That time we talked about leaks

This is episode number 6 of The Homeowner's Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner's Show. We are so glad that you could be with us today. Uh, we have a really cool show. We're going to be talking about some stuff that you've probably never even thought about being a problem for your home before. Um, but before we get to that, go ahead and hit the subscribe button there on iTunes, hit the notification bell there on YouTube, and continue to give us a lesson as we bring you these great episodes. As always, you can connect with us on Facebook and Instagram, and you can email us at info@homeownersshow.com. Did I forget anything?

No, I think that's about it. Go ahead and leave us a 5-star review, would be awesome.

Yeah, or an honest one.

Hopefully that's the same. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, how's it going, man?

That is really none of your business.

That's what I was afraid of.

Yeah, that's what you get for asking.

Well, next time I won't ask. So, um, we're gonna talk about something I guarantee I've never really thought of before. This morning, we've got leak detection.

Yeah.

Leak detection.

Is it—

it's not a morning right now. I said this morning. That's okay. Yep. It's late at night at this point. And this is, this is take number 2. So that's right. It is what it is. But yes, we're gonna be talking about leak detection, something like you said, I, I, it's not something I really have thought much about. However, recently, um, on a previous show, we were talking a little bit about, um, my air conditioner and how it had gone out. And part of the issue was, um, my drain pan was filling up because I was having— it was clogged up there. And if that would have happened and it would have overflowed, then I would have had a leak problem. So

we definitely would have had a better story. Yeah, I don't know about that. I wouldn't have liked this story.

For all of us, it would have been a better story.

Yeah, for you, maybe not for me. But I know it's a problem. And so yeah, we're going to talk about it a little bit tonight.

Yeah, I'm excited about this. We have Jim from JC's Leak Detection here in Houston, Texas. And Jim deals with specialty leaks. And if you don't know what that is, good, we didn't either. And Jim's going to tell us all about it. Thanks for joining us, man.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, glad you could join us. Um, so just to get started, how did you get started?

Uh, I moved to Houston in '98, and, uh, I was a— I moved here from Florida. Um, I was previously in the bar business, restaurant business, stuff like that, uh, bar manager. And when I got here, I got saved. So after, you know, going to church for a little while, I realized I probably shouldn't keep feeding people drinks and putting them out on the road.

You wanted to divvy out a different kind of spirit.

I figured, right. Yeah, let's, let's go with something different. You know, if we're going to teach about spirits, Holy Spirit's better. So, uh, and, uh, I mean, it was pretty much, you know, he laid that on my heart to change that. And, uh, it kind of, um, it started out as a, you know, honestly I was here for 2 days and, uh, uh, yeah, I was staying at my sister's house and, uh, you know, after that I was like, man, I was scared straight.

No, I'm just kidding.

That's not, Somebody came over and was looking for help from my brother-in-law, and I started working for him, you know, that day. And he was doing construction work, and we were doing framing. And then, and the guy that owned the business decided he didn't want to do it anymore. In fact, he was teaching music. He wanted to go back to teaching music. And I guess I could see, you know, it was a little bit harder out there than sitting inside in the air conditioning. It's, you know, it gets hot here. And, but he quit that. And the guy that I was working with, the guy that actually got me the job, he introduced me to his father-in-law. And his father-in-law hired me

at a leak detection company, probably one of the bigger known worldwide companies. And honestly, I had no idea what leak detection was. Never thought about it. Like you were saying, you know, you never, until you have a leak, why would you think about it?

Yeah.

You know, so it's not something that crossed my mind. Of course I was in my, well, I was younger.

Let's just say that.

Let's just say that before I put my age out there for everybody. But I was younger and I honestly, I never thought about it until when I started doing the leak detections and There's some strange things that happen under houses and stuff that people don't know about, you know, and in your pool.

So was it interesting to you, like almost immediately?

I mean— Absolutely not. In fact, I came home the first day from work and my sister said, how do you like it? And I said, I don't see myself doing this for another week. That was 20 years ago.

Yeah.

So, wow.

But it's, you know, I don't know. what your viewing audience literally is looking here, but I will say that God uses it as a ministry, man, because everybody has problems with pipes sooner or later. I mean, if you've got, if you've got a bathtub in your house, sooner or later you're going to have a leak. I mean, it's just, it's the nature of the beast, you know, toilet's going to stop working or something's going to happen. You're going to have a high water bill. And those are the kinds of things we find. We find the hidden leaks that most plumbers and pool companies can't find. So it's—

Yeah. And we were talking about that before the show. I mean, like, so typically you get called in when A plumber can't find what's going on.

Well, it comes down to there's 2 options. He can either just start tearing things apart looking for it, or you can call a specialty company like us to come out and we can pinpoint it. 9 times out of 10, I tell people we can drop a dime on it. We'll put you within a foot of where your leak is without breaking anything.

Oh yeah. Okay. So at that point, is it, is the sale like, look, we can save you money by not being completely destructive to your home or your business or whatever's going on and find that leak. More accurately than the demo crew. Right, right.

Well, let's just use a simple front yard as an example. You know, if your whole front yard is saturated, you can pay some plumbing company $100 an hour to come out and dig up the yard and water will travel. I mean, it'll travel. It takes the path of least resistance. So you never know where it's actually coming from. I get people all the time go, I dug a hole, it's coming from that direction. And I'm like, well, if you wanna start digging, go ahead. But I don't dig unless I know exactly where the leak's at.

Right.

You know, and I'm not digging unless I'm within a foot or 2 foot, 'cause I'm just, it's not that I'm lazy. I just, you know, digging in clay down here is not fun. And so you can either pay them $100 and then they can be digging all day and then eventually they're gonna get tired and they're gonna say, why don't you call a leak detection company? And, you know, a couple hundred bucks, we can come out and drop you right on top of it. So, and we don't tear up your front yard. You're not, you know, having to put down new landscaping or whatever else they hit, you know, in the process.

Well, so let me ask you a question regarding that specifically. So let's say that I've got something going on in my house and I'm noticing water somewhere.

Mm-hmm.

My initial inclination is to call a plumber because that obviously is a plumbing issue and even though you deal in plumbing issues, my initial thought is call a plumber. So I guess one of the questions I have is if I find that I've got either a high water bill, like you're saying, it doesn't make sense, I don't know why I've got a high water bill Or if I'm noticing water, like you said, in my front yard, I've got an irrigation system, I'm noticing water pooling and my water's not running, would it be best to call you first or what is the— what's the protocol there that I need to be thinking about?

