Los Gatos covers more ground than people expect, and the plumbing changes as you climb. Down in the flats near downtown there are homes from the turn of the century through the thirties, many of them beautifully kept and still running on some of their original pipe. Up in the hills the houses are newer but the site conditions are harder.
In the older houses the recurring job is untangling what previous decades did. A 1915 house has usually been plumbed three or four times over, and the result is a mix of galvanized, copper and whatever was cheap at the time, with the joins hidden in a crawlspace. Dissimilar metals corrode where they touch. We map what is actually there before quoting anything, because the surprise in these houses is never in the part you can see.
Hillside properties have their own list. The service line from the street can be a long run, sometimes very long, and pressure at the top of a hill behaves differently than pressure at the bottom. Some homes have boosting; some have regulators working far harder than they were meant to. If your fixtures keep failing early or your pipes bang when an appliance shuts off, the pressure is usually worth a look before anything else gets replaced.
Mature oaks are the other constant. Big trees on big lots mean roots in sewer laterals, and on a long lateral you want a camera in there before somebody starts digging in the wrong spot.
On the hillside properties, tell us on the phone roughly how far the house sits from the meter. A long service run changes how we approach a suspected leak, and knowing it in advance means we bring the right locating equipment the first time rather than making a second trip.
What we get called for in Los Gatos
Plumbing services in Los Gatos
Need a plumber in Los Gatos?
Phone consultations are free. Describe what it is doing and we will tell you whether it needs a visit, and roughly what it will take.