Plumbing across Santa Clara County

Santa Clara County is one valley, but it does not have one water supply or one kind of house. Some cities pump much of their water from local wells, some buy most of it through Hetch Hetchy or Valley Water, and many blend the sources. That changes how quickly scale builds inside water heaters and fixtures from one street to the next.

The houses vary just as much. Older neighborhoods near downtown San Jose, Santa Clara and Campbell carry galvanized supply lines and clay laterals, while the large postwar tracts sit on slabs with pipes under the concrete. We plan each call around those differences, which is why we ask where you are and roughly when the house was built.

Postwar slab tracts make up a large share of the county, and in those houses supply and drain lines run under the concrete. A leak shows up as a warm spot, a hissing sound or a meter that keeps turning, and the repair is planned around the slab rather than through it where possible.

Older pockets closer to the original town centers have crawl spaces, galvanized pipe and clay sewer laterals that roots have found over the decades. Those houses are where repipes, sewer camera inspections and lateral repairs come up most.