I would, you know, because of what I do, I would say, yeah, it's best to call a leak detection company first. Now, I say that and you may not get the same treatment from other leak detection companies that I might give you, you know, because I can walk you through a couple things that might narrow it down and I might be able to say, hey, this is the person you really need to call, you don't need to call me. At the same time, you could call a local plumber and he could come out and he might be able to just, you know, he might, depends on how long he's been doing it, he might be saying, hey, this is what the problem is, let me just fix that. And so it's kind of hit or miss, you know. I

would say You know, it depends on, have you been bit before? You know, it's kind of one of those things. And how much do you know about where that water's coming from? Because if it's coming out from underneath the side of your house, you know, or it's coming out from underneath 3 different walls, you know, then that's the point where, you know, hey, I want a leak detection company because I don't want the plumber's gonna come and his favorite tool might be a hammer.

Yeah.

You know, or a pipe wrench and let's break out some sheetrock and figure out. Next thing you know, you got 4 rooms with holes in them and you're trying to figure out where that water's coming from. So it depends on how much water it is, I would say. And you know, where you're seeing it, but definitely high water bill. Yeah. I would call a leak detection company. Most of us are honest enough to say, hey, let's try a couple of things and see if we can't resolve it over the phone. If I can, if I can help you figure it out over the phone and a plumber can come out, that's what I'm going to do. I mean, again, I look at my job more as a ministry. So, you know, God put me in here for a

reason. You know, like I said, one week, I was all, I thought I was only doing it, you know, 20 years later, I'm like still paying my bills with it. So, I mean, it's, uh, it's kind of hit or miss on that. That's a tough one to answer.

That's a tough one to answer. So I think you helped me because, um, again, just a typical Joe homeowner, um, trying to take care of my house, don't really know what I'm doing. I'm calling a plumber more than likely. But, um, one of the reasons I'm glad that we're talking to you, uh, is, is just for that very reason that, um, you've given me another tool in my, in my arsenal to say, Hey, I know about this other company that might be able to help me differently than just a plumber might.

And that might be the first question. Should I call a leak detection company? And I always tell people this, if they don't ask you any questions over the phone, don't have them come out to the house because they're not trying to solve your problem already. They're just trying to get in your bank account. And I hate to say that, but that's, it's unfortunately it's the nature of the world we live in. You know, people are, they're just people that, I mean, hey, I got ripped off this year from an AC guy. You know, but it's something I didn't know about and you live and learn, you know? And I try to share that information with as many

people as possible. But if they don't go, is your toilet running? If you shut this off, have you checked the meter? Have you done this? Have you done that? If they don't have a couple questions for you, then they're just trying to come out there and you never know what you're gonna get.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the other thing I like to share with people is, you know, I'm not, I don't wanna steer people away from big companies because a lot of big companies have been out for a long time. But if you can find somebody with their name on the side of the truck, You know, he's coming out, his reputation's at stake. You know, that's, you know, he's wanting free advertisement. So he wants to do a good job. That's the kind of guy you wanna call. Okay. You know, cool. I mean, generally speaking.

Yeah. And, and is there, is there a reason that like Kevin calls a plumber that he can't do what you do?

It, it's equipment. We're just gonna have different type of equipment. You know, a lot of the cameras and stuff that we use.

Well, it's not just having it either, right?

No, it's maintaining it. And knowing how to use it. Yeah, there you go. You know, uh, knowing how to use it's not that difficult, but it takes, you know, I, I was talking to another leak detector the other day and, you know, um, I went back on one of his jobs and, uh, you never want to tell somebody they missed it by 30 feet. You know, they get a little offensive, but I'm like, hey, you know, I've been doing it for 20 years and, and I've lived and learned, you know, and, and, uh, plumber can do that. They can, you, I mean, you can rent a camera. You can, you can rent some of the tools that we have at, you know, some of these tool rental places. But if you really don't know what you're doing,

um, like here's a, for instance, and I talk about sewer lines. We'll, we'll go there first. Cause I started in the, uh, in the, in the slab side of the company. And basically we handled sewer lines, drain lines underneath your house and, uh, the water lines underneath parking lots and underneath the house. Uh, people used to ask all the time, why don't you, are you just going to run a camera in there and find the leak?

Yeah.

Well, man, you can see what looks like a crack in a cast iron pipe and it's got a rubber hub on it and you call that a leak and, you know, that's not the leak.

Right.

You know, but that's not a water leak. We're talking about drain issues there. So just buying a camera doesn't, you don't always know what you're doing. I mean, I've had people tell me that I think that's a leak and then I've tried to prove that it's a leak and I'm like, it's not leaking. So that's not, that's not a leak. Because the camera will show you a dark line and you think it's a crack and it turns out to be glue. You know, some— somebody was sloppy with their glue and they got it inside the pipe. So, um, but you know, the, the hard part is the water lines that are underneath parking lots and underneath the house and stuff like that. It takes a little while to hone that skill of saying, okay, it's right here.

Um, when we were— when I was working, I did this in, uh, I've done this in 4 different states. Um, Texas, Oklahoma, uh, Missouri and Kansas.

Okay.

And, you know, when you— the further north you go, the deeper the pipes go. So it gets a little more difficult to pinpoint a leak when it's 4 feet deep or 8 feet deep, as opposed to down here, our freeze level is 6 inches. So a lot of our pipes ain't but 12 inches deep. You know, you want to go 6 inches below that freeze line. That's normally a standard code.

I mean, by a house like mine, sometimes they're just sitting right on top of the ground.

Right. Right. It depends. You know, to get to the code, you gotta live inside the city limits where the city inspector's gonna come out and look at it. But, uh, yeah, it, it, you know, it, anybody can pick it up. And, you know, nowadays, man, anybody can look on YouTube and, and try to do it themselves. And, and it's a matter of, you know, how many times I tell people this, you know, if you've got a $10,000, $20,000 deck outside by your pool, how many times do you wanna take a chance that you got it right the first time? You know, cause when I get done telling you where your leak is, you should only have to make a hole 12 by 12 to fix it. Now, if you want to make a bigger hole, that's totally up to you. But

you know, when I'm fixing it, I'm gonna make as small a hole as I need to, to patch it. Cause I don't want to make a big patch. I'm not a concrete guy.

