Saratoga Plumber – Family-Owned Since 1988

Leaks and Emergencies in Saratoga

Most urgent calls we get from Saratoga are water where it should not be: a soaked yard, a ceiling stain, a water bill that suddenly doubled, or a call from the water company. If water is leaking right now, do two things before you call us:

• Shut off the water at the main valve, usually near where the line enters the house or at the meter by the street.
• If the leak is outside, turn off the irrigation controller so the sprinklers do not keep feeding it.

Then call (408) 358-6446, any hour. Here is what some of those calls have turned out to be.

The water company shut the water off

San Jose Water shut off service to this Saratoga home because it was losing about 187 gallons an hour. We went out the same day, ