Author: Jason Miller

Open the cabinet under any sink in your house. You’ll see one or two small valves coming out of the wall, with braided or plastic lines running up to the faucet. Behind every toilet there’s another one. Those are angle stops. Each one exists for exactly one moment: the day something leaks and you need…

People are surprised to hear it, but the Las Vegas Valley gets hard freezes. Most winters bring a handful of nights below 32°F, especially in December and January, and outlying areas and higher spots like the west and northwest valley can drop lower than the Strip. Homes here aren’t built for cold the way homes…

A slow kitchen sink that keeps coming back. A main line that backs up into the tub every few months. Every time, it gets snaked, works for a while, and then it’s back. When a drain keeps clogging, the problem usually isn’t the clog. It’s what’s coating the inside of the pipe. That’s where hydro…

Nearly every home in the Las Vegas Valley is built on a concrete slab, with water lines running under or through it. When one of those lines springs a leak, you can’t see it. The water just goes into the soil under your house, sometimes for weeks before anyone notices. Slab leaks are one of…

In most of the country, a water heater sits in a basement or a utility closet at a mild temperature. In the Las Vegas Valley, it usually sits in the garage, and on a July afternoon a closed garage here can climb well past 110°F. Add some of the hardest water in the country and…

If you’ve lived in the Las Vegas Valley for more than a few months, you’ve seen it. There’s a chalky white ring around the faucet base and spots on every glass that comes out of the dishwasher. The shower head sprays sideways because half its holes are plugged. Nothing is wrong with your house. That’s…