New to Huntsville? Plumbing to check in your first week

This list is for after you’ve got the keys. If you’re still shopping and want a pre-purchase checklist instead, we’ve got what to check before buying a house.

Get water service set up with the right utility

Which one depends on where you landed. Most of Huntsville gets water, electric, and gas from Huntsville Utilities (HU). Madison Utilities, Decatur Utilities, and Athens Utilities each cover their own areas. Outside city limits, you might be on a county water system instead. And if you’re out in a rural stretch of Limestone or Madison County, you could be on septic rather than city sewer, or even a private well for water. If you’re not sure, check your closing paperwork or ask the seller.

Find the main shutoff and test it

Every house has one spot where you can cut water to the whole house. Find it this week, while nothing’s leaking. It’s usually near where the line enters the house, in the crawlspace, the garage, or a utility closet. Close it and open it again to confirm it moves and doesn’t drip afterward. If you can’t find it or it won’t budge, get that fixed now. Here’s how to shut off water to your house for the full walkthrough.

Locate the water meter

The meter marks where the utility’s responsibility ends and yours begins. In Huntsville, you own the water line from the meter to the house and the sewer line from the house to the main. Other utilities are usually similar, but confirm with yours.

Learn your water heater

Check the label for the manufacture date and the fuel type, gas or electric. If nobody can tell you when it was last flushed and the tank is more than a few years old, read how to flush it safely before you open the drain valve. Sediment buildup is one of the more common reasons a heater runs out of hot water early or gets noisy.

Look under every sink and check the pipes

Open every cabinet under a sink and look for damp wood, mineral crust on a fitting, or a musty smell. A slow drip that’s been going for months leaves marks even after it stops. While you’re under there, take a look at what the supply lines are made of. Gray flexible pipe stamped PB2110 is polybutylene, and galvanized pipe is the dull gray steel stuff that corrodes from the inside over decades. Neither one is an emergency by itself, but both are worth knowing about going in.

Test the toilets for silent leaks

1. Lift the tank lid and add a few drops of food coloring or a dye tablet to the tank water.
2. Wait 15 to 20 minutes without flushing.
3. Look in the bowl. Color in the bowl means the flapper is letting water leak through, even though you never heard a drip.

Get to know the crawlspace

A lot of Huntsville area homes have one. Take a flashlight down there once, note the pipe material, and check for insulation on any pipes that run near the outside walls or foundation vents. Winters here are mostly mild, but when a hard freeze comes, crawlspace pipes are the ones that freeze first. How to keep pipes from freezing covers what’s worth doing before that first cold snap.

Hard water depends on your source

Hardness varies by utility, and river water and well water aren’t the same. If you’re noticing spots on glassware or scale building up fast, hard water in North Alabama explains why and what your options are.

Coming from somewhere with real winters? Pipes in crawlspaces and exterior walls here weren’t built for the kind of sustained hard freeze you might be used to up north. And if you’re coming from somewhere warm, yes, it does freeze here. Most winters bring a few nights cold enough to worry about pipes, and every so often a real cold snap.

None of this needs to happen the first day. Just don’t let it wait until something’s already wrong.