Posts Tagged ‘ House ’

DATELINE:  SOUTH BOSTON, MA…
Do you gag at the thought of drinking water straight from your tap? Have you and your family become bottled water addicts as a result?  Or, do you hold your nose while you shower because of the smell of your water? Can’t rinse off that scummy soap film either?

If so, John Wood, founder and CEO of Hub Plumbing & Mechanical of Boston outlines some alternative methods that can be used to clean up your water.

First of all, many consumers buy bottled water because they assume it’s safer or cleaner than what comes out of the tap from their municipal water source or well. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water used for drinking. While most consumers assume that bottled water is at least as safe as tap water, there are still potential risks. Although required to meet the same safety standards as public water supplies, bottled water does not undergo the same testing and reporting as water from a treatment facility. Water that is bottled and sold in the same state may not be subject to any federal standards at all.”

Wood urges consumers to take matters into their own hands by employing an in-home water filtration system. “If clean drinking water is your primary concern, a number of alternatives to buying bottled water are available. All offer greener alternatives to bottled water, reducing the huge volume of plastic water bottles that end up in landfills. Point-of-use (POU) systems treat water at a single tap. Point-of-use systems include pour-through products, faucet mount filters, counter-top manual fill systems, counter-top systems connected to sink faucet, or plumbed-in systems that are installed under the sink with a permanent connection to an existing water pipe.”

If your water woes are more widespread and include problems with rust or sediment, scale or odors, you might want to consider a point-of-entry filtration system explains Wood. “Point-of-entry (POE) systems treat water as it enters the house, providing filtered water for use throughout the house for drinking, bathing, cooking, laundry and dishwashers.”

Continues Wood, “POE systems can stop dirt, sediment, rust and scale. Both rust and sediment, left unchecked, can ruin appliances while scale creates unsightly build up on water fixtures, coats water heating elements thereby reducing their efficiency, wastes soap by reducing its lathering ability, and leaves an unpleasant residue on your skin, hair, and clothes when they are washed. Also, one of the most common chemical disinfectants found in municipal city water supplies is chlorine, which tastes and smells bad and can be removed with a carbon filter.”

Both POU and POE devices are based on various contaminant removal technologies including carbon filtration, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and distillation. In addition, flow rate, filter size, filter life and port size are also important components in point-of-entry systems, which require professional installation. Whichever system is used, it should meet NSF/ANSI standard 53 and be certified to remove the contaminants of concern in your water.

About Hub Plumbing & Mechanical
Hub Plumbing & Mechanical was established in 1999 and now includes a staff of 16 full time employees. This full service plumbing company assists residential and commercial customers with code violations, sewer/drain clogs, garbage disposals, water heaters, water filtration, steam and hot water boilers, thermostats, leaky faucets, tub valves, gas pipes, appliance installation, outside hose faucets, and residential HVAC service.

Hub Plumbing & Mechanical was recently highlighted in a new book entitled “The Celebrity Experience” where Hub Plumbing & Mechanical’s Red Carpet Service was cited as an example of how it’s possible to create faithful life long customers by showering them with treatment usually reserved for celebrities.

Hub Plumbing and Mechanical’s signature Red Carpet service features experienced teams of licensed technicians who not only protect your floors with a red carpet, but also cover their work boots with stain-resistant booties, wear ID badges for security purposes, and arrive on time and smartly dressed in crisp, clean uniforms.

The company does not charge by the hour, but by the specific project. Hub Plumbing & Mechanical is available 24 hours a day and 7 seven days a week to provide immediate access and peace of mind. Dedicated 2nd and 3rd shift night dispatchers internally handle all calls at Hub Plumbing & Mechanical, not an answering service. The difference between the two enables Hub Plumbing & Mechanical to get real-time info on the customer 24/7 to expedite the call as efficiently as possible.

Hub Plumbing & Mechanical Inc. is located at 70 Old Colony Avenue in South Boston, MA 02127. For more information about Hub Plumbing & Mechanical call 1-866-HUBPLUMBING (482-7586), email services@hubplumbing.com, or visit www.hubplumbing.com.

when the thermostat shuts down air conditioning/furnace unit I lose power to almost all of my house and when the unit turns back on then the power returns to all the items that lost power.

The newly replaced batteries in my older house thermostat ( with a mechanical clock) got hot to the touch? Why? I never noticed this before. Is is an issue to worry about? Thanks. MH

It is relatively easy to replace a thermostat for the average do it yourself person. Most of the time you simply loosen a few screws, remove five or six wires, pull the old stat off the wall, put the new one on the wall and re mount it using the two screws and anchors that come with the stat.

Then simply put the wires back on the same terminals that they were on the old stat. Most of the time the process is fairly easy and most people are able to do this with no real problems. There are a few problems that people have, such as hooking up the jumper between the Rh and the Rc terminal or not to and whether or not you your new thermostat needs a common wire or maybe they did not mark which wires went where, before they took the old one off the wall. I get people calling and emailing all the time about issues like this.

The first thing I always try to identify before I start trouble shooting for them is why was the original thermostat replaced? Was there a problem or some reason that they decided to replace the old stat to begin with. The answer most of the time is yes there was a reason.

Very seldom do people replace their thermostat simply to up grade it. Usually they are un happy with the operation of the furnace, or they sense a draft in the home and think that its the thermostat, or they want to reduce operating costs by installing a programmable thermostat. But very seldom do people replace a thermostat that is doing its job.

The issue is that people who do not trouble shoot for a living, generally can not recognize the difference between a thermostat problem, a mechanical problem or a system problem. So the do it yourselfer will start by replacing the thermostat when they sense a problem with eh system. I have been working in the industry for a long time and I can tell you that even when I did a lot of repairs that most of the time, if a thermostat was faulty, it was always faulty – I mean it usually was not an intermittent problem. If the thermostat was going bad, the problem might happen, once or twice and usually after that, you had a full time problem. A thermostat problem is not one of those things where it happens this morning and once last year – usually once you have a problem with a thermostat its a constant problem. The general rule I used to tell my customers is that when it comes to thermostats, unless the unit was knocked off the wall, or removed and remounted, unless there was a power surge or maybe you did not replace the batteries in the last few years the chances of your stat just going out, are act7ually pretty thin.

Most likely, if you think you have a thermostat problem you probably have a system problem.

If you’re trying to save money by replacing the thermostat and you’re wrong, then you just spent money you could have put towards having a qualified service technician come and and perform a diagnostic test on your system. If you think that the thermostat is not operating properly, then you are at least 50% correct – there is a chance that something is not operating properly and my point is that if you recognize that something is different and feel motivated to replace the thermostat, then my advice is to save your money and have the system looked at by a professional because as I said before, real and true thermostat failures are very far and few in-between. Most likely you are going to put the new thermostat on trying to solve a problem and end up calling someone out anyway because the stat was never the cause. Most thermostat failures I have ever run into were caused by something else and a stat failure is usually just a symptom of a different problem.

The majority of people who write or call me about thermostat replacement issues – trying to figure out how to wire up a replacement stat – usually have replaced the stat for the wrong reason. If you think you have a problem, you’re right and its time to call someone who can trouble shoot.

I am not saying that thermostats do not go bad, they do. My point is that usually, issues that you will notice which may be intermittent or all of a sudden are not thermostat problems at all.

If you want a new thermostat because you want to upgrade with the latest technology that’s one thing but if you’re replacing a thermostat to fix a problem that’s another. Call a professional to fix problems, if the system is over 15 years old consider replacing it.

Good luck

John