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Emergency call came in on Saturday April 2nd regarding a clogged kitchen sink drain that involved the garbage disposal not working and both sinks not draining. The customer told us that she found us on Yelp.com and that she had read some positive reviews on Yelp and gave us a call. When we arrived, both sides of the sink were clogged and the garbage disposal was jammed. The very first thing we did was use an allen key and unjam the disposal.
 
We knew at the time of unclogging the disposal that there was some type of foreign object inside the chamber from the way the disposal would suddenly stop in the turning motion. Given the kitchen sink drain was still clogged, our priority was getting the kitchen sink unclogged and free flowing. Capital Avenue is located off of Stevenson road, off Kimberly Drive as well to reach the location of this street. Elsmere Kentucky is a growing community near Erlanger Kentucky where Dixie Highway shares the traffic path for numerous cities along the way.
 
With the abrupt use of a toilet plunger, we took the plunger and depressed the wastewater sitting in the sink and forcefully pulled back, creating a large suction of the wastewater in the piping system. With a few vigorous attempts, this removed the clog in the piping system and got the drain free flowing.
 
Our first intention was to use our drain cleaning machine but even though the property owner stated the drain chemicals were removed from the drain, it was more than obvious that the drain chemicals were present beyond a reasonable doubt. One thing we mention to all of our customers who have Dunbar Plumbing perform plumbing services is that additional charges are applied when dealing with drain chemicals.
 
Over time, drain chemicals slowly damage the drain cables used in our profession of drain cleaning and it's better to avoid the chemical completely than to go through the risk of exposure to the cables or physical contact, meaning skin/eyes/hair of the human body.
 
We offered the talent of the toilet plunger for this reason only, as we believe the charges implement for our expertise should require tools in our hands far more skilled in using than a $6.00 plunger.     Knowing Hazardous chemicals were in the piping, it was a good move that proved economical to the customer and safer for us to deal with.

The foreign object was then removed from the garbage disposal once the drainage was no longer backed up into the system. Contact Dunbar Plumbing at 859-359-4833 for all of your plumbing needs and drain cleaning. Visit our website at DunbarPlumbing.com for more information.
 
 
DUNBAR PLUMBING - NORTHERN KENTUCKY PLUMBERS

 

Japan nuclear crisis: workers using newspaper and sawdust to block pipesJapanese workers battling to stop a radioactive water leak into the Pacific from the beleaguered nuclear power plant have resorted to using newspaper and sawdust to try and block the pipes. To read more click here. In Japan this nuclear meltdown continues to get progressively worse and worse. This all started on March 11th 2011, Today is April 4th. From the get go, those in charge have made a mockery out of the truth regarding the seriousness of this situation.
 
They knew if they pumped water into these buildings that have malfunctioned, there would be water displaced as a result. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure this out. What they are trying to stop now is the flow of water entering back into the sea, which will cause serious problems with the aquatic life, down to the fish that are harvested from the ocean that's a large source of food for the Japanese.
 
They recently tried the use of concrete but stopped this idea as fast as it started, probably due to the amount of concrete it would take to cover up this mess and how much trouble it'll be to clean it up when the time comes. An idea about putting the radioactive water on tankers, but what would they do with the radioactive water at that point?
 
What this all boils down to is repeated lies from the upper brass of this electric company, stating their records indicated safety measures to which we now know isn't true on all levels. The earthquake combined with the tsunami disabled the diesel generator backups which forced this nuclear powerplant into an overheating situation, causing the explosions that led to power failures. The amounts of radiation these people that have been forced to reckon with at this powerplant will most likely suffer the ultimate, which is death. Radiation sickness or cancer is the most likely result of radiation exposure. Products to protect yourself from radiation sickness found at websites such as buyiodide.com help with protecting the thyroid gland of the human body.
 
 
There will be no quick results in this situation unfortunately. Very sad for all the families of Japan that have been mislead on the seriousness of the situation there, being forced to live out this nuclear fallout that will claim lives for decades after they eventually stop the transfer of radiation exposure at this damaged plant. So often, humans are responsible for the majority the tragedies in this world. 

Repeat customer of Dunbar Plumbing contacted us for a burst water line that led to an outdoor kitchen that we installed last year. The job is located on Windsor Way in Florence Kentucky, in Gunpowder Estates off Gunpowder road. We have provided a great deal plumbing services for this customer over the years to which we are very grateful for.

 
The water line in question was a 1/2" copper line that led to the outdoor dishwasher. We was hired to design an outdoor plumbing system that was resistant to freezing after preparations are done for winterization. The water line in question has a 1/2" by 3/8" angle stop that allows for a stainless steel braided connection to the dishwasher. Even though we opened and drain this copper water line leading to the dishwasher, having the angle stop narrowing down to 3/8" created the situation where water collected inside this pipe, allowing the cold weather to freeze and burst the pipe.
 