Yeah.

You know, I'm a leak detector. You know, we do repair work too, but you know, you can, you can go buy the equipment. You can, you can YouTube it and you know, sometimes that'll help you out, you know, but when it comes down to the equipment, I've had people tell me, you know, I YouTubed it. I did exactly what they said. Now you're telling me it's leaking where I looked. It's like, well, I've been doing this 20 years, you know, and you've been doing it for 20 minutes. So they can get the equipment, but they don't like to, you know. And there are some plumbers I've talked to, they're just like, you know, it's just,

it's easier for me to be doing this repair over here, have you come find this leak, and then I can come fix it.

Yeah.

You know, so.

So have you run into any situations where like homeowners are renting this equipment and trying to do it and then calling you?

Yeah, yeah. The one I, I recently did a, uh, Well, he didn't rent any equipment. He just started digging for it. Okay. And he had a hole and he dug underneath the deck. This was on a pool and he dug under his deck almost back to the edge of the pool. And he's like, man, all I know is the water's still coming from that way and I'm tired of digging. You know? And he had a hole. It was probably 10 feet deep.

Oh wow.

And I'm sorry, not deep, 10 feet long. Okay. But he was 4 feet down. He's like, these pipes are deep. And I go, sooner or later they're gonna come up. And he's like, are you serious? I go, yeah, you'll be too deep. You're gonna be underneath the leak when you find it. It's gonna be hitting you in the head. And he was, he was probably about 4 more feet off. And I kid you not, 10 by 10 hole and we fixed it and we were done. He's like, you know, I could have been looking all day for that. And he started, actually, he showed me a spot where he had dug another hole, you know, and I've had people tell me before they've run cameras down their lines trying to find it and they've dug up,

you know, and They dig up and the pipe's good and they're like, I don't understand. But that goes with, you know, the camera doesn't always show you a leak. It just shows you something in the pipe that you still need to do a pressure test or something, you know?

Yeah. And I think one of the things that I hear you say there is, what is my time worth and what is my money worth? So those are 2 big things that I kind of measure things by. And so if you're telling me that I can pay you to come out and you can tell me within a foot where I have to dig, I'm probably saving money on repairs. I'm saving money on my time and ultimately probably a lot of frustration, right?

Right.

And so maybe I could find it, maybe I can't. I might have already done all this work and have to call you anyway, but it may be worth our time and our money to go ahead and call you out, get the information, and then we can get on with our business.

Right. And I tell people, you know, you spend a lot of money, especially in, like I said, my business now is mainly focused on the poolside. I mean, I've done it all and I still talk to people when they want to ask me about leaks inside their house and what they can do there. But I tell them, you know, you spend a lot of money to make this to where you're going to enjoy it. And if you sit out here and you see 4 holes in the deck, where, you know, somebody tried to find a leak and they didn't— it wasn't there, it wasn't there, it wasn't there, and hey, they finally got it on the 4th one. You know, you're gonna be looking at

those all the time, and that's, that's gonna bother you. I mean, if you're like me, I'm gonna look at it. If there's only one, it bothers me sometimes, and it's like, but you know, it happens. You know, you're gonna have a patch and you're gonna see it. Do you want to see one or do you want to see 4?

Hmm.

You know, and I'll go, I'll go behind people sometimes, and people are just guessing at what their leak is, you know, because most people You know, 90% of the leaks in a pool, we'll just use a pool, 90% of them are probably gonna be light conduits or skimmer throats. So you'd be surprised. I'll go to so many pools and they've got it all. They've, somebody's put junk all in the skimmer trying to plug it up. I had one guy use that spray can Flex Seal.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. He tried sealing up his leaks in the pump and stuff. And you know, your best bet is to cut it out, get a, get some, get a professional to do it unless you, and I mean, If you wanna use that stuff, it's, it's not gonna last. It's not on a pressure pipe, you know?

Well, so like a situation like that, you're coming in behind a halfway done job or a poorly done job. And so that, that actually costs them more because you're having to tear up.

It can, it can because it, well, here's the thing. Unfortunately, unfortunately for me in the Houston area, I have to charge a flat rate and meaning if it's a basic pool, I can only charge so much. Whereas up north, You know, when we were up there, they were charging by the hour, you know? So if you have tried to fix a leak and what it can do is it can kind of hide what I needed to see in the first place. And now I might be searching longer, you know? But if he, you know, you spray that stuff all over your pipes, I gotta be able to put glue on it. So now I gotta clean it

up. It is gonna cost you a little bit more or something like that.

So are there certain regulations that make you charge a flat rate or?

No, it's called, there's just, it's competition out here. Okay.

Yeah.

When I was up in Oklahoma, they didn't have, uh, in fact, I don't know that there was any other companies. Um, so yeah, I mean, I came home one time in Oklahoma and this guy was vacuuming. I heard a vacuum running at a commercial pool and I was like, we were staying in an apartment complex and he had drained the entire pool looking for this leak.

Oh my gosh.

And he was at the middle of the pool and the leak was over on the end. It was funny because I told him, uh, You know, he saw my shirt, my leak detection shirt, the company I was working for up there. And he's like, he wanted to tell me how they couldn't find it. I said, well, they got this new guy in town that he can put you right on top of it. And he goes, well, I'm gonna call a buddy of mine who I know that he said he's got a great leak detector and he wouldn't use anybody else. So I got a call from him a couple days later. Evidently it was you. So, and he's like, you can put me within

a foot? And I put him right on top of it. And he was like, he was impressed. But you shouldn't have to drain your pool to find a leak.

No.

You know, so I mean, I've had to, so I did one not too long ago where it was a vinyl liner and it was leaking on the bottom, but there was so much water on the outside of the liner as well that I couldn't find the leak without draining it down.

Well, and I know we were talking before the show that pools and fountains have kind of become your primary area of expertise.

Much nicer to swim in there.

Especially, well, maybe not so much right now, but—

Yeah, well, it's cooling off.

Yeah. So what can be so devastating about a leak in a pool?

