Emergency plumbing
When something counts as an emergency, how fast we can get there, where your main shutoff is, and what to do in the minutes before we arrive.
Plumbing FAQs, Salt Lake City, UT
The questions homeowners actually ask us, answered the way we'd answer them on the phone. How we work and what it costs, plus the practical things worth knowing about your own plumbing and the particular ways houses in this valley give trouble.
Nothing here is a sales pitch dressed as a question. If the honest answer is "it depends," we say that and explain what it depends on.
Licensing, who shows up, and what happens in your house.
6 questions Pricing and schedulingEstimates, timelines, and how long jobs actually take.
5 questions Your home's plumbingShutoffs, water pressure, drains, and what lasts how long.
6 questions Plumbing in this valleyFreezing, hard water, old pipe, and bench-side pressure.
5 questionsWorking with Reliable
The questions worth asking any plumber before you let them into your house. Ours are answered here so you don't have to ask.
More about the teamYes. Reliable Plumbing is licensed and insured for plumbing and drainage work in Salt Lake City and across Utah, carrying both general liability and workers' compensation coverage. Ask to see the credentials at any point and we'll show you. Any plumber who gets uncomfortable when you ask that question has answered it for you.
Yes, Reliable Plumbing asks that someone be home in Salt Lake City for repairs and installations. If we find something unexpected behind a wall or under a sink, we'd rather talk it through with you than make the call on your behalf. It also means you see the finished work and can raise anything before we pack up rather than after.
To protect your Salt Lake City home, Reliable Plumbing puts drop cloths under the work area, shuts water off deliberately rather than in a hurry, and tests every connection before calling it finished. We clean up when we're done. Plumbing means opening up old fittings in places nobody has looked at in twenty years, so the aim is to leave the room exactly as we found it apart from the part that now works.
At Reliable Plumbing in Salt Lake City, Brody or someone on the small team he works with shows up at the door. There's no dispatch center routing you to whoever happens to be nearest, and the person who answered your call is usually the person who arrives. On an operation this size that isn't a marketing line, it's just arithmetic.
Yes. Reliable Plumbing works with restaurants, offices, rental units, and multi-unit properties across Salt Lake City and the valley. Property managers who need someone dependable for repeat calls across several addresses are welcome to get in touch about ongoing coverage rather than starting from scratch every time something goes wrong.
If Reliable Plumbing finds a second problem while working in your Salt Lake City home, we stop and tell you. You get what we found, what happens if it's left alone, and what it would cost to deal with, and then you decide whether to do it now or later. Nothing gets added to the invoice that you didn't hear about and agree to first.
Pricing and scheduling
Nobody enjoys asking about money. Here's what we can tell you before we've seen the problem and what genuinely has to wait until we have.
Get an estimateReliable Plumbing gives free estimates on plumbing work throughout Salt Lake City and the surrounding area. You get the cost of the repair or installation before it starts, and the invoice matches what you approved. If something changes partway through, you hear about it before it changes, not when the bill arrives.
For common jobs, Reliable Plumbing can give Salt Lake City customers a realistic price range over the phone once we understand what's happening. The firm number comes after we've seen it, because the same symptom can have a cheap cause and a very expensive one, and no honest plumber can tell you which from a phone call. What we can do is tell you the range and what would push it toward either end.
Reliable Plumbing's faucet replacements in Salt Lake City usually run one to two hours, and toilet installations usually two to three. The variable is what's behind the fixture: seized shutoff valves, a corroded supply line, or a failed flange under the toilet all add time. We'll give you a specific estimate once we know what we're working with.
How soon Reliable Plumbing can get to you depends on where you are in Salt Lake City and the valley and what's already booked. Emergencies go to the front of the line. For everything else you get a real window when you call rather than a vague promise, and if the honest answer is tomorrow morning we'll say tomorrow morning.
Whether Reliable Plumbing recommends repair or replacement in a Salt Lake City home depends on the age of what failed, the cost of the repair against a replacement, and how many times you've already repaired it. A five-year-old water heater with a bad thermocouple gets repaired. A fifteen-year-old tank that's rusting through gets replaced. We'll give you both numbers and our honest opinion, and the decision stays yours.
Some questions can't wait for a webpage.
Burst pipes, sewer backups, no water to the house, or a water heater leaking onto the floor. We answer the phone around the clock, and a real person picks up. What to do while you wait
Your home's plumbing
None of this needs a plumber to act on. Knowing it will save you a call, or make the call you do place a much shorter one.
What we work onIf the water will be off for more than a few hours, Reliable Plumbing recommends turning off the water heater in your Salt Lake City home. Switch a gas tank heater to pilot or vacation mode and turn an electric one off at the breaker, so the burner or elements are not running with a partly empty tank. Turn it back on once the tank has refilled and water runs clear from a hot tap.