Given that Dunbar Plumbing designed this system "not" to freeze during the winter months, along with our efforts last winter to winterize this system, we returned to this residence, removed the burst water line and installed a new one (about 24" long) and installed a tee right before the angle stop, allowing for another drain that is simple to open and remove all water from the line. Along with this design we also angled the water line so gravity will remove the majority of the water from the piping when it comes time to winterize.
 
Even though the customer offered to pay us for our time, we took care of this repair at no charge to the customer as we will not hold a customer liable for design flaws. It was a very simple repair, less than 20 minutes of our time and it was a gesture that strengthens our ongoing relationship with this customer. We would not of felt comfortable taking any payment for our time and the system is now correct and usable for the design it was created for.
 
 
DUNBAR PLUMBING - NORTHERN KENTUCKY PLUMBERS
 

Autopsies revealed this past week that "Knut" the famous polar bear in Berlin had died due to drowning, which might of been triggered by mental related issues. People are coming out in protest of the recent developments stating that the body of the polar bear is going to be publicly displayed at another part of the zoo.
 

According to the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Knut suffered from a brain inflammation and muscle spasms that caused him to fall from his perch and drown in the enclosure's pool.

More about this story about the protests.
 

This was for a repeat customer of Dunbar Plumbing. Knob Hill Court is off of Mt. Vernon Drive in Fort Wright.Corner sink, customer had one of those older delta faucets where the on/off control is one hole, the center hole is for the swinging spout and the right hole is the sprayer.

Customer had a new one to go into the sink, identical to the old one coming out.

The opening into this corner sink was that of a lazy susan design, where the door is actually 90 degree angle that swings of a set of hinges as one piece, nothing accordian.

Roughly 18" I had to gain entry into this deep corner to disconnect the faucet and reinstall the new one, along with installing a new insinkerator evolution series garbage disposal.

Had to be creative on the replacement of the faucet replacement because you literally could not make the flexible hose connections to the valve under the sink, unless you was 16 year old 80 pound kid.

Once I removed the holding nut, I pulled the valve up out of the sink to remove the two flex lines (one to sprayer, one to center spout) and went about installing the new one. The difficulty was these two connections along with 2 3/8" copper tubes coming out of the valve, retaining nut having to go over top all of it along with the spacer. This is where I think Danze/Pegasus could of taught a lesson to Delta, using the open hole design in the holding nut along with the 2/3 screw tighten down design, as this holding nut I needed to tighten down wasn't even close to an 1/8th of an inch. One arm, long arm into the opening and just barely seeing the locking channels grabbing two straight edges of the nut. I truly believe a basin wrench would not of worked in this application whatsoever.

Once the faucet was secure, I installed two 1/2" by 3/8" 1/4 turn valves along with 3/8" flexible stainless steel supplies that are made to reconnect to copper tubes. The existing faucet did not have isolation valves so the customer was pleased with this new design, along with the stainless steel supply lines.

Got the faucet in, leaks at the camber. I tightened the clip, nothing. Has a plastic pivot ball and I told him to get a stainless steel one with a new camber washer because it's possibly because of the age of the faucet that might be the reason for why it is leaking. He had the faucet for over 3 years, had dust on it as it might of been a 20 year old faucet from back in the day when it was made. How he found an exact match was amazing. It was old; soft copper tubes were very rigid and had to be careful bending them so they wouldn't kink up/collapse.

He's going to fix the leak as he doesn't want to pay me to fix the new faucet.


Old garbage disposal was removed before the full work was done to the faucet. Garbage disposal flange had been leaking for almost a decade due to plumber's putty not holding up. Vibration could of played a role as well. It was a waste king... garbage. Customer opted for a new Evolution series Insinkerator garbage disposal this fellow could not believe how quiet this disposal was.

I usually install the "compact" series, the cheapest of the 3 in the Evolution Series but they didn't have this particular model, sold him the step up that was in stock for the same price as the compact series.

Made this customer's day and I don't blame him. I had to even take my fingers, open up the rubber baffle that sits in the mouth of the mounting flange to see if the innards were turning because I thought maybe it was jammed.  It wasn't, and I told him that he'd have to remember to turn it off, as some people have forgotten that it is even on.

Took a considerable amount of time to do this job, 3.5 hours and I'm so glad I didn't schedule a call thereafter; the difficulty of this job was done mostly by one hand inside the cabinet because it was too narrow to get the whole body inside, moving the hands around. I need motrin.