Well, it depends. There's a couple things. I mean, you're talking about financially. I mean, if your pool's right next to your house, it can cause foundation problems. You know, you got to think about where's that water going? Okay. What's it going to damage? You know, a lot of people, they put a lot of this expensive landscaping around their pool and man, you can lose a 20, 30-foot tall Palm tree and then go, you know, that's not cheap to replace.

No.

You know, and then if it falls, what's it going to fall on?

Right.

You know, so you got to look at things like that. You know, the decks are quite expensive and, uh, you're— if you're losing water in your pool, you're losing chemicals. So you're constantly putting the chemicals in. Okay. If you can't keep your chemicals straight, then you're not going to keep the algae out and the algae can stay in your pool. So then you're damaging your plaster or whatever you got in there, Pebble-Tec, Diamond-Brite, uh, you know, whatever it is. So You know, there's, there's, there's a lot of downsides. I mean, I mean, uh, so what you're—

I mean, basically what I'm hearing is like, if I have a leak in my pool, one, I don't know exactly how much water is going to the soil.

Right.

Two, I don't know exactly what chemicals are getting mixed into that soil and how that's affecting the area around my home. So we got dangerous chemicals going in the soil. Right. We've, we've got potential foundation issues because, you know, you got Well, especially around gumbo clay.

Yeah.

Where it's swelling and shrinking and doing all these kinds of weird things. So we can be causing all kinds, not just like water issues, but we can be causing like foundation issues.

Right.

Which can cause other issues.

It's not just issues for your pool, your water bill. It can be a lot of other things. Yeah. And then my other, my biggest thing is, you know, when water leaks out of a pool, the first thing it's going to do is touch the backside of that pool. And if it's a gunite pool, gunite With the chemical water, it's not designed to hit that water. You know, that's why we put plaster on top of it. So it damages it. I've literally scraped gunite with my bare hands where it's been leaking for so long. It deteriorates the wall.

It makes it softer?

Yeah, it makes it soft. It almost turns back into sand. You know, it leaks sometimes. And I don't know if it's— I'm going to be honest, I don't know if it's the chemical or if it's the water, you know, the movement, but we all know water erodes things. Sure. You know, so it's going to damage the back of that. And, uh, When you spend that much money on a pool, the last thing you want to do is damage it from the backside when you could have fixed it really quick. But you know, here's the thing in pools. Most of the time you don't see that leak. You know, a lot of people call me and go, look, man, I'm just adding more water to my pool

than I feel like I used to. And I tell them, you know, an evaporation test is the best thing to do. And I think you guys have my website so people can go on there and they can learn how to do an evaporation test. You know, the standard evaporation in Houston is an 8th of an inch. And I mean, I've had people tell me, no, man, my pool builder told me I should be losing an inch every other day. And I'm like, they just don't want to come out and fix something.

So an 8th of an inch every day?

Every day. That's standard evaporative loss.

Like if it's got full sun exposure and—

Right. Well, you know, I mean, people think that it's all about the temperature, but it's surface area, wind speed, you know, barometric pressure. You know, you could technically, you could lose more water in the wintertime on a nice cold dry day with a lot of wind. than you would in a hot summer day when the humidity is at, you know, 95, which is, it's pretty good around here all the time. So, I mean, so, you know, we do excel at that, right?

Yeah, we're good at humidity down here. Yeah, yeah.

Well, my hair got shorter when I moved here. My hair is really short, so.

Yeah, your hair is in full retreat, dude.

Yeah, it's, it's gone. It started growing on my face instead of my head.

It's my gray.

Yeah, wait till you get to my age, it grows in other places.

Yeah, so—

Stuff's coming out the ear.

There you go. So, one question I've got is, let's say that I am noticing, maybe I'm noticing water, maybe I'm noticing that I'm losing water in my pool or whatever it is. I think there's a problem. I'm either going to call a plumber or I'm going to call you. Are there anything, is there anything that I could do now to kind of begin mitigating the problem before you get out to my house?

Well, I mean, it, it, it, the first thing I would say is if you only think, let's do an evaporation test because an evaporation test in 24 hours is going to tell you inside the bucket, this is how much evaporation has happened. Outside the bucket will tell you this is how much water plus evaporation you've lost. And then let's know before you call me out and spend your money on a leak detection. Okay. Now I get calls where people are buying a home and they want the pool tested and I totally understand that. You can't drop a bucket off for 24 hours and come back and, you know, hey, maybe this guy's wanting to sell his house and he's going to come back in the middle of the night and fill the

bucket and fill the pool. You know, so I understand that you got to— there's situations where, but you know, you want to be on top of evaporation. So if you think you're losing water, you really want to know how to run the evaporation test.

Now, is that something you guys do?

I can do it for you, but I've got to charge you to keep coming out.

Sure.

So that's why I put a website on my page. I put it on my website. It's really easy. I mean, and I've got a step-by-step list for them to do, and I've got a couple pictures showing it how I do it. Now, people will put tape on the side of the pool. That's not a valid test to me. Okay? I mean, I want to know for sure. I mean, obviously if you lose an inch, that's a leak.

Something's going on.

That's a leak. If you're way above standard evaporation in the area, I know. Okay. If you call me up and say, hey Jim, I lost 5 inches last night, I'm not going to tell you to do an evaporation test. It's pretty guaranteed. Now there are some things I will tell you to look at and make sure you're looking at your multiport. If you have a multiport, is it leaking to waste? You know, go back and look at the pump. You got a busted pipe? Because if you got a busted pipe, you don't want to pay me to come out. Have your pool guy come out. He's going to be cheaper fixing that. You know, we're more of a specialty

company. So, but as far as You know, what can you do? You know, a lot of people down here, the problem is they put in autofills and autofills are great if you're on vacation because you don't want to call your buddy and say, hey, can you come by my house every day and make sure my pool's full so my pumps don't run dry? Because your pump runs dry, then you're buying a new pump.

Right.

You know, or, and it gets too hot. It might melt a water pipe, might melt your filter or stuff like that. Okay. And then you got a big, you gotta, you know, you're paying a lot more out of pocket. But I'll get calls and they'll go, hey, I had no idea I had a leak. I got a $1,000 water bill. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay a $1,000 water bill. And most of the people I go to, even the richest people in the world don't want to pay $1,000 for water if they don't have to. So you want to keep an eye on it. You want to monitor it on a regular basis. The problem is people put their pool in the backyard and it's great for a couple months. And after that, they just forget about it.

