Pre-Monsoon Plumbing Checklist for Arizona Homeowners

This is the one that produces the worst outcomes. When a storm surge hits a partially restricted main, the surplus comes up through the lowest opening inside your house — a floor drain, a garage drain, a first-floor shower. That is sewage in your home, and it is a health hazard as well as a mess.

Who needs this most: anyone whose main line has backed up before, homes with mature landscaping over the sewer route, pre-1980 homes with clay or cast iron laterals, rental properties, and multi-unit or park properties where one blockage affects many people.

If the line has backed up more than once, get a camera in it rather than another cable service. A recurring backup has a physical cause, and knowing whether it is roots, scale, a belly or a crack determines whether jetting solves it or whether you are heading toward a repair.

This is technically an HVAC item and it is functionally a plumbing problem, which is why we handle it.

During humid monsoon months, a residential AC system can produce several gallons of condensate a day. That water leaves through a small PVC line, usually running through the attic to an exterior wall. Dust drawn through the coil combines with condensate to form sludge, algae grows in a warm dark wet pipe, and the line closes.

When it does, water backs into the drain pan under the air handler and comes through the ceiling below. It is the most common summer HVAC call in this region and it is entirely preventable.

Clear the line before the season, test that the float switch actually shuts the system down, and put an algaecide tablet in the pan. If your AC has been "randomly shutting off" in July, that is very often the float switch protecting your drywall.

Walk your property and look at where water goes. Desert landscaping with rock and compacted caliche sheds water fast rather than absorbing it, so a lot of Apache Junction yards move a surprising volume during a storm.

Make sure water flows away from the foundation, not toward it. Check that any area drains are not packed with gravel and debris. Clear the path to any yard drains you have.

Then find your sewer cleanout — usually a capped pipe near the foundation on the sewer side of the house. Make sure the cap is present and secure. An open or missing cleanout cap in a yard that floods lets storm water and debris straight into your sewer lateral, which is a fast route to a blockage.

If you do not have an accessible exterior cleanout at all, this is worth adding. It is a modest job and it gives the sewer a place to relieve outside rather than inside if the main ever blocks.

Monsoon season brings power outages, wind damage and the kind of chaos where you may need to shut water off quickly.

Find your main shutoff — usually on the exterior wall near the front hose bib, or in a box at the meter — and actually turn it. Hard water seizes these valves, and a shutoff that will not move is not a shutoff. Discovering that during an emergency is the worst possible time.

Make sure everyone in the household knows where it is and how to operate it. Then turn it back on slowly, and check for leaks at the fixtures afterward, since old packing sometimes weeps after a valve is exercised for the first time in years.

Snowbird households have a specific risk: a failure in an empty house runs until somebody notices, which might be months.

Shut off the main water valve to the whole house. Turn the water heater to vacation mode or off entirely — there is no reason to keep fifty gallons hot for five empty months. Arrange for someone to check the property periodically, ideally after major storms.

A smart leak detection and automatic shutoff device is worth serious consideration for a part-year home. It monitors flow patterns and closes the main if it sees something that looks like a leak, which converts a catastrophic event into a nuisance.