fittings without warning, and some insurers ask about them. If you see either where pipes come out of the wall at the water heater or under sinks, have a plumber look at the whole system. Replacing it before a leak is far cheaper than repairing the water damage after one.

In most Colorado homes it is in the basement or crawl space, on the wall that faces the street, where the water line comes in through the foundation. It is often close to the water heater or the pressure-reducing valve. Homes on a slab usually have it in a utility closet or the garage.

There is a second shut-off at the water meter, normally in a pit near the curb or sidewalk; your water provider can close that one. Find your main valve today, make sure it turns, and show everyone in the house. Use it any time a pipe bursts, a fixture will not stop running, or you leave for a long winter trip.

If you have an in-ground sprinkler system, a boiler or another connection where non-drinking water could be drawn back into your pipes, plumbing code requires a backflow preventer on it.

Colorado’s drinking-water rules require water providers to run cross-connection control programs, and many testable backflow assemblies have to be tested each year by a certified tester. Which homes are included varies by provider, so check with yours. Whatever the testing rule, an irrigation backflow assembly must be drained or protected every fall, because it is the first thing to split in a freeze.

In most Front Range cities the homeowner owns and maintains the sewer service line all the way from the house to the connection at the city main, including the part under the sidewalk or street. Check with your city or sanitation district to be certain.

That makes the line’s condition a real cost question in older neighborhoods. Clay pipe, which was standard for decades, has a joint every few feet where tree roots get in, and Colorado’s expansive clay soil shifts and offsets those joints over time.

Yes. A camera inspection of the sewer line costs little compared with a line replacement, and it is the only way to see roots, cracks, sags and collapsed sections before you own them.

It is most valuable on homes built before about 1980, homes with large trees near the line, and any house where drains are slow on the lowest level. Ask for the recording and a note of where any problems are, measured from the cleanout. A standard home inspection does not include it.

When more than one fixture backs up, or water comes up in a basement floor drain or shower when you run the washing machine, the blockage is in the main sewer line, not in a single drain.

Stop running water, because everything you send down will come back up at the lowest drain. Tree roots, a sagging section of pipe and grease are the usual causes. If it keeps returning after cleaning, the pipe itself needs a camera inspection and probably a repair.

A running toilet is almost always a worn flapper that no longer seals, a fill valve that does not shut off, or a float set too high so water spills into the overflow tube.

Put a few drops of food coloring in the tank and wait fifteen minutes without flushing. Color in the bowl means the flapper is leaking. A toilet that runs constantly can waste hundreds of gallons a day, which shows up on the water bill quickly. The parts are inexpensive; if the toilet is old and has been repaired repeatedly, replacing it can make more sense.

Keep grease, fats and oil out of every drain, and keep fibrous or starchy scraps out of the disposal: celery, corn husks, onion skins, potato peels, rice, pasta and coffee grounds. In the toilet, flush only toilet paper. Wipes labeled flushable still clog pipes.

Grease is liquid when hot and solid a few feet down the line, where it collects everything else. Run cold water for a few seconds before and after using the disposal. Skip chemical drain cleaners: they rarely clear the clog, they are hard on older pipe, and they leave caustic water sitting in the drain for whoever opens it next.

Test it a couple of times a year, and before spring snowmelt and summer storms, by slowly pouring a bucket of water into the pit. The float should rise, the pump should start, and the water should leave quickly.

Then walk outside and confirm water is coming out of the discharge pipe and draining away from the foundation. In winter, a discharge line that has frozen shut will stop a healthy pump from moving any water. Pumps commonly last around ten years; if yours is older, loud or slow, replace it before it is needed. A battery backup is worth considering in a finished basement.

Colorado plumbers are licensed by the State Plumbing Board, part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) Division of Professions and Occupations. You can look up any plumber or plumbing contractor by name or license number with DORA’s free online license lookup.

Ask for the license number and check that it is active and what level it is. The state licenses residential plumbers, journeyman plumbers and master plumbers, and it registers plumbing contractors and apprentices. Also ask for proof of liability insurance before work starts.

A master plumber holds the highest plumbing license Colorado issues. It takes about five years of documented experience and passing the state master plumber exam, which covers code, design and the business of running plumbing work.

Colorado’s three license levels are residential plumber, journeyman plumber and master plumber. A registered plumbing contractor must have a master plumber responsible for its work. Jason at Waterworx Plumbing is a Colorado licensed Master Plumber with 27 years of experience.

In general: replacing a water heater or boiler, adding or moving fixtures, repiping, running gas line, and replacing a water service or sewer line all need a permit. Simple repairs and like-for-like swaps of a faucet or toilet usually do not.

Permits are issued by your city or county, or by the State Plumbing Board in areas without a local program, and the rules differ somewhat from one jurisdiction to the next. Before anyone digs for a water or sewer line, a utility locate through Colorado 811 is required by law and is free.

Leave the building immediately and call your gas utility’s emergency line or 911 from outside, well away from the house. For Xcel Energy natural gas customers the emergency number is 1-800-895-2999.

On the way out, do not switch lights or appliances on or off, do not use a phone inside, do not start a car in an attached garage, and do not look for the leak. The utility will make it safe at no charge. Once it is safe, a licensed plumber can repair or replace the gas piping. Colorado law also requires carbon monoxide alarms near bedrooms in most homes with fuel-burning appliances; if one sounds, get outside and call 911.

Yes. In Jason’s own words: “I would be happy to give you a free estimate on any upcoming plumbing projects!” Call the office at (720) 535-4368 or send a request through the contact page.

A useful estimate needs a few facts from you: what is happening, how old the equipment is, where it sits in the house, and photos if you can text them to (720) 930-2952.

Yes. The company’s own words are: “Have a limited budget, we can work out a payment plan that works for both of us.” Tell us when you call and we will talk it through before the work begins.

Plumbing failures rarely arrive at a convenient time. It is better to raise the budget at the estimate than to put off a repair that is doing damage.

Waterworx Plumbing serves the north and south Denver metro from Fort Lupton and Centennial, Colorado, including Brighton, Thornton, Denver, Arvada, Highlands Ranch and Parker.

If you are near those areas and not sure, call the office at (720) 535-4368 and we will tell you straight away whether we can get to you.

In the company’s own words: “We are a faith-based business that always puts our customers first.” The verse the company has chosen for itself is Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

In practice it is a standard for the work: do the job as if the One you answer to is watching, whether or not the customer ever sees behind the wall. Everyone is served the same way.