Plumber near Standley Lake

Houses from the boom either side of 1980

The neighborhoods around Standley Lake filled in largely through the late seventies and eighties. That gives them a distinct plumbing profile — newer than Olde Town's galvanized-and-clay era, older than the PEX-and-PVC of the newer western developments, and sitting right in the window when a few materials were in widespread use that have not all aged equally well.

Polybutylene, and how to tell if you have it

Polybutylene supply pipe was installed widely in American homes from the late seventies until the mid-nineties before it was withdrawn from the market. Houses built in this window are worth checking, because it is the single most consequential thing you can learn about your plumbing.

It is usually grey — sometimes blue or black — flexible plastic tubing, around half an inch or three quarters, and it is most easily spotted where it enters at the water heater, at the main shut-off, or where it stubs out of a wall behind a toilet. It is not the same as modern PEX, which is typically red, blue or white and is a completely different and entirely sound material.

If you find grey plastic supply line, do not panic and do not let anyone panic you into an emergency decision either. Plenty of it is still in service. But it is worth knowing it is there, worth mentioning to your insurer, and worth planning for rather than discovering during a failure. We will tell you honestly what we see and what we would do — and if what you actually have is PEX, we will tell you that too and charge you nothing for the good news.

Forty-year-old cast iron and original laterals

Drain stacks from this era are often cast iron, and forty-plus years in, they are scaling and narrowing from the inside. The symptom is a drain that clogs repeatedly no matter how thoroughly it was last cleared — because the restriction is the pipe wall, not the blockage. Jetting takes it back toward full diameter where the pipe is sound.

Sewer laterals here are frequently original. The trees planted when these neighborhoods were built are now forty-plus years mature, with root systems to match, and they have had four decades to find any weeping joint on the way to the main. Root intrusion is common and it recurs on a cycle. If your main has ever backed up, a camera inspection is worth doing in autumn rather than discovering the problem with a house full of guests.

Original fixtures and valves

Most houses here are on at least their second water heater and often their third. What often has not been touched is the small hardware: angle stops under sinks and behind toilets, the main shut-off, hose bibs. Multi-turn valves of this vintage seize, and they seize open, which you discover at precisely the moment you need them to close.

• Test the main shut-off turns. If it will not, replace it — it is a small job that pays for itself the first time something bursts.
• Swap seized angle stops for quarter-turn ball valves as you come across them.
• Replace original hose bibs with frost-free versions, and disconnect hoses every October.
• Check whether there is an expansion tank if a PRV has been fitted at some point.

Winter, wind and exposed pipe

The open ground around the lake means wind, and wind matters more for frozen pipes than the thermometer alone suggests. Pipes running through exterior walls, unheated crawlspaces and garages on the exposed side of a house lose heat much faster on a gusty night. If you have had a freeze in one particular spot before, that is the spot to insulate properly before the next hard swing — Colorado's habit of going from sixty degrees to fifteen inside a day is exactly the pattern that splits pipe.