At any point should I be turning my water off?

Should I—

are there things like that?

If you're dropping a lot of water really quick, I tell people all the time, you know, hey, just shut it down. Your pool's gonna— it's not gonna turn green really fast. You know, most of the time we're within a week, we can get to you. You know, let's face it. You don't want to tell somebody, hey, my pool's an emergency, because anytime you mention the word emergency, anybody's gonna want to charge you more. Right? So if I can tell somebody, hey, shut your pool off. You know, if you lose 6 inches when it's running, but you don't lose anything when it's off, Leave it off, leave it off for a couple of days. You know, it's not going to kill it. I would say that that's the

time, you know, I mean, people tend to think they wait till the last minute. My pool's been leaking for 6 years and now I want to get it fixed. It's an emergency, you know.

Now it's an emergency.

Right. So it, yeah, it's okay to turn your pool off. You know, you want to circulate it because you don't want it to turn green. Cause like we said earlier, you know, we don't want to damage the plaster with algae and extra chemicals and stuff like that. But if you're constantly draining water really fast and you keep adding chemicals, you're doing just as much damage. So if it doesn't drain down a lot really fast and somebody can't get to you within a week, you know, yeah, keep adding water, keep circulating it so it doesn't— because it does need to be clean and full for us to find all the leaks, you know? Right. And that's part of our deal when we do leak detections, that we guarantee we're going to find them all. You know, we're not going to come out and say,

okay, here's one leak, let's fix it and be done, unless it's a really big leak and I can save you the detection fee, you know, then I might do it. But if I'm going to do a detection, I want you to have the water at full operation level, completely— it doesn't have to be completely clear, but it can't be green. You know, I had a lady one time, she didn't understand why I didn't want to swim in her pool. And I think I could have walked across it.

Oh.

But I'm like, ma'am, you gotta wear— you know, we use ultrasonics to pinpoint the leaks in the pipes that are under the deck. And if I got an ear infection, I can't, I can't work. I can't get in another pool. I can't work. And she just didn't understand that. So we try to ask for it to be clean to that extent, not leaves and stuff. We're going to move them around anyway.

Yeah. Well, so that's pool-specific. What if I had a leak? I don't have a pool. Let's say I don't own a pool, but I've got— I'm noticing I've got a bill that's 2 or 3 times, maybe 5 times more than I'm expecting it to be. I think I might have a leak. Should I turn off my water?

Well, no. I mean, this is what I would say. At that point, I'm gonna walk you through a couple things. First of all, a running toilet can double your water bill, okay? And a lot of us have a special toilet in our house. Let's be honest.

You gotta jiggle the handle.

You got, right. Well, yeah, I've got a toilet that I use and, you know, hey, my wife's like, this is your bathroom and this is my bathroom.

Mine's name is Jerry.

That's right. Some people like to call it Jim so that they can say went to the gym every day. I bet you. But the, you know, you don't, you may not go to everyone, you know, I don't go to my son's upstairs bathroom. So I don't, you know, if I got a high water bill, that'd be the first place I'd go looking if I didn't see water.

Okay.

So, you know, there's a couple tips I tell people all the time. If you, if you get a high water bill, you can take colored Kool-Aid and put it in the, in the tank. Okay. And never use yellow.

Okay.

Don't get the lemon lime because everybody's, yeah, you're coming back and you're like, did my kid go to the bathroom or did it, you know, Use, use red or purple. You do.

Right.

You never, you never know. So use a different color. Okay. Get the cherry, get the grape, get something like that. But you put that in the tank, you know, and you don't have to, don't get the one with sugar, just get the sugar-free.

Yeah.

Okay. You're dumping it back there and then come back like 20 minutes later and see if it's in the bowl. Because if your flapper's leaking, you need to get your flapper replaced. And at that point, you don't need me to come out.

Sure.

Then you, you can either go, if you're, you know, if you have any kind of, you know, skill, you can, you can change that flapper out on your own. If you can't, call a plumber and they'll do it, you know, because I mean, if you, If you make it work, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you take the flapper out and you're like, what if I take the— get the wrong one? Take it with you. You know, the guys at these hardware stores and stuff, you hand it to them, they're gonna know what you need. They don't— don't hand it to them, they probably won't take it. Just show it to them. Well, this one's round. And this was— but they

do have 2-inch. I bought a square one. Right, it doesn't fit. Yeah, I've been trying to mold it, but I mean, that's one thing, you know. And then If you hear it, you can hear, you know, if you have metallic pipes, whether they're galvanized, yeah, whether they're galvanized or copper, you'll hear a vibration running. And you can try to track that down a little bit. And if it's just the toilet running, you can always turn the toilet off. You know, there's angle stops in the back and nowadays they got them nice, they're quarter turns, but some of the older ones are a little bit harder. You know, I will say this, the older ones, if you start to turn them,

they could start leaking and then you have another problem.

Yeah.

So at that point you definitely need to jump on the phone and call The plumber. And this is something that I wanted to share because, you know, the first thing I do when I'm training somebody on slab detections and drains and water lines and stuff like that is we pull up to a house and the 2 things I want them to always know where they are is the meter. Well, let's go with 3 things: the meter, the house shutoff, and then is there a cleanout? And you need to know where your cleanout is. If your pipes back up, the plumber's gonna wanna know. Otherwise he's gotta go through the roof or he's gotta call somebody to find a cleanout and install a cleanout. So it's good to find that. And when I say a cleanout,

there's usually 2 in a house. There's usually one under your kitchen sink or outside the wall on the kitchen sink, and it's gonna be a little 2-inch or an inch and a half. Okay. And then there should be a 3 to a 4-inch cleanout. Now it didn't used to be code for them to bring those up to ground level and grade level. So now it's, we're getting to the age where they want to see these, but every once in a while you'll get a homeowner's association They don't wanna see 'em, so they're buried or they're in the backyard or something like that. As far as the water meter, I tell guys this all the time. Anytime you buy a home or move into a

home, tell your wife how to shut the water off. 'Cause sure as it's gonna, you know, sure as I'm breathing, your pipes are gonna break when you're not there.

Right.

