What to do first when water is off, a sewer backs up, a line freezes or bursts, or a utility gets hit while digging in New Jersey.
The state defines washing machine water as sewage, the septic rule keeps effluent off the ground, and your township code decides the rest.
Read more →A single slow drain is usually a clog. A backup that returns after clearing, or hits every drain at once, points at the pipe. Here is how to read the signs.
Read more →No water in a cold snap? Check the neighbors, call the water utility, open one cold tap, and never thaw a pipe with a flame. Here is why a service line freezes in the first place.
Read more →Most sewer smells indoors are a drain that dried out. Gurgling, a smell that tracks the rain, or one strongest outdoors point at the sewer line instead. Here is how to tell which.
Read more →Septic systems rarely freeze when they are used normally and the field is left alone. The risks are a compacted or snow-cleared field, shallow lines, a trickling fixture and a house left empty. Tanks can be pumped in winter if the lid can be reached. Never drive on the field.
Read more →A properly buried sewer line rarely freezes, because it slopes, drains empty and carries warm water. When one does freeze, it usually means a section is holding water: a belly, a shallow run, or a pipe through an unheated space. Thawing it fixes today; the camera tells you why.
Read more →You can usually flush and shower if you still have pressure, and you should not drink the tap water unboiled once a boil water advisory is issued. Whether one is issued depends on whether the system lost pressure, and the advisory stays until certified lab results clear it.
Read more →Stop running water first. Then find out whether it is your lateral or the town's main, because in most New Jersey arrangements the line from the house to the main is yours, including the part under the road. The two minute test, snake versus dig, and who to call for which.
Read more →Both usually mean the service line, and the first job is not digging. Whether the whole street is out, the meter test that says which side of the curb stop the leak is on, why 42 inches of cover decides who freezes, and when it becomes a dig.
Read more →Stop the machine and leave it. Gas and electric are a 911 call before they are a repair job, water and sewer belong to the system that owns them, and fiber is expensive rather than dangerous. What to photograph before the scene changes, and the two foot rule the claim usually turns on.
Read more →Ground heaters thaw the dig, the restoration waits for April, and a hose from the neighbor's spigot keeps your taps running in between. Under an hour to most emergencies, an honest triage when we get there, and the three things we actually find broken: cracked poly, pinholed copper, rotted galvanized.
Read more →A drought gave it away. Four feet down we found poly where the house has copper, cracked on the underside because it was never bedded in sand. The spot repair was $4,750 and the full 500 foot replacement $17,400.
Read more →Gas means 911 immediately, then engines off, because static counts. NJ requires damage reported immediately whether or not it caused an emergency. Plus the exemption nobody knows: old plastic water pipe does not have to be marked at all.
Read more →James founded a network of roughly 40 local plow contractors who clear driveways and roads for police, fire, and EMS during serious storms, clearing the way for emergency crews when minutes matter.
Read more →Parts of Sussex and Warren County sit on karst limestone that slowly dissolves underground. Here is why sinkholes and depressions show up here, and how we stabilize them.
Read more →A leaking water service threatened to close Shakey Jakes Cafe in Stanhope mid-winter. We replaced 150 feet of service, bored 33 feet of it under the parking lot rather than opening the asphalt, and upsized to a 1-inch line so a dinner rush does not run them out of pressure.
Read more →An NJDOT emergency on State Route 206 in Newton: inspected at 8 a.m., on the job by 8 p.m., riser replaced and repaved. Why a state right of way is a different job, and why emergency work is a different procedure rather than an exemption from one.
Read more →That red light and the buzzing on the panel outside is not the end of the world, but it is telling you something. Here is what a septic alarm means, what to do in the next hour, and when to call.
Read more →When a storm drops a tree on an insured structure, the instinct is to start clearing right away. Stop and document first. During high-volume disasters like Sandy, carriers lose track of claims, and months later a complete paper trail is what gets you the coverage you are owed.
Read more →Sewer · Water lines and service · Drainage · Fiber and conduit · HOA and condo
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