What could be causing persistent plumbing issues?

How old is your home? Old plumbing was made from steel pipes (some real bad ones were made in China) and they start to corrode reducing the inside diameter of the pipe and thus the flow rate capability. Copper and PEX piping are not affected. A water softener can help prevent corrosion. You may need to replace most of your piping with new PEX piping. A cost effective solution is to leave the old pipe under the sink and replace the accessible pipes under the floor.

Ken gave you some good ideas. I'll add that we had some problems with water pressure that turned out to be related to problems with our water softener system, so if you have one of those, check to see if it's showing any problems.

Do you have a well and a pressure pump? If a pressure pump is getting old it cannot maintain good water pressure. We had to replace ours. One sign was that was running constantly and the water pressure in our kitchen was not good.

Jody....Have you just recently moved there?

Hi Jody,

Have you checked under the sink, the water pressure problem could be related to the valves being closed or partially closed, look to see it they are wide open.

Where I live we have our drains cleaned out every year due to tree roots. From what I was told by the employee who came out to do this many people do this about once a year or more.

Hi Jody, do you have large tree on you lot or in the neighborhood close to your house? I used to work for Drainage branch in my City, and a lot of problems were caused by Tree root intrusion into the drainage pipe, or grease clogs in the pipes coming out to the mainline, best bet is to call in a plumber or the city or town you live in to get a service televising, this method records the camera view inside your pipes and tells the experts what is wrong, they then know how to fix it. If the issue was on city property where I live, it was free of charge, but if it was on your property there was a one time fee of something like $385 flat rate. Anyway, call your town or city public works office to get this done, hope this helps.

Hi there, since you live in Toronto, have your pipes froze? Make sure you insulate your pipes, they can burst if frozen.

If the problem is caused by tree roots pour sodium chloride or copper sulfate, or rock salt, into your toilet. Pour a half pound of the salt into your toilet and flush as many times as you need to clean out the bowl, and repeat this process until you've flushed 2 pounds of salt into your pipes. The best time to do this is at night so the solution stays in the pipes for a few hours.