And she's there. And then now you gotta try to explain to her what it is. And it drives my wife nuts. We'll walk in the house and I'll go, oh, there's our shutoff. Oop, you know, and it's just something I didn't see 20 years ago, you know? But know where your shutoff valve is, you know, know if you have one at the house and know where the city meter is and have a key. You can buy the meter key at the local Home Depot, Lowe's, you know, Ace Hardware and free plugs for those guys. They can send me the check later, you know, but, uh, you know, get those keys so that they know how to shut them off because I mean, that's going to save you thousands of dollars in damage if they, if you can shut the water off quickly.

Sure.

So yeah, I've actually used mine several times. Right. Yeah, I know it's been very, very helpful.

And the thing that bothers me about your house is we can't find the house shutoff and your meter is a long ways away.

Well, I can actually— so just so everybody knows, Jim has helped me a lot on my house because as we've discussed many times, my house is special. I found it.

Okay.

I did find it. Well, one, I was just happy that it had one.

Right.

Again, because like, you know, most things are optional when it comes to my home. But I found it. It was actually underneath the porch. It was, it was buried. Um, I forget why I found it.

You're probably looking for your puppies.

Uh, that's probably actually what was going on.

There were some—

we had some puppies that got born underneath the deck. We had to pull some deck boards up.

Okay.

So, but yeah, I did, I did finally found it.

So did you make an access to get to it?

Oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly how to get to it now.

All right, so, uh, I mean, that's nice to know because it, you know, from here to the street sometimes can take a while and you get a lot of water dumping out, you know.

I'm fast, but like, you know, it's a long ways down there.

Yeah. Well, um, so you've, you've answered a lot of things that I, I had questions about. Can you think of anything else that we need to know? Anything that you would want a homeowner to know as a homeowner yourself? Just something about what you do that, that you might want Want us to know, or have we covered it?

No, there's a couple of things that, I mean, you could still, I mean, that meter, I mean, once you know where the meter is, that, that's going to be your friend. I mean, I, it sounds kind of weird, but, and I'll say this, having done this business for 20 years, I've been bit by brown recluse and a black widow. So if you get in your meter, definitely want to tap on that box first and then flip it over quickly. Don't just reach in there and think there's nothing in there.

Okay.

Because sometimes there can be snakes there. Yeah. Things like damp spots. But that meter's got what's called— what we call a tattler, and it's either gonna look like a sprocket or a diamond or a triangle. And if that thing's moving and there's nothing going on in your house, your kids are not there, you're not doing dishes, you're not running laundry, then you need to start shutting things down and see what stops that meter from spinning, because that's gonna cause your high water bill.

Yeah.

And if it's anything like this city, they normally get you for a gallon in and a gallon out, means you're paying for sewage. Okay. And if you do have a leak, a lot of people don't tell you this, send that— once you found the leak and you've got it fixed, let the city know. Sometimes they'll give you some of that money back. Okay. Because if it's going in the ground, they don't need to charge you for sanitation. So they, you know, hey, what's the worst that they can say? No.

Right.

You know, you got to try. And a lot of people don't know that.

Um, well, plus you're helping them. I mean, like you're not polluting the ground further. Right.

And you start saving water, they're happy. when people do that because, you know, they waste enough because it takes them forever to get over to their 10-inch mains and stuff like that. So, but that, that Tadlar on there, it's a good thing, you know. Um, chemicals, talk to— be, you know, if you've got a pool, talk to your pool guy. Be— just keep communications going with your landscapers. You know, we got any wet spots in the yard? You know, I mean, I don't know. A lot of people, a lot of people that I go to, they don't take care of their own stuff. They're busy. I mean, you know, even, you know, even dual income families, man, nowadays it takes a

a lot to keep a house running. So, I mean, I heard a report the other day, it takes $250,000 to raise a kid and we're, yeah. And that doesn't count college.

So. Thanks for telling me that information.

Hey, hey, my wife wants 2 more.

You're a half mil in the hole, dude.

I'm 500 grand in.

So you wanna make sure your water's not leaking out.

Yeah, I don't have any more money.

Right.

All of a sudden, I didn't know.

Well, and I tell people all the time, you know, nowadays we're putting in new pipe, you know, there's the PEX pipes and stuff like that. plastic pipes that they're putting in, they last a long time.

Yeah.

You know, so, but everything breaks. So when they tell you this is the new best thing and it won't leak, I'm gonna tell you right now, everything leaks. Eventually everything will leak. You know, even these new pipes, mice love them, you know? So, you know, rodents will get into your house, whatever. You need to, you need to be on top of it before it becomes an issue. Here's a, here's a couple things that I will say that I've seen in the past. I've seen some pretty pretty hairy things, man. Well, you, you walk in houses and the walls are 5 feet tall and they're 5 feet of black mold. You're like, oh man, this is not fun. But that's a leak that's been going on

a while.

Yeah.

You know, that's a neglect leak and your insurance will not cover neglect leak. So if you got something that's dripping, I've seen houses where I walked in the house one time and literally it was a 3-foot trail throughout the house and they had garbage piled up everywhere and They're like, yeah, it's been— it's the bathrooms where the leaks are. I walk in the bathroom and they've got buckets underneath the— trying to catch the drip that's coming out of their tub. And eventually it had wore holes into the bottom of the tub and started getting out. And insurance is not covering any of that. So that's the kind of stuff you need to get taken care of, you know, as quick as possible before it causes more damage. Because now you got to put

in a new tub, you're going to need new faucets. Obviously you got to do mold remediation and stuff like that. You know, so the best thing is to be on top of it, you know, and the best plan is to know what to do and, you know, letting it go doesn't solve it because the leak's not going to get better and it's just not going to get better.

It's going to get worse if anything.

Right. It can't get better. I mean, now I will say this, I have seen before where, you know, you'll get a piece of debris in a copper pipe. It's a little pinhole leak and it gets a piece of debris and it plugs it up for 2, 3 days, but it's going to come back.

Sure.

It's going to come back.

So. Is there a particular kind of pipe? Because I mean, like here in Houston, I mean, like we're, we have homes that are over 100 years old, you know? And so like, we're gonna have all different kinds of pipes and different things. Like, are some of these like just nightmares for you to come in and find leaks on or?

