- Area
- Parkwood and Eagle Street
- Local focus
- Eagle Street and Around
- Common calls
- Drains, supply pipe, heaters, sumps
- Booking
- By telephone
Homes and plumbing in Parkwood and Eagle Street
Brick bungalows and modest storey-and-a-half houses line many of these streets, built when Newmarket was still a small market town. Original supply pipes may be galvanized steel or early copper. Drains are often cast iron under the basement slab, with a clay lateral running out to the municipal sewer.
Plenty of owners have updated kitchens and bathrooms over the years. Fewer have touched the pipes feeding them, so a new vanity can sit on a seventy-year-old supply line.
Trouble spots in these houses
- Rust-coloured water at the first draw of the morning, a classic sign of galvanized pipe corroding from the inside.
- Toilets that run or rock, sometimes because the closet flange beneath them has corroded or cracked.
- Cold exterior walls. Older bungalows were lightly insulated, and kitchen lines on outside walls can freeze in a deep cold snap.
- Slow basement floor drains where cast iron has scaled or the lateral has shifted.
Services most asked for
Owners who are tired of patching usually ask about repiping. In a bungalow this is often more manageable than people expect, because the basement ceiling is open or easily opened and the runs are short. We replace supply lines in sections, plan the work so water is off for as little time as possible, and leave each fixture with its own shut-off.
Smaller visits are just as welcome. Toilet repair is a frequent call here, and we check the flange and the floor around it at the same time.
Getting ready for winter
If a sink sits on an outside wall, prop open the cabinet doors on the coldest nights so warm air can reach the pipes. Disconnect garden hoses in the fall and shut any inside valve that feeds an outdoor tap. The circular on winter pipe protection covers these steps in more detail.
Bench note
If your water runs brown for a few seconds each morning, note which taps do it. That pattern tells us a good deal about where the old pipe is.
What a first visit looks like
On an older bungalow we start in the basement. We note the pipe materials at the meter, follow the main branches as far as they are visible, open the cleanout if there is one and run water at several fixtures to compare flow. That half hour of looking tells you what is urgent and what can wait a few years, so money goes where it will do the most good. You get a plain explanation, not a sales pitch.
Ringing us from Parkwood and Eagle Street
Phone (365) 990-3021 with the approximate age of your house and what you have noticed. We work throughout this part of town, and also in neighbouring Gorham-College Manor, which has a similar housing story.
Phoned-in questions
Is repiping a bungalow a big job?
It is a real project, but bungalows are among the easier homes to repipe because runs are short and the basement gives good access. Many jobs take a few days rather than weeks.
Why is my water brown first thing in the morning?
Water that sits overnight in corroded galvanized pipe picks up rust. Running it briefly clears it, but the cause remains in the pipe.