Your home or business’ plumbing system is one of its most vital comfort systems. The plumbing system is tasked with the seemingly simple but incredibly important job of ushering fresh, clean water into your space and banishing wastewater from that space and into a septic tank or sewer system. The parallel systems of pipes that send these types of water to and from your space make clever use of gravity and pressure to minimize pumps and other complicating factors. It’s all a bit more impressive than it might seem — and, unfortunately, a bit more precarious.
Don’t get us wrong: Modern plumbing systems are amazing things, and they’re very resistant to problems. But if you neglect your plumbing system, you’ll find out that no system is immune from potential disasters. Without proper care and maintenance, your system will suffer problems and possibly even catastrophic failures.
But plumbing repairs and maintenance are expensive — right? Not so much as you might think. Read on.
How to lose money on plumbing
Here’s one way that some people try to save money on plumbing: They avoid making necessary repairs and try not to pay much for maintenance.
In the short term, this strategy might appear to work. Certainly, such home and business owners are paying less to their plumbing contractors. But, unfortunately for these folks, the strategy falls apart pretty dramatically in the long term.
A neglected plumbing system does not become stronger or better. Problems with a plumbing system do not solve themselves. Instead, issues will grow and problems will become worse. And you don’t have to be a professional plumber to understand that bigger problems tend to cost more to fix than smaller problems do. So when you postpone maintenance, you end up paying more in the form of higher repair costs.
Unless, that is, you refuse to fix things even when the problem is big and expensive. What then? Well, then your plumbing system could fail you in dramatic ways. The results could include flooding and water damage. You might even deal with backflow, a disgusting, unsanitary, and dangerous problem that happens when sewage flows the wrong way in your pipes and ends up emerging from your plumbing fixtures and contaminating your home. Needless to say, the costs of fixing such issues — and the costs of repairing the damage such issues can cause to your home or business property — can be very steep indeed!
Plumbers wish you knew not to wait for a crisis to call them. To learn that lesson, and start actually saving money on plumbing.
How to actually save money on plumbing
Though it may seem counterintuitive to some, the real way to save money on plumbing is to spend money on it.
As a home or business owner, you need to invest in proactive maintenance and immediate repairs to small problems. When you do that, you’ll ensure that you’re getting the most cost-effective path to a smoothly operating plumbing system, the experts at the appropriately named plumbing firm Intelligent Service explain.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll always have to pay top dollar for plumbing. Many trusted professionals charge reasonable rates and building a good relationship with a reliable plumber or plumbing contracting company can help you stay on top of maintenance in the most cost-effective way possible. Business owners, in particular, may be able to save money by signing long-term maintenance contracts.
Owning a home or a business doesn’t always come cheap, but you can do a lot to limit the financial damage that a plumbing problem can cost you. Invest in preventative maintenance and act fast when you encounter a plumbing problem, and you’ll be far better off in the long term.
