Do you know how to do a sewer and water test?
In this video we're gonna teach you what a sewer and water test is and we're
gonna tell you why to get away from the words "hydrostatic test".
And we're gonna teach you right now.
I'm Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber.
Welcome back to another great video.
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I recently did a class for some real estate brokers.
I do that quite often.
But this is one that I did for a big broker in North Dallas.
A great company.
They wanted to learn about plumbing so what we wanted to talk about is a hydrostatic test
and although I hate that word, I think that TREC has it in their contract but we need
to get away from that word.
We need to get to slab leaks, water leaks, sewer tests, water test, gas test, and that's
what I'm talking about here.
I hope you enjoy it.
Now I get into the hydrostatic test.
And TREC has this on their new form that came out, I think it came out January and they
started enforcing it in May.
I don't like the verbiage.
If you Google "hydrostatic test" it'll tell you it's a test on a pipe or vessel where
pressure is applied to the system to determine if there's a leak.
If you've got a plumber that wants to apply pressure, get rid of him immediately.
If he wants to pump up the system, get rid of him immediately.
What we do on a sewer test, we literally, we go in, we put a test ball in the drain
where it comes out of the house, we need a two way clean-out or we've got to find another
way to do it, but you put it in there, you fill it up to the top of the slab level, you
see if the water goes down.
There's no pressure applied.
Literally you've got about three feet of pressure so you're talking about 1.2 psi.
If y'all have ever been in a house that had the sewer stopped up, it's the exact same
thing.
Water is filled to the slab level so that's all we're doing.
We're not boosting the pressure, we're not creating problems, we're not ruining anything.
Why the other real estate company and and TREC keep calling it hydrostatic, I don't
know.
I'm guessing somewhere down the road a plumber came in applied pressure and blew something
apart.
I actually had an engineer fly back from Austin because he wanted to see me do his test because
he just knew I was gonna blow his system apart, his dad knew I was gonna blow his system apart.
So I showed him step-by-step what I did and filled it up and I said that's it.
He said: well I felt I thought you would put pressure on it.
I said: look I've been telling you I put no pressure.
All I did is fill it with water with a garden hose.
Once it reaches slab level you let it go.
After about 20 minutes you'll know if that water levels dropped any.
And if you stay longer and see how far it drops, and sometimes you need to say longer,
sometimes you don't, depending on the size of the leak you can tell about how far it
drops whether it's a tub, whether it's a toilet, whether it's down in the main.
You can't tell which one but at least then you know you have a leak and at that point
you turn this over to the seller; by the way we had a plumber come out.
And buyers normally pay for the sewer/water test.
They're the ones - it's their insurance.
So they'll pay for it.
They turn it over to the seller.
At that point the seller does a locate.
So three main tests not performed by home inspections.
The sewer test, that's the one I just told you about.
No external pressure.
The water test.
All we do basically is go into the house, we'll disconnect the washing machine, we'll
hook a gauge up to the washing machine box and see what the pressure reading is.
We go up to the meter, we turn it off, again we wait about 20 minutes see if it drops.
We can tell by how fast it drops how big the leak is.
Now this is good to do, we do need access to the house, but this is good because we
literally we go into the house, we make sure nothing's dripping, we make sure nothing's
running.
If we find a frost proof dripping or a toilet running or something like that we will tell
y'all: hey the seller needs to fix this first.
If it's something that we can valve off, say there's a toilet running and we can turn off
the angle stop.
We can go ahead and perform the test, and say the test passed but this toilet is running
and it needs to be repaired.
The last one is the gas test.
Gas test is a little harder to do it.
You've literally got a go in, you've got to disconnect something, you have to put a gauge
on, you have to cap it off at the meter, depending on where regulators are and what not.
But you pump it up.
Now gas - you know, water in our houses, they teach y'all 40 to 80 pounds is where it's
supposed to be for a home inspector.
Gas is a little bit different.
The gas in our house is about two ounces.
So it's very, very low and that gives us enough BTUs to heat up whatever we need to heat up.
The gas test, we only pump up to six pounds.
That's the only one we do apply pressure to but that same pressure is required by the
city or Atmos in order to get the gas turned on.
So we're not doing anything other than what the city actually wants us to do.
Thank you for watching.
If you want to learn more about plumbing check out some other videos we've done on The Expert
Plumber and start now by subscribing and ringing the bell so you don't miss out on anything.
I'll see you on the next video.