Published on Oct 01, 2026
Welcome to another Q&A session where I answer questions from y'all on the internet.
Today's question is:
Kolten's advice for preventing water damage centers on regular, simple self-checks. He suggests periodically walking the house to inspect plumbing fittings and electrical boxes, looking, listening, and smelling for anything unusual around switches and plugs, without disassembling anything. For plumbing, he recommends checking the supply lines at every toilet and faucet for leaks, and pulling out the dishwasher to look behind it if able. If a homeowner isn't comfortable doing this, the company offers free inspections alongside estimates (a standalone inspection carries a charge, but quick looks during an estimate visit are free). He adds that Next Gen can handle general residential services and maintenance such as annual water heater flushes, typically starting with a phone call and a ballpark price. For plumbing servicing, the company partners with a local business, Apes Plumbing and Repair, and can either connect homeowners with them or walk them through the process directly.
I would say be aware of your plumbing fittings, electrical boxes, and so on. Every now and then, take a look at your switches and your plugs. You don't have to disassemble anything, just go around the house, take a look, maybe listen for a second or two: do you hear anything, do you smell anything, do you notice anything different with the plugs? Same thing with all your plumbing. Go around each toilet fitting where the water line comes into the toilet, take a look, make sure nothing's leaking. Do that on all your toilets and all your faucets. If you're capable, pull your dishwasher out and take a look back there. If you're not, call us out, we'll come take a look. We do free inspections, as well as an estimate. If you're looking for just an inspection on its own, we'd charge for the inspection itself, but if you want to ask a couple questions while we're out there for an estimate, I'd be more than happy to take a look. We can offer any sort of residential services, if you want us to come out and look at some things, we can do that. We'd get on a phone call, discuss what you're looking to have done, and I could give you a ballpark price over the phone. We can also handle things like annual water heater flushes. We work directly with local small businesses, our plumber is Apes Plumbing and Repair, and they do all of our annual servicing for plumbing work we do together and anything additional. So if you reach out looking to have plumbing work done, we can take care of that; we can either connect you with Apes or I can come out personally and walk you through the process.