After I wrote up the bill, this fellow and I had been discussing internet travels and he asked me to check out his website, see what is wrong. Well, having 4 toolbars at the top of your web page would be a good start to remove/get rid of the junk. I viewed his website, right clicked and viewed source that revealed his internet guy never did a lot of things right.

He was pleased with the results of what I found so he could get him to fix it, and gave him some great ideas to make his website work more proactively so he can make money. He had 1700 indexed pages so that was a good start!

Always a pleasure to work for repeat customers. I replaced a water heater and a water softener in 2008, turned out great.
 
 
 
DUNBAR PLUMBING - NORTHERN KENTUCKY PLUMBERS
 
 
 

Dunbar Plumbing was called out to an emergency plumbing call regarding a sewage backup. Customer explained that sewage was backing up into the toilet on the ground level (basement) whenever the plumbing was used on the first floor level of the home. This was a quad level home that has numerous living areas at different elevations with steps inside the home never more than 4 to 6 steps. Customer gained our phone number by searching Google for Northern Kentucky Plumbers where we showed up at the top of the list for emergency plumbing service.
 
 
The customer went on to state that not even a week/two weeks prior that another plumbing company had been out there to clean a kitchen sink drain that was running slow. The plumber didn't have much success and used a larger cable, retrieved a disposable wipe that the customer thought was extremely odd given it was a kitchen sink drain. Clover Nook Drive is off of Camp Ernst road, a very heavily travelled road in Boone County Kentucky. Briargate is the street that turns off of Camp Ernst road that leads to this street.
 
 
Customer was glad to see us arrive no later than 45 minutes from the time we called. The toilet had already been removed from the closet flange on the ground level where the backup was occurring. Customer showed us the piping directly behind the bathroom so we could directly diagnose exactly where the clog is, and that we wanted the closest proximity to the clog as possible. We set the machine up and within the first 20 feet we ran into a hard obstruction inside the 3" drain piping.
 
When we removed the cable back out of the drain, the last foot of the cable was wrapped with numerous disposable wipes that most likely was responsible for the clog in the drain line. Customer went on to say that the prior family member that lived at the property always put these disposable wipes into the drain, and there was a good chance that possibly hundreds of them could be inside the drain line. In knowing this, we instructed the customer that when the drain was open and free flowing that heavy amounts of water should be ran down the pipe while the cable is in the drain to get the majority of those wipes out of the drain. We always state to our customers that toilet paper and urine, fecal matter is the only items to go down a toilet. The rest belongs in the garbage, always.
 
Once it is after the fact, there's not much you can actually do since the buildup continues inside the piping where accumulation of these wipes will slow down the flow of the drain system and create a clog in the drain. In total we made three passes with our cable which was 80 feet in total, making sure the drain was completely open and free of the disposable wipes. As part of the service, we told the customer that we would reset the toilet back down on the closet flange and hook it back up, test it to make sure the system was working the entire time. Also encouraged the property owner to flush the toilet repeatedly after the drain cleaning work was done, running sinks, filling up the laundry tub and operating the washing machine to create the heaviest amount of water flow into the drain system to move any remaining disposable wipes from the drain. Call Dunbar Plumbing at 859-359-4833 or visit DunbarPlumbing.com for your plumbing needs.
 
DUNBAR PLUMBING - NORTHERN KENTUCKY PLUMBERS   
 
 
     

Customer contacted us in regards to a kitchen faucet replacement along with an outdoor faucet that was leaking on the back side of the house. The job location was Ashgrove court in Independence Kentucky, back in the Villages of Beechgrove. Beechgrove is a part of Independence, one of the first few "large" subdivisions that was created in the late 1970s.
 
The age of this home is stamped by the fact that the drain piping in the home is cast iron for the ground work, the upper drain waste and vent piping is PVC. Subdivisions such as the one we visited today are subdivisions where you can expect to see modifications to the plumbing systems, along with some products that have served almost 3 decades with sufficient/good reliability.
 
 
When we arrived to the property, customer stated there was two faucets leaking which concerned us that possibly high water pressure may be playing a role. Before the water was shut off to make the necessary repairs, we test the water pressure at the rear outside hose faucet which revealed 60+ pounds pressure without a pressure reducing valve present on the main line. We could see the entire water service coming out of the floor without any indication that there was a pressure reducing valve anywhere. No thermal expansion tank was present at or near the water heater as well.
 
 
Once the water was shut off, we proceeded to repair the back outside faucet. Removal of the stem for the faucet revealed the black rubber washer was old and hardened along with a crack in the mating surface where the seat washer comes in contact with the seat. We replaced the seat washer and reassembled, fixed the problem. 
 
 
Next, the kitchen sink faucet replacement. 
 
