Summer in the Pacific Northwest puts a different kind of pressure on your plumbing than winter does. Frost damage from January shows up the first time you turn on the hose bib in May. Kitchen drains that limped through the slow season get pushed over the edge by BBQ-season grease and a house full of guests. And homeowners who held off on water-heater replacements through the cold months suddenly realize they’ve got three months to fix things before fall hits.
We’ve been the plumbers Mukilteo, Everett, and the rest of Snohomish County call for over 50 years, and the same handful of jobs come up every summer. Here are the seven we see most, with examples from the work we’ve done in the last few months.
1. Outdoor hose bibs that won’t stop dripping
The first time you turn the outdoor faucet on for the garden is when last winter’s frost damage shows up. A hose bib that drips, won’t shut all the way off, or sprays from the stem packing isn’t going to fix itself — and the longer you leave it, the higher the chance the inside-wall pipe is involved.
We replaced one in Mukilteo a few weeks ago where the old fixture had cracked silently inside the wall over the winter. We installed a frost-free model, which is what we recommend for any home west of the Cascades — it drains backward as you shut it off so there’s nothing for the next cold snap to freeze.
Read the full job: New Hose Bib Installation in Mukilteo →
2. Slow kitchen drains from BBQ-season grease
Summer is grease season. Burgers, marinades, full-house cookouts — and a kitchen sink that handles three meals a day instead of one. The grease, food scraps, and dishwasher runs add up fast, and the drain that was “a little slow” in April becomes a full backup by July.
We pulled a tough clog out of a drain line in Everett in mid-May where the buildup was so far down the line that store-bought chemicals never had a chance. A proper drain cleaning isn’t just running a snake — it’s reading what the camera shows you about why the drain clogged, so you don’t have us back in three months.
Read the full job: Clearing a Tough Drain Clog in Everett →
3. Guest-bathroom toilets that fail when family visits
The flapper that “kinda works” when it’s just you and your spouse will fail the day five relatives show up. Running toilets, weak flushes, and toilets that need to be plunged after every use are the calls we get from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
We handled one on Whidbey Island recently where the customer had been ignoring a slow refill for months — by the time we got there, the fill valve was on its way out, the supply line was corroded, and the bowl had a hairline crack. We replaced the toilet rather than nickel-and-dime the repairs.
Read the full job: Toilet Repair in Langley →
4. Water heater stress from thermal expansion
This one’s invisible until it’s not. Water heaters need a place for thermal expansion to go — when water heats up, it expands, and modern code requires that expansion to happen into a small tank instead of pushing pressure back into the city water main. If yours doesn’t have one, or the one you have has failed, summer city-water pressure swings will start showing up as drips around the T&P valve and stress on every fitting in the house.
We installed a Therm-X-Trol expansion tank for a Mukilteo customer in April. It’s the model we trust most for the Pacific Northwest’s pressure profile.
Read the full job: Thermal Expansion Tank Installation in Mukilteo →
5. Pre-listing and pre-tenant sewer scopes
Summer is when houses change hands in Snohomish County — and a $250 sewer scope is the cheapest insurance a buyer or seller can buy. Cast iron in older Mukilteo and Everett homes, roots in the sewer line in any neighborhood with big trees, bellies and offsets you can’t see from the surface — none of that shows up on a standard home inspection.
If you’re listing your house this summer, get it scoped before you sign the listing agreement so you know what you’re working with. If you’re buying, make the scope a contingency. We’ll show you exactly what we see on the camera.
Read more: What Is a Sewer Scope? →
6. Water heaters: replace in July, not December
Every November we get the same calls: “no hot water, can you come today?” — and the answer is usually yes, but at higher cost and with whatever unit we can get on the truck. The smarter play is to replace in July when there’s no urgency, we can pick the right unit for your house, and we can swap it on a clean Tuesday morning instead of a Saturday night.
If your water heater is over 10 years old, makes new noises, runs out of hot water faster than it used to, or shows any rust at the bottom of the tank, it’s on borrowed time.
Read more: Top 5 Signs You Need a New Water Heater →
7. Outdoor irrigation backflow checks
Washington requires annual backflow assembly testing on any system that connects irrigation to your drinking water — and most cities in Snohomish County will send you a letter if you’re past due. Summer is the right time to handle it: the system is running, problems are visible, and we can catch a failing assembly before the first hard freeze breaks it.
We’re certified backflow assembly testers — if your city or water district asked for a current test report and you haven’t done it yet, give us a call.
Schedule a summer check before fall hits
Most of these jobs are an hour or two of work and a few hundred dollars handled in July. The same problems caught in November cost double and usually involve some kind of emergency.
We’re a Mukilteo-based, commercially licensed plumbing company — every team member is a fully licensed plumber, which is rare for residential service in Snohomish County. We’ve been doing this for over 50 years and we cover Everett, Mukilteo, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Marysville, and the rest of north Puget Sound.
Call us at 425-374-3909 or book online, and we’ll get one of our trucks out this week.
Stollwerck Plumbing & Sewer · WA license STOLLPL780CJ · Serving Snohomish County since 1973