The Truth About Cast Iron Pipes with Roger Wakefield!

Do you have cast iron plumbing? Are you terrified of cast iron plumbing? We got homebuyers freaking out about cast iron plumbing. What's the truth? The truth is, it goes back to a sewer water test to do that, but let's talk about cast iron itself because I've had some real estate agents ask me flat out, should I steer my clients away from homes with cast iron pipes? And I'm like, sure, if you want to steer them away from 80% of the homes in the Dallas area. Because that's how many there are. It's a lot of them. And it's not just Dallas, it's all across the United States. But look at this, Todd. It was built 50, 80, a hundred years ago. Cast iron pipe is designed to last 50 to a hundred years above the ground. Now I've climbed under houses here in the Dallas area that are 60 years old and actually cut into the cast iron line to do an ad and the cast iron pipe looked amazing. I mean, it looked better than some of the cast iron pipe today. The thing is don't treat cast iron pipes bad, meaning don't put things down your drain. You're not supposed to don't put chemicals down your drain ever. PVC pipes are great. And when we go in and do a replacement, we use PVC pipes. But I mean, think about it. You're building a new house right now or using PVC or cast iron? PVC. Okay. That's what we use these days, but your old house probably had cast iron pipe under it. It had cast iron initially and then we had to replace the whole system with PEX and PVC. You bet. Okay. Now the PEX is the water, so that's replacing copper. The PVC replaces cast iron. Never get away from a house just because it's got cast iron. So I go back to that question from the real estate agents. If there's cast iron pipes, should I steer my customer away? Yeah. No. You steer them towards a sewer water test to make sure that it's good because if it's good, guess what? It's going to be good for a while. If it's bad, now you know, now you can get that fixed before you move in. So you're still getting a good house. And my comparison on this is we have a similar electrical situation, right? There's old homes with all sorts of wiring system, pigtailing, knob and tube and all sorts of crazy things. And in theory, no one of those technologies is bad. What's bad is when they're managed poorly or they're interconnected poorly, or you're simply not aware of what you have. So what I'm hearing you say, which is helpful to buyers, sellers, and homeowners who have no intention of transferring ownership at all, is understand what you have, the right way to maintain it, and then make sure it's operating correctly before you purchase it. So, you know, one comes before the other. So you referenced the water test and the sewer test. A lot of people are afraid of that. We've got a whole nother video on that. You don't want to pressurize that stuff, but you want to make sure that things are working. Now, let me ask you a quick follow-up on that. Let's say I do have cast iron and it does need a repair. Can I now repair a cast iron partially with PVC, or do I need to replace the whole thing? Because there's fear in the market that the plumber is going to come tell me I have to do the whole thing and it's going to cost a fortune. Is he taking advantage of me or is that the right thing? So what's the right thing for cast iron repair? The right thing is, yes, you can repair a section. You've got to get a good plumbing company to come in that knows how to isolate your system. Meaning your system is not just a straight line of your plumbing. It has branch lines going this way and branch lines going this way. If the leak is over here, you don't need to replace all this because a good plumber can come in, isolate this leak, test everything else and say, look, 90% of your plumbing is good. 90% of your plumbing is holding and not leaking. We need to replace this 10%. And then me as a plumber, I give them options. You want me to go through the floor? Do you want me to tunnel in from the outside? Give the homeowner options because chances are if your insurance company is going to pay for this, we can talk to them the right way to find out what's the best thing for you. You may want to replace your bathroom floor. So maybe let's jackhammer it up, tear it up and go in this way. Cheaper for you. You may not want to replace the bathroom floor. You may not want that dirt that's had raw sewage leaking into it for years, piled up in the middle of your bathroom. You may want to tunnel from the outside and then there's no intrusion in your house whatsoever. Okay. So just to ask the simple question, I can have PVC connected to cast iron because there's, I think a misnomer out there in real estate world that you can't have dissimilar materials. And I know there's times you can't, but in this situation, there is a reliable connection point between PVC and cast iron. Therefore this fear that I'm going to ignore a known problem, which we hear this, which is scary because I don't yet have the money time or willingness to replace everything out of sight, out of mind. I know I've got a leak dinner. I'm not going to worry about toxic and dangerous and ugly and smelly and bad. So this should be a relief to a lot of people watching this video, whether you're selling a home, buying a home, repairing a leak, or you're currently terrified that one is down there, the right plumber like this guy and the right approach, whether it's working with insurance or out of pocket, this is a solvable problem. So don't be terrified of cast iron. Don't even be terrified of a repair of cast iron. And then would you in any scenario on a new property now prefer cast iron in any situation? On new commercial jobs, they're still using big cast iron pipe on a lot of the underground. I worked on Parkland hospital a few years back, big cast iron pipe underground. So there is still a need for it. And I talked with plumbers all around the country. A lot of plumbers up North still use it every day here in Texas. Not so much. PVC has done great for us. Okay. Yeah. So I appreciate it. And I think that most people watching probably have or have had, or are fearful of that problem and have probably missed out on a bunch of amazing properties because they were just steering clear. Hopefully the real estate agents and people listening are taking that away as well, that you've just opened up significantly more inventory for your potential buyer. If you had previously been avoiding these problems with them are solvable. And those tests should also not scare you as much as maybe they have in the past. So lots of great information. Appreciate Roger Wakefield, check out his channel and the rest of ours. We'll talk to you on the next one.