An emergency can strike at any time, and one of the most dangerous and devastating kind is a plumbing emergency. Plumbing emergencies can range from minor ones such as broken or frozen pipes to more serious ones like broken sewer lines or gas leaks. These could have hazardous effects on your home and your family. While regular maintenance can significantly reduce the chances of such a disaster striking, having an emergency plumber in San Diego you trust on speed dial is extremely important should an emergency ever occur.

I’m A Skilled DIY Homeowner. Why Should I Call a Plumber?

While having emergency plumbing tools at your disposal and knowing how to use them is a great thing, it could not hurt to have a 24-hour plumbing service in your contacts list. Knowing your way around a plumbing emergency could save you from the immediate danger and could save you some money, but the underlying issue might simply be too much for a DIY’er to handle. This is why it is important to seek professional help, a trustworthy plumber with the right tools and the years of experience of using them. Of course, there are some plumbing emergencies that you should not toy with at any cost and during which it is absolutely imperative to seek professional help. Some of these emergencies are:

Gas Leaks

This is the most obvious example of an emergency that demands to be handled by a professional. There’s no mistake in identifying a gas leak, the distinctive odor is a sure sign that something went wrong in the gas lines. It is extremely important to get in touch with an emergency plumber and ask them to take care of this issue, as a gas leak could result in poisoning, death, serious damage to your home or even an explosion. What you can do to reduce the risk of this happening is to shut the main gas valve as soon as you notice that something smells funny. The rest is best left in the skilled hands of a professional emergency plumber.

Heating Breakdown

Your heating system malfunctioning during winter should also be considered an emergency best handled by an emergency plumber, especially if you have children, seniors or someone ill in your family. Before you call a 24-hour plumbing service, you could check for some obvious issues, like whether the thermostat or the burner has been switched off. Then check whether the circuit breaker shorted out and if so, resetting it should bring the heating system back online. Finally, check if the oil tank is full if your heater is oil-based. After going through all of the steps above, if there’s nothing to indicate what could be causing the breakdown, best call a plumber to diagnose the issue.

Burst Pipes

Make no mistake, even something that seems trivial compared to the previous entries such as burst pipes could wreak irreparable damage to your home. The first step you should take even before you call an emergency plumber is to shut the main water valve. If you don’t know where the main valve is, call your plumber immediately. Then, after the emergency has been handled ask the plumber to tag all of the valves and explain what each does, in case you are ever faced with such an emergency again.