The week before Thanksgiving is our busiest for plumbing disasters. It’s always the same culprit, and it’s completely avoidable. I get three to five emergency calls every year from homeowners whose showers turn ice-cold just as relatives arrive. In nearly every case, it’s not the tank, heating element, or age of the unit—it’s the water … Read more
I once worked with a young couple who had just bought their first travel trailer. They were thrilled about weekend getaways but completely blindsided when their single 6-gallon tank ran cold halfway through the wife’s shower on night one. The husband called me at 6 a.m., panicked that the “broken” heater would strand them at … Read more
Here’s what surprises homeowners: the biggest cause of system failure isn’t the equipment itself, but the tiny, $15 part nobody thinks to maintain—the anode rod. I’ve seen 80 gallon electric water heaters last 12+ years with perfect heating, only to fail because a corroded anode rod went unchecked. That small sacrificial component protects the tank … Read more
A client called me last week, their voice full of regret, after trying to follow a tutorial they found online. They’d installed a cheap plastic shower drain strainer from a big-box store, only to have it crack within three weeks—water seeped under the tile, rotting the subfloor beneath their $12,000 Kohler linear drain system. They … Read more
Statistics show that 40% of bathroom remodels go over budget. For our clients, that number is less than 5%, and here is the one thing we do differently—we install Schluter shower drains with precision-matched waterproofing systems from day one. No guesswork. No patch jobs. Just a fully integrated, code-compliant drain assembly that eliminates leaks before … Read more
Based on our post-installation surveys, the stainless-steel shower drain kit we use still flows at 9 gpm after 5,000 showers, while the big-box plastic kit drops to 5 gpm and starts smelling like a locker room by year three. That 50 % flow loss means soap scum puddles, re-grout bills, and a callback that wipes … Read more
In 15 years of installations, I’ve seen that nearly 80% of emergency service calls are for issues that could have been prevented with a simple, annual maintenance check. One call in particular sticks with me—a homeowner in Portland called me at midnight because their shower flooded the master bathroom. The culprit? A clogged linear drain … Read more
I had to sit down with a family and show them photos of what was really inside their walls. Black slime had crept three feet up the studs from a failed shower drain trap that dried out during a three-week vacation. The relief on their faces when I said “we can fix this” is why … Read more
The sleet was hammering the skylight so hard I thought the glass would give way. I was kneeling on a freezing tile floor at 2 a.m., flashlight between my teeth, while the homeowner held a soup pot under the dripping Schluter Kerdi drain. If I couldn’t get that shower drain out before the overnight low … Read more
Early in my career, my mentor pointed to a seemingly minor detail and said, “If you don’t fix this $100 problem now, it will become a $10,000 problem later.” He was right. I watched a homeowner in Portland ignore a slow-draining shower for eight months—until the waterproofing membrane beneath their Schluter®-KERDI tiled floor failed, rotting … Read more