Just bought a Louisville home? The 10-point plumbing checklist for your first month

Congratulations, you just signed the biggest check you’ll probably ever write. Somewhere between the closing table and getting the couch through the door, plumbing tends to fall off the list, mostly because everything ran fine when the water was on during your walkthrough. That’s exactly the problem. A five-minute test doesn’t tell you how old the water heater really is, what the pressure’s running at, or whether the sewer line is fine for another eighty years. We built this list from the calls we get most in that first year of ownership: cheap to check now, expensive to discover later. Here’s the order we’d work through it.

The four things worth doing in week one

Do these first. All four take about twenty minutes total, and they’re the ones that turn an ordinary Tuesday into an emergency if you skip them.

• Find your main water shutoff, and actually turn it In most Louisville homes it’s on the wall where the water line enters the basement or crawlspace, often near the meter. Don’t just locate it, turn it, gently, all the way closed and back open. A shutoff seized in the open position is worthless the day a supply line lets go. If yours won’t budge or starts weeping, get it swapped now: replacing a seized 3/4 inch main valve runs $500–$600, calmer to schedule than to discover mid-flood.
• Read your water heater’s actual age, don’t guess it The manufacture date is coded into the serial number, not printed in plain English, so most homeowners are guessing off how the tank looks. Most tank water heaters last 8 to 12 years, and Louisville’s hard water pushes toward the short end. Past ten years, plan around it. If it’s newer but rumbling or running out of hot water fast, a tank flush runs $100–$200 and an anode rod runs $400–$500. Near the end, a standard 50-gallon gas replacement runs $2,200–$2,400, a better number to plan for than to hit at 6am.
• Get the water pressure checked with a real gauge You can’t feel high pressure at a faucet, but your fixtures, supply lines, and water heater feel it every day, as a shortened lifespan. A quick gauge reading on an outdoor spigot gives you the real number. If the house needs a pressure-reducing valve, that’s a $600–$700 item, better to know in week one than from a burst hose in month three.
• Find your sewer cleanout, before you ever need it The cleanout is the access point a plumber uses to run a camera or cable down your line, and knowing where it is saves real time later. If nobody’s ever run a camera through yours, especially on an older Louisville property, it’s worth doing once as a baseline. A camera inspection runs $300–$400 and shows you exactly what you own, on footage you keep. Most come back clean. The ones that don’t are worth catching early: an excavated spot repair runs $3,400–$3,600, and a full replacement starts around $7,800–$8,000.

The rest of the list: worth doing before the month is out

• Test every fixture shutoff, not just the main Under every sink and behind every toilet is a small valve, a fixture stop, meant to kill water to one spot without shutting off the house. On an older home they’re often original, which usually means seized or dripping. Turn each one closed and back open now. Replacing a seized or leaking stop runs $200–$300.
• Figure out what your supply pipes are actually made of What’s behind the walls tells you what the next twenty years look like. Galvanized steel, common in homes from the 1950s and earlier, corrodes from the inside until pressure and flow drop off. Polybutylene, the gray or blue plastic common from the late 1970s through the mid 90s, has a documented failure history at its fittings. Copper and PEX are what you want to see today. If you’re not sure what’s under your sinks, have someone tell you plainly.
• Check for the small leaks nobody mentioned A slow drip under a sink, a quietly running toilet, a damp spot behind the water heater: sellers live with these long enough to stop noticing them. A running toilet is often just a $10 flapper; a pro swap runs $100–$200. A leak you can’t see but can hear in a higher bill: sound-sensing detection runs $400–$500.
• Find out if you’re on hard water Louisville water runs hard, typically around 7 grains per gallon, building scale in every pipe and appliance since before you owned the place. If the last owners never ran a softener, expect spotty dishes, dry skin, and a water heater working harder than it should. A whole-home softener install runs $2,400–$2,600.
• Test the sump pump, if your home has one If there’s a basement, there’s probably a pit, and you want the pump tested before the first hard storm, not during it. Pour a few gallons in and watch it kick on and shut off cleanly. A tripped GFCI outlet is the single most common reason a pump goes quiet, and it costs nothing to check. An aging pump or bad check valve calls for a replacement at $800–$900, or a check valve alone at $100–$200. A battery backup runs $2,000–$2,200 if losing power would actually hurt you.
• Know your gas shutoff, and check the permit history If the home has gas appliances, find the shutoff at the meter and make sure everyone knows where it is. Check whether past work, especially a water heater swap, actually pulled a permit. Kentucky requires one under 815 KAR 20:050, and the state permit fee is $50. Better to know now than during a future sale.

Add it up and none of this is expensive to check, even though a couple of the findings can be. A standard visit covering the shutoffs, the water heater, and a pressure reading runs $89. The camera adds $300–$400. Call the whole first-month list under five hundred dollars to verify, against a house that cost hundreds of thousands. Most homes come back clean. Want us to walk the whole list in one visit and tell you plainly what’s overdue? Ask Goldie can get you a straight answer before anyone shows up.

Common questions we get

Reviewed by Spencer Gardner, Owner · William Riley, KY Master Plumber, Lic. #6590. Prices last verified August 3, 2026.