Plumbing and Drain Work for North Portland's Pre-1960 Houses, from St. Johns to Overlook

The remodel probably stopped at the wall

This is the most common surprise along Mississippi and Williams and through Boise-Eliot. A lot of those renovations replaced fixtures, cabinets and finishes, and stopped where the drywall stopped. The supply lines feeding them can still be the original galvanized steel, which is a separate job the remodel never touched. Putting new faucets on old pipe usually makes a flow problem more noticeable rather than less noticeable. It's worth having somebody look at what's behind the wall before you assume it got handled.

How long a water heater actually lasts here

Longer than in a lot of other cities. Portland is a soft-water town, so tanks here aren't getting eaten by minerals the way they are through much of the country, and a heater can pass ten years without looking like it's in any trouble. What that means is the failure tends to be quiet when it comes: a recovery time that's slowly gotten worse, a rumble down at the bottom of the tank, rust showing at a fitting. We check the manufacture date, the anode rod and the sediment before we recommend anything. If the house has gained a bathroom since the last heater went in, installing a correctly sized heater is a capacity question rather than a like-for-like swap, and replacement is permitted work through the City of Portland.

Leaves in October, roots in August

North Portland's mature street trees drop a heavy leaf load into exterior and area drains from October onward, and the same trees push roots into aging clay laterals through our dry late summers. From inside the house the two look the same. Clearing the line and then putting a camera down it is how you find out which one you're dealing with, instead of paying for the same visit every autumn without knowing what's causing it.

We plan the week around this side of the river

Our shop is in Southeast Portland, so North Portland is a real drive. What we do about it is route for it: we group peninsula appointments so a plumber is already up here, we give you an arrival window we can hold, and we bring the parts an older house is likely to need so nobody has to leave mid-job to go get them. The crew, the pricing and the standard of work are the same as they are on the blocks near our own door. We're licensed and insured in Oregon under CCB #255748, and the work is done by our licensed Portland plumbers rather than a rotating subcontractor.

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