Plumbing Inspections & Maintenance in Springfield IL

More than likely, you won’t be able to because you haven’t had a professional plumber’s experience from working on hundreds of systems a year, finding which products work best, last longest, and give you the least problems. Remember, cheap work is not good and good work is not cheap. When you hire a trained professional to do a job, part of what you are paying for is this expertise. This is true with other trades as well: electricians can’t provide a warranty for fans and fixtures you buy at a retail store; tile setters know from experience that they can waste a lot of valuable time struggling to set tile that an owner bought on sale from a discount store because such tiles are often “seconds” which cannot be set straight; a carpenter can’t properly hang an odd-ball door. Bottom line: It usually takes more time to try to make an inferior product fit or work properly than to use the right materials the first time.  

Well, we think it’s very important to have a back-up pump of some type. If you have an electric primary pump (likely) you have 3 pump options for back-up redundancy: 1) an additional electric; 2) a battery-powered; or 3) a water-driven. After all, if you didn’t care about water in your basement, you probably wouldn’t care about having a primary sump pump in the first place! It’s sort of like wanting to get to your destination in a car with no spare tire…you’re “rolling the dice” without a back-up. Unfortunately electric pumps themselves have limited service-lives, often fail, and leave many basements flooded. Not pretty. A properly installed secondary electric is a good choice as long as your city power is on. Under certain conditions, a better choice might be a battery-powered. As a matter of fact, many backup pumps installed in the past were battery-powered. Of course they only work if the battery has been maintained, and is fully charged and fresh. Once the battery wears down after a few hours, if your city power isn’t back in service, you’re back to “square one” with no way to keep the basement dry. The battery-powered was certainly better than nothing at all. But the best is yet to come:

Nowadays, we highly recommend installing a high quality water-powered back-up sump pump. It’s clearly the best choice.  It has very few moving parts, and requires no battery and no electricity. The big reasons a water-driven pump is best: 1) It requires virtually no maintenance and it will just about last forever; 2) Groundwater typically becomes a problem when there are storms and the odds of power outages always increase with storms. Unless you have your own standby generator, the water-driven pump will be there to pump day and night without missing a beat no matter how long it rains…when the primary sump pump stops due to lack of electricity, and the battery back-up stops due to an exhausted battery; 3) Importantly, the water-driven will pump more water out of your basement faster than the typical battery sump pump and often as much or more than the electric primary pumps. Water-driven…the best choice for peace-of-mind and proper groundwater removal. Our choice.

Backflow Prevention Devices (often called RPZ’s or Cross Connection Devices (CCDs)) are an important part of many plumbing systems. Basically they help prevent the possibility of contaminants getting into your drinking water. The were mandated by the IL EPA a number of years ago in many applications involving potable (drinking) water. Accordingly, the EPA required that special training (approx. 32 hours) and subsequent licensing was required for both Backflow Installation and Servicing. Only Journeyman Plumbers already licensed by the IL Dept. of Public Health are allowed to undertake the training and be issued a Certified Backflow license on successful completion. Our Backflow crews are of course fully licensed.