 
Once we looked under the sink into the cabinet, we realized it was going to be a difficult task to replace the kitchen sink faucet. The faucet itself was loose on the deck, and the nuts were froze into position. Along with that revelation, the way the flexible supply lines connected to the copper water lines was a serious conglomeration of transition fittings that needed to be removed from the equation to simplify the replacement.
 
 
The first thing we did was cut/remove the existing shutoff valves and install 2 new 1/2" by 3/8" shutoff valves so the faucet had new isolation valves and no numerous points in the system where it could possibly leak. Using our famous Ridgid kitchen sink faucet installing tool, we removed the existing faucet. The tool we used is designed with slots to mesh into the tab pattern of the common plastic nuts used for holding down/anchoring new faucets to sink decks. The tool works quite well and even though it does work all the time, it works the majority of the time and that's far better than before. Before, the only tool out there for that application of moving the holding nuts was a basin wrench which was notorious for ripping the ears off of the nuts. Once that happens, removal is very difficult and involves the difficult task of breaking/splitting the nut.
 
 
Once the faucet was removed, we installed a customer supplied Delta two handled kitchen sink faucet with sprayer. This was a long necked spout, chrome finish. Very nice and elegant and the customer really enjoyed the looks of the faucet. Underneath the sink we installed new stainless steel faucet supply lines connected to the new shutoff valves for the hot and cold.

 
As always, Dunbar Plumbing follows the traditional design of using silicone grease to cover the holes of where the allen screw holes are for the handles, along with the fine threads of the aereator. We make a point to show this to our customers while this is being done, something that proves that no matter who works on that faucet in the future, the correct steps have been taken to allow for removal of the handles without fighting to get the allen screws out.
 
 
Customer was very pleased with the finished results and we are very glad to service this new customer. Call Dunbar Plumbing at 859-359-4833 or visit DunbarPlumbing.com for your plumbing needs.
 
 
DUNBAR PLUMBING - NORTHERN KENTUCKY PLUMBERS

 

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnfNZ7fqog" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnfNZ7fqog</a>
 
 
This is a sad story of hardship of an animal.
 
"Knut" the polar bear began his journey into this world by being the recipient of an animal that was rejected by his mother at birth. This brought international celebrity to this polar bear and people from all over the world came to see this polar bear.
 
Abruptly, this polar bear died at age 4 this past week with 600 people present in the viewing area when this happened.
 
Here is a article that will bring tears to your eyes just by looking at the pictures, seeing this animal that lost the most important part of his life without rhyme or reason, his mother. From the standpoint of humans and human life, the bonding relationship with mother and son is crucial. It is very evident when a child has been robbed of this opportunity and it shows up through the aging/developmental process. There is nothing that replaces this action and time in those very crucial beginning years. This animal was dealt that devastating blow and was forced to grow up having something that he never got a chance to endure.
 
The video above changes in context, the very reason I wrote the story about this animal 'after' the reader of this thread would most likely watch the video first. Most if not all of us had the luxury of having a mother in their life. But to see this animal celebrate his birthday, alone, it's the crossing of wires to even understand what this animal is going through, being separated for no reason other than his mother totally disconnected from him. Can you imagine the pain that is felt in a human child, knowing that their mother doesn't care, love and nurture them?
 
I find the whole situation quite disturbing. Humans are animals. People don't always think animals have emotions, but we're almost built with the same setup; bones hair head and a heart. There's a good chance this polar bear, beloved "Knut" died of a broken heart. So very sad. 
 

HB 333 has passed the house and senate. Gov. Steve Beshear is scheduled to sign the legislation Monday, March 21.
 
 
This is going to be a huge change in history for the state of Kentucky, given that many fireworks have been restricted/banned all over the state, forcing underground sales of fireworks.
 
Indirectly at one time the only way to get the "good" fireworks, meaning anything above and beyond sparklers, smoke bombs and small fountains would mean a trip out of state where the product was legal. People did not think twice about bringing such illegal products back to Kentucky as at one time it was legal.
 
There are local sellers of these illegal fireworks but you have to sign a document stating that you will be either taking them out of state OR lighting them off in the presence or under the supervision of someone designated to use them.
 
With this latest change of the fireworks being allowed to be bought sold and detonated in Kentucky, this should promote sales in Kentucky and keep revenues here in the state, thus promoting income for Kentucky businesses.
 
If you knew "where" to buy them all these years, you wasn't travelling to Indiana or Ohio to purchase fireworks. I believe there's a good majority and the creation of future firework's businesses that this will be a good move for Kentucky.
 
To think this will create a more harmful situation for people in Kentucky is unwarranted as they've been in the hands of childrens and adults in this state for decades. 
 
 
Here is a video of the Independence Fireworks in Independence Kentucky in the past few years.
 
 
 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkmY7pqeSZE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkmY7pqeSZE</a>

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