Easton Plumbing Questions Answered Before You Call

A yearly look at the plumbing you can see is a reasonable habit, and a plumber should look sooner when something changes. Buying a house, a renovation, repeat clogs and a stain that keeps returning are all good reasons. Fall suits the yearly check because Easton averages about 110 days a year below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, according to GLISA climate data. Walk the basement or crawl space with a flashlight, look for damp spots, rust and drips, and note where the main shutoff sits. If a pipe, valve or fixture looks worse than last year, book a visit rather than waiting for a failure.

In Easton the homeowner generally keeps the pipes inside the house and the building drain and lateral that run to the sewer. Chapter 475 of the City code puts the building drain and lateral on the owner. Water is different: the Easton Suburban Water Authority describes an Authority side and a customer side of the service line. Houses built before 1950 may have a lead service lateral on the customer side, which is a reason to ask early. To learn exactly where your line changes hands, call the City for sewer questions or the water authority for supply questions. A plumber can then work on the owner side. For the pipe from the street, see water line repair.

The City of Easton Codes Office handles building permits and inspections under the Pennsylvania Uniform Construction Code. Here is the usual path for a repair or replacement:

1. Find out whether the work requires a permit, for example a heater swap or new gas piping.
2. Either the owner or the contractor can file the permit application through the Codes Office at 123 S 3rd Street, or online.
3. The Codes Office reviews residential applications in up to 15 business days and schedules inspections when the work reaches a checkpoint.
4. Connections to the city sewer may be made only by a plumber registered with the City, which is why the City licensing chapter matters.

One caution: an emergency repair may begin ahead of the permit as long as the paperwork goes in within three business days. Confirm that rule with the Codes Office for your job. For heater jobs, water heater replacement covers permits in more detail.

A camera inspection pays off when a drain keeps backing up after cleaning, when you are buying or selling a house with an older lateral, or before any digging. A small camera on a flexible cable shows cracks, roots, offsets and sags that cleaning alone cannot reveal. In Easton there is also a local reason: when an existing lateral is reused for a new or renovated building, Chapter 475 calls for it to be televised at the owner expense. Ask for the recording and note the distance from the cleanout to each defect. A clean pass is useful too, since it rules out the line and points the search back to fixtures. Related work is described under sewer line repair.

Check how many places are affected, because that narrows the cause quickly. One slow sink or tub points to a local clog. Several slow drains or gurgling after a flush point to the main drain. A water meter that keeps moving when every tap is off points to a leak. Weak flow at every tap, hot and cold, suggests a supply or pressure issue at the house or the street. Weak flow only on the hot side points to the heater. Write down what you see and when it started, since the dispatcher can use those details to send the right plumber and tools. For slow drains, see drain cleaning before you reach for chemical cleaners.

Yes. The same number takes calls from homeowners, landlords and business owners, and the dispatcher asks a few extra questions for a commercial building. Useful details include the size of the building, who holds the keys, whether tenants are affected and whether water can be shut off to one section. Restaurants and storefronts often need after-hours visits so the doors can open on time. Apartment buildings add questions about which unit is leaking into which. Larger projects, like new restrooms, may need permits from the Codes Office. The commercial page, commercial plumbing, lists the kinds of buildings and calls handled.

Picture a late October evening with a forecast low of 25 degrees. Start outside: unhook garden hoses, drain them and close the shutoff to each outdoor spigot if the house has one. Then go to the cold spots, meaning the garage, an unheated basement corner or a crawl space, and look for pipes near outside walls. Add pipe insulation where a line is exposed and seal gaps that let in cold air. Last, find the main shutoff and confirm that it turns. Easton gets about 110 days a year below freezing, so this ten-minute routine is worth doing before the cold arrives.

Keep the heat on and open cabinet doors under sinks on outside walls so warm air reaches the pipes. Let a faucet drip when the temperature falls into the teens, since moving water is harder to freeze. If you leave for a few days, keep the thermostat set to a safe temperature rather than turning it off. When a pipe does freeze, open the faucet, warm the pipe slowly with a hair dryer and never use an open flame. If a pipe has already split, close the main and call right away. More about burst lines is under pipe repair and repiping.

They can, but no soil survey for individual Easton streets was found for this site, so this page does not claim a soil type for your address. What is documented is the setting: Easton sits where the Lehigh River meets the Delaware, with Bushkill Creek nearby, and the area has flooded before, with Delaware River crests recorded in 1955, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Wet ground and high water can stress older buried lines and let groundwater into cracked pipes. The practical steps are a camera inspection of the lateral and a call to PA 811 at least three business days before any digging. Water in the basement is covered under leak detection.