Answers for the house you own

Read these before an emergency and you will know where your valves are, what a healthy sump sounds like, and when a drain problem is yours to fix with a plunger or ours to fix with a camera and a cable. None of them asks you to do anything risky: where a job needs a licensed gas fitter or a permit, we say so.

Several of them suit a quiet Saturday morning: a flashlight, a pail of water and twenty minutes in the basement will teach you more about your own plumbing than most people ever learn. Keep a notebook by the panel with the date of each check, so the next visit has a baseline and you can tell when something has quietly changed since last season.

If you read one of these and still are not sure what you are looking at, ring us and describe it, or text a photo once we are on the line. We would rather spend five minutes on the phone than have you force a valve or pour something caustic down a drain.