Plumbers in Groveton, Texas

Turning the water on for the season

Do it slowly and do it with somebody watching. Open the main a quarter turn at a time with a tap open high in the building, and listen. A system that has come through the winter intact goes quiet within a minute. One that has not keeps running with nothing open, and the sound tells you before the water appears.

Keep the water heater isolated until the rest of the building has proved itself, then fill it, then turn the power or gas to it on. An electric element fired dry is destroyed in seconds, and that is the classic opening weekend mistake.

Then walk everything: under both sinks, behind the toilet, at the heater, at the pump if there is one, and outside at any hydrant. Split lines from a January freeze leave no trace in a dry system and announce themselves the moment pressure returns.

Do this a week before the season, not on the Friday. The difference between finding a problem with seven days to fix it and finding it with eight people arriving is the whole point.

The rest of the list

Traps are dry. Months of evaporation means the smell on arrival is the drain venting into the room. Water down every fixture and every floor drain fixes it before anyone unpacks.

Propane appliances have sat idle. Pilot assemblies, thermocouples and regulators do not improve with months of disuse, and camps run on propane. If the heater or the range is reluctant, that is the usual reason.

Things have moved in. Wasps in a vent termination, rodents through an unsealed penetration, mud daubers in a hose bib. A quick look at every opening beats discovering it later.

The septic has been resting. A system that handles a family occasionally is about to take fifteen people for three days. Spreading showers and laundry across the weekend matters more here than anywhere, and if the tank has not been pumped in years, before the season is the time.

Shutting down, and how we work

The January shutdown is what decides next season. Water off at the main, the system drained from the lowest point with taps opened to let air in, the heater drained, traps given a little antifreeze if the camp will be hard frozen, and the pump isolated where there is a well.

Write it down and leave the list in the cabin. Camps are shut down by whoever leaves last, which is a different person every year, and a laminated sheet on the back of the door outperforms anybody's memory.

We do pre-season and post-season visits around Groveton, Trinity, Apple Springs and Centerville, and we would rather come out a week early than on the Friday of opening weekend, when so would everyone else.