In Cary, North Carolina, plumbing disasters happen—as they happen anywhere. But Chris Kousis, owner of CK’s Plumbing & Backflow, LLC, has stories to tell that highlight the perils of plumbing problems, and the mastery of the plumbers who fix them. Plumbers have to think analytically to determine what causes mishaps in the first place. In order to do that, they have to have a constantly updated working knowledge of plumbing systems old and new.
Kousis tells the story of a “cross section” plumbing problem: When heating and cooling water got mixed in with drinking water. This could lead to a health disaster because heating and cooling water is full of chemicals and runs through the machines that heat or cool buildings. There are very specific valves that prevent the mixture of drinking water and heating or cooling water. In North Carolina, Kousis’s business is, among other things, a local Cary backflow prevention plumbing business. So Kousis knows how back “cross section” water mixing can be. To fix the problem, Kousis’s team “had to find the point where the water was crossing, then fix it by installing a backflow prevention system.” This could have been very “serious because people could get really sick from it”—from mixing potable and grey water.
At a hotel an hour and a half outside of Kousis’s service area—outside Cary, North Carolina—hotel owners were having big plumbing issues. It took more than four plumbers looking for causes before Kousis and CK’s Plumbing & Backflow, LLC, were called in. The issue was very low water pressure—which could, of course, destroy a hotel’s business. At a hotel, guests don’t want to worry about water pressure; they want to be comfortable. One of the previous plumbers had discovered a PRV valve—a water pressure reducing valve—that needed to be replaced. First you have to understand what PRV units are: Because city pressure fluctuates, says Kousis, every building should have a functioning PRV valve. Many municipal codes require homes and buildings to have PRV valves because they regulate water pressure.
Kousis calculated that it would take thousands of dollars to replace the PRV valve at the hotel; but that would require shutting down the hotel during repairs. The management did not like the sound of this, so Kousis’s crew did some more investigating. They found out that the previous plumbers weren’t doing their jobs fully: The PRV unit was definitely salvageable. The real problem was that the previous plumbers didn’t want to mend a bent hose that was stopping up water. Although this buildup in the plumbing system was getting dangerous, Kousis had seen the problem before and fixed it by slowly releasing the hose.
Instead of shutting down the whole hotel, Kousis and his crew unstopped the hose and cleaned out the PRV system. The other plumbers, meanwhile, were insisting that he replace the whole system. But “just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s worn out. It just needed to be cleared out,” says Kousis. Often, people see something that doesn’t look right or that needs to be cleaned up, and they get very frightened that everything needs replacing, says Kousis. Fortunately, his experience has taught him that it often doesn’t pay to be so hasty.