Well, when you say Houston nightmare leaks, I think of these homes that have, you know, 10, 15 bathrooms and I'm like, why? You know, but you know, the older pipes, most of the galvanized pipes were put up over in our attics. And, uh, you know, I get a lot of calls from people that are like, hey, my sink is no longer running and stuff. That, that, that pipe deteriorates from the inside out. And it doesn't always look bad when you're looking at it in the attic. But then when you start realizing, hey, my fixture is going bad, you know, I'm getting a new washer every couple of years, you know, flush out, we need to flush out our, our, um, water heaters because that sediment will

destroy all the other stuff in your house. And, uh, The, you know, those pipes, when they start deteriorating like that, they can be kind of a hassle because I'll go to pressure test something. And ideally, when I do a pressure test, I want zero loss in pressure, you know, because that way I can tell people, you know, hey, I've got nothing. Um, but you get those, man, you pressure them up and you're, you know, city pressure 70 and I want to go 75, and I'm like, I don't really want to push these pipes too much because they're old, you know. So I mean, that's why you see all these new companies out that all they do is repipes. They just

do new repipes. You're a re-pipe specialist, you know? And hey man, if they're crawling around in a Houston attic, cutting out old pipe and putting in new pipe, they're gonna charge you for it.

Yeah.

My parents actually just had that recently done. It's pretty incredible how those guys can get in and get out pretty quick. I mean, it's a big job.

Well, you don't wanna be up there. You go in attics. I know you don't wanna be up there too long. But, uh, yeah, those are the— those are probably the worst. Now I'll say this one, drain lines, man, the old cast iron was a pain because you couldn't get a good test on just about anything. So I know that, uh, there are people out there that, uh, on cast iron, they tell you there's 2 types of cast iron: cast iron that's leaking and cast iron that's about to leak. So, but there was a time where we were getting cheap, cheap cast iron from other countries and, you know, it wasn't good homemade American Solid, you know. I've seen cast iron, it's,

you know, 60, 70 years old and, uh, downtown.

Oh wow.

And it's, uh, it's still great, you know. And, uh, then you get— but, you know, cast iron's one of those pipes, if water's sitting in it, it's going to rot, it's going to rust, you know. Um, something I tell people all the time, you know, when, you know, they go like, I don't dump any grease down my sink, you know. I, I, I dislike garbage disposals. I think it's the dumbest thing to ever do to put stuff, grease, food, and stuff like that down in your sink because it's going to clog up that inch and a half, 2-inch kitchen line.

Yeah.

And then you're going to get somebody to Roto-Root it out. You know, if you got cast iron or Calvin, I'm sorry, if you got PVC pipe, it may not be as much of an issue as, uh, say, say cast iron is. But you know, like I said, down here, you know, they're going to tunnel to it and tunneling can be expensive to fix. So you don't want to dump anything down there you don't have to. You know, scrape your bacon grease off and throw it in the trash.

Yeah, please.

It's not that difficult.

It's not. It's not. And, you know, paper towel is a whole lot better than paying somebody to go down there and fix it.

There you go.

Yeah. Well, so if— just so people know, I mean, if— so say you come out to check a pool for a leak and they don't have access to you because they're not here in Houston or something like that, what should they expect from a quality leak I mean, like, what should they be observing these guys do?

Well, they should be breaking the system down from suction to return. And when we say suction, your skimmers and your drain lines, that's going to be the suction. And return, it's returning to the pool. A lot of people think it returns to the pump. It doesn't. It returns from the pump to the pool. They should be pressure testing the pipes. I use 20 pounds of pressure on most pipes just because the average pool pump runs between 8 and 20 pounds. I wanna say, and I'm pulling numbers out of the air here, I think it's 330 for an inch and a half is what PVC can be pressured to.

Yeah.

And then 280 for 2-inch. Okay? So 20 pounds, you know, a lot of people are always like, man, if you pressure up my pipes, how do I know you're not the one that broke them? In fact, I just had a recent client that thought another pool company who blew out his lines caused the leaks. And it's like, you know, unless they came back there with a commercial industrial compressor, I doubt they did.

Yeah.

Because, you know, pipes are rated pretty good. Um, but they should be doing that. They should be getting in the pool. You can't do a complete leak detection without getting in the pool because there's a drain on the bottom. There's a light that you've got to take out and look inside the niche and look at the conduit and stuff like that. Um, you know, I, I, I know when I went to, uh, this company up north and, uh, it was like early December, late November, they're like, how did you find that main drain leak? I'm like, what do you mean? I jumped in and plugged it up and pressured the pipe up and they're like, you jumped in

the water? And I'm like, uh, yeah, how else are you going to do it? You know, so, but they should be doing stuff like that, you know. And, uh, they should— my personal thought is I get calls from people like, did they not— should they have given me a report or a diagram? And I'm like, well, yeah, if they don't let them just come out. I mean, there are some people that are going to come out, they're going to fix something, you're gonna be like, okay, I know that they did a good job, okay, because my pool is no longer leaking. You know, but I like to give my people documentation that way they can come back and go, hey, you know, so many years. Because first of all, I give a 5-year warranty on my plumbing repairs. That's

not your standard in the industry. A lot of people, it's 1 year. You're lucky if a lot of people are in business 5 years.

Yeah. Okay.

But, um, you know, so I want to make sure that I know what's going on. So I do the documentation with, you know, diagrams, pictures, as much as I can, not so much just for them, but for me. So I would always ask what I'm getting for my money. Am I getting a pressure test? Am I getting a warranty? I guarantee that when we come out, we're going to find all the leaks on your pool within 30 days. If I tell you, hey Craig, your skimmer throat's leaking and you fix that and you go, man, 2 days later I'm still leaking, call me out. I'm coming out for free. Find out if they have a warranty, find out if they back up.

I tell you this day and age, man, it's really nice because you can check on anybody. You know, get referrals. Yeah. You know, find somebody. I mean, Nextdoor app, you know, Angie's List, you know, is an old school for people, you know. I mean, when I first started, we were advertising in the phone book. Do you guys even know what a phone book is? That's the thing we sit on. Yeah.

I think the Power Team used to rip those in half.

