Plumbing the Depths of Your Home, Pt. 1

Water is the one thing that people cannot live long without. One of the marvels of human ingenuity is plumbing. While indoor plumbing made life as we know it convenient, plumbing itself made life as we know it possible. In this, the first of three parts on plumbing, we will be looking at how water gets into your home. In part 2, we will look at how it gets out of your home. Which is more important? Well, it all depends on your point of view. And in part 3, we'll look at what to do when things go wrong.

The Simplicity of How

Water comes into your home from one of two sources: from the public water main or from your own well. If you have a well, you will also have a pump to bring the water to the surface and to your house under pressure. If you get your water from the city or water company, it comes to you through the mains already under pressure.

Most of us who get our water from either the city or water company will have a water meter at the point where the water supply line enters the house. The meters will have either a large pointer that sweeps across the face of the meter or a dial marked "one foot". When you have a faucet open, these dials will move very fast, because they mark off each cubic foot of water that goes through the meter.

The purpose of the one foot reading is so you can tell if you have a leak. With all the faucets closed, look at your meter. If the one foot pointer is moving, you have a leak somewhere in your system. Hopefully, it's nothing more than a dripping faucet. If you don't have a water meter, you can pick up a leak detector from a plumbing supply store. There are many types, but they all work the same. There is a metal rod that you place on the pipe and you ear goes against the other end, like an old-fashioned phone receiver. If all the faucets are closed and you hear a gurgling sound, then there is water flowing through the pipe and you have a leak.

It's In...Now What?

Once past the meter, the water pipe goes to the water heater before it branches off. There, a line will run to the inlet of the water heater and hot water comes out the outlet. From this point, most of your water lines will be run in pairs. Lines to outside faucets will only have cold water supplies, but all other areas of your home are supplied with hot and cold lines. The only other places there might be a branch off the cold water line would be to supply the toilet and a line for an icemaker in your fridge or a humidifier on your furnace.

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