Reliable Plumbing considers somewhere between 40 and 60 psi comfortable for most Salt Lake City homes, and plumbing code caps static pressure at 80 psi, above which a pressure reducing valve is required. High pressure isn't just noisy. It shortens the life of every valve, hose, and fixture connection in the house and it's a common cause of leaks that appear to come from nowhere. A gauge that screws onto an outdoor hose bib costs very little and tells you in about a minute.
Reliable Plumbing tells Salt Lake City homeowners to keep grease, coffee grounds, rice and pasta, eggshells, fibrous vegetable peels, and anything sold as a flushable wipe out of the drain, and that last label is the least accurate in the hardware aisle. Grease is the worst of them, because it goes down as a liquid and sets as a solid somewhere you can't reach. Wipes are second, because they don't break down and they catch on everything.
As rough figures from Reliable Plumbing for Salt Lake City homes: a tank water heater runs eight to twelve years, longer for tankless with maintenance. Supply lines vary enormously by material, with copper lasting decades and galvanized at or past the end of its life in most homes that still have it. Sewer lines commonly last forty to sixty years. Age alone isn't a reason to replace anything, but it changes how seriously to take the first warning sign.
Reliable Plumbing's Salt Lake City advice: use chemical drain cleaner sparingly, if ever. It can shift a soft clog near the fixture and does very little for a blockage further down the line. The versions strong enough to eat a clog also sit against your pipe and its rubber seals while they work. If a drain needs it more than once, the problem isn't the clog, it's whatever keeps creating it. And tell us if you've used it recently, because it's still in the line when we open it.
Reliable Plumbing notes that Salt Lake Valley water is hard, and hard water leaves scale inside water heaters, on fixtures, and through appliances in Salt Lake City homes. A softener isn't required, but in a hard-water area it extends the life of a water heater and cuts down the buildup you'd otherwise spend weekends scrubbing off. Hardness varies by source and by season, so check your water provider's report for your address before you spend anything.
Plumbing in this valley
Every region breaks its plumbing in its own way. These are the patterns we see across Salt Lake City and the surrounding communities.
Areas we serveReliable Plumbing sees cold snaps along the Wasatch Front freeze Salt Lake City pipes regularly from about December through February. The pipes at risk are the ones with the least heat around them: exterior hose bibs, lines running through unheated crawl spaces and garages, and anything inside an exterior wall. A pipe that's frozen but hasn't burst yet is still an emergency, because the damage usually happens on the thaw.
To keep pipes from freezing in a Salt Lake City winter, Reliable Plumbing's first step is to disconnect and drain garden hoses before the first hard freeze. Insulate pipe in crawl spaces, garages, and along exterior walls. On the coldest nights let a faucet on an exterior wall run at a trickle and open the cabinet doors under sinks so household heat reaches the pipe. If you're away in winter, don't drop the thermostat below about 55.
Yes: Reliable Plumbing finds that a lot of Salt Lake City homes still have original galvanized supply lines, or clay and cast iron sewer lines from the 1950s and 60s, all of which are at or past the end of their service life. The pattern we run into most is a house that's had three partial repairs across thirty years and now has four different pipe materials joined end to end, with every transition being somewhere a failure can start.
Often, yes: Reliable Plumbing finds that Salt Lake City homes near the foothills can have higher water pressure. Systems fed from higher elevation deliver more static pressure to homes lower down the slope, and some neighborhoods sit above the 80 psi code limit without anyone realizing. A pressure reducing valve solves it. If you're going through fixture cartridges and supply lines faster than seems reasonable, pressure is the first thing worth checking.
Reliable Plumbing covers Salt Lake City and the surrounding communities across the valley, including West Valley City, West Jordan, Sandy, Taylorsville, Murray, Draper, Riverton, Herriman, Holladay, Midvale, Cottonwood Heights, Millcreek, South Jordan, Magna, Kearns, and Bluffdale, plus Provo, Park City, and Bountiful. Call with your address and we'll confirm it in a sentence.
Question about a specific job?
The pages below go deeper on the questions particular to each kind of work, including what it typically costs and how long it takes.
When something counts as an emergency, how fast we can get there, where your main shutoff is, and what to do in the minutes before we arrive.
Repair against replacement, how long a tank should last, what the noises mean, and whether tankless is worth it for your house.
Why a drain keeps clogging, what actually clears it, and how to tell a single slow drain from something further down the line.
Signs of a sewer line problem, what trenchless repair involves, how long lines last, and whether to inspect before buying a house.
How to find a hidden leak yourself, what a slab leak looks like, whether walls have to come open, and how insurance usually treats it.
What to replace while the walls are open, permits, working alongside your contractor, and whether to buy your own fixtures.
Reliable Plumbing, Salt Lake City, UT
Ask us. Describing the problem takes about thirty seconds and you'll get an honest answer, including when the answer is that you don't need us yet.
(801) 803-0847