That's right. That's it. That's what it was. But you know, you can find out anybody. I mean, The sad thing is, I will say this, if you're looking at reviews, make sure you read them close because I had a review from an Angie's List review for my company one time and they said that the 2 of us sat in our van on the side of the house, wrote the report for an hour and a half and then charged them for it and the leak wasn't there. And I'm like, well, first of all, I don't write reports on the site. I write my notes. But then I type and send the reports and, uh, I looked at it closer

and it was in Vermont and I'm like, uh, I don't, you know, I will travel if you pay me, but I'm pretty much not gonna leave the state of Texas.

Yeah.

You know, enough for an hour and a half project.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You gotta, yeah, it's a pool in an hour and a half project. I was right. So I'm like, yeah. So just look at it close cuz anybody can write anything, but you wanna make sure, you know, that it's, And, and when I, and I don't knock Angie's List, but all they did was change the grade. You know, now at the time I wasn't the owner of that company. I was partners in that company and I didn't have full authority to say, hey, you need to get this off there and stuff like that. And he really wasn't, you know, just didn't monitor that.

Right. Okay.

So he was even older than me, you know, and I, all this new stuff you guys do.

Good Lord. Was he even walking?

Right. I asked him if Moses really did hold up the staff with his left hand or right hand.

So he's like, I grew the tree.

That's right. That's right.

So, well, cool. Uh, anything else? You got any more questions, Greg?

Uh, no, I'm sure we have plenty. We're closing in on an hour here right now. And I know we could probably talk. We probably just need to have you back in and cover some more of this stuff.

Yep. I'm sure people will have questions later. If they do, man, just let me know.

And you're okay with people contacting you? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So they can either through my email or the phone number.

You want to give that or you want me to read it to them?

Yeah, you can.

Yeah. So, so if you have any questions about leaks, you can reach Jim at jcsleakdetection.com and we'll, we'll have all those in the show notes. You can also reach him at 713-557-4103 and you can email him at jcsleakdetection@gmail.com and you can also find him on Facebook where I'm sure he responds to contacts and you can find links to his webpage and phone number there as well. And you can just click on that and give him a call and he'd probably be happy to answer all your leak questions. Yeah.

Yeah. Very good. Uh, we only got one more thing we gotta do here and then we can wrap this up and that's the final 4.

The final 4.

Yeah.

So, uh, these are 4 questions we're gonna ask you and then we'll try to run through them fairly quickly since we're running long on time. So, first question we ask everybody that we, we ask to come on the show is, what's the must-have tool that you won't leave your house without?

Well, for leak detection, I won't leave my house without my leak finder, but I would say on an everyday basis, it's gonna be my utility tool Leatherman.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Those things are so useful, man.

Yeah.

Leathermans are awesome.

If you can't do it with a Leatherman, you—

Yeah, you shouldn't.

You gotta call a professional. Call MacGyver or somebody else.

You're just not creative enough.

That's right. Yeah, fine.

Find another profession.

That's right.

All right. Number 2, what's a job you walked away from?

Uh, I've walked away from a couple. Um, we had one job one time when, uh, we walked in and, uh, but you know, the first thing you do when you're going to do a hydrostatic test, you shut off all the water, you shut off all the toilets and you flush them so that nobody else will, uh, so when you take the toilet off to do the hydrostatic test, nobody will flood the house. Right. And this lady goes, oh, don't look in that toilet. There's a mouse in there. And I opened it up. And it was pretty big. It was not a mouse, it was a rat. And, and that wasn't the worst part. I'm like, okay, well, we'll get him out and we'll flush. That's not a big deal. But as we go to walk across the hall to the next bathroom, I look down and towards the

kitchen, there's one. He pops up just looking at us like, oh, we got company. And I'm like, yeah, we want to get out of here.

Oh no. Yeah, we're, we're done with this job.

So yeah.

You need to call someone else first.

Literally outnumbered.

That's right. We're outnumbered. And there was a time that, uh, I did a— they had a camera job they wanted me to do at a, uh, a rather large, well-known, uh, kind of a family gym place with a pool. And they had a lift station and they didn't want to turn the toilets off and they wanted me to get down in the lift station and run a camera. And I'm like, yeah, if you're not turning the toilets off, I'm not getting in there. Yeah, not happening.

I got better things to do with my day.

That's right. That's right. I'm not, I'm not a living target. So I've walked away from that job.

That's a good—

torpedoes away.

That's right. If you're gonna flush it, it's not coming at me.

Yeah.

So we're talking about different types of leaks all of a sudden.

That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh, number 3, uh, how do you wind down at the end of a long day? I mean, you know, I think it's important for all of us to, to find ways to relieve stress and to kind of, you know, build ourself up for the next day. So, so what do you typically do to wind down?

Well, I'm gonna say that I start my day off with my wind down process, and that's first thing I do in the morning is go to the gym. And that's, that's my stress release. Uh, used to be golf, but then I started getting too frustrated.

Yeah.

So it didn't help. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'm gonna come home, sit down, and, you know, I, I like to quiz my son on how his day went, talk to my wife about how her day— and then we, we have dinner together and we, we kind of sit down and watch a show, you know, something relaxing, not something that's going to get me uptight. And then, yeah, go back and do it all over again.

Family time is important.

It is.

It is. Yep, absolutely.

All right.

Well, last one. Um, what's one of the best pieces of wisdom or advice that you've ever received?

Uh, I would say the thing that sticks with me as far as if we're thinking about business and leaks, um, my dad once told me, if you're going to do something for somebody, you do it like you're doing it for yourself. And, uh, you know, you got to own the problem. You got, you got to take it as if it's yourself and I try to, uh, I try to still use that, you know. I, I make sure that when I get to somebody's house, they know that their problem is my problem now, and, uh, I'm gonna do the best I can because it's, you know, if I'm doing— well, it's kind of changed over the years because since my dad taught me that,

I, I've kind of gone on and gotten— like I said earlier, I got saved, and now I, I do all things as unto Christ. So I just pretend like everything I'm doing, one day I'm gonna stand before him and he's gonna go, I sent these people to you. I didn't send you to these people. So—

Well, that's great. Well, it's really good to meet you, Jim. Thanks for coming on and giving us some information. Hopefully it's been helpful for those out there listening. And, you know, you can find us at all the places that Craig mentioned earlier. And if you have any questions about leak detection, you know, feel free to call Jim or email him. You can also send your questions to us info@homeownersshow.com. And I think that's all we've got. Join us again next week for another episode, but until then, have a great week.

See ya!

Bye.