Plumbing in Old Town and Main Street

Area

Old Town and Main Street

Local focus

The Historic Heart of Newmarket

Common calls

Drains, supply pipe, heaters, sumps

Booking

By telephone

Homes and plumbing in Old Town and Main Street

Walk along Main Street South, or up Prospect, Botsford and Timothy, and you see the town as it was more than a century ago. Part of the lower Main Street area is protected as a heritage district, and many of the nearby houses are Victorian or Edwardian, with tall windows, deep porches and stone or brick foundations.

Inside, the plumbing is rarely original. Most of these homes were fitted with indoor bathrooms well after they were built, then updated again in the 1950s, the 1980s and more recently. That leaves layers: a cast iron stack beside new PVC, galvanized steel feeding one bathroom and copper feeding the next, sometimes a clay sewer lateral heading out under a mature maple.

Trouble spots in these houses

• Galvanized supply pipe narrowed by rust, giving weak flow upstairs.
• Cast iron drains cracked along the bottom where water has flowed for decades.
• Clay laterals with tree roots at every joint.
• Rubble or fieldstone foundations that let groundwater seep in.
• Pipes frozen in exterior walls with little insulation.
• Mixed metals joined without proper fittings, corroding at the joint.

Services most asked for

The most common request in Old Town is help with drains: clearing the main line and a camera inspection to see what the old lateral looks like. Close behind is repiping to replace galvanized lines, and frozen pipe calls in deep winter.

Many owners here also ask about backwater valves, especially those on lower ground toward the river and Fairy Lake.

Thinking of buying here?

An older house here can carry a century of patched pipe. Before you buy, ask for a sewer camera inspection and look at what pipe enters at the meter. Our circular on buying an older home sets out what to look at.

Ringing us from Old Town and Main Street

Ring us and tell us roughly how old the house is, and say whether you have had any work done on the plumbing. We will plan the visit around what you describe and take care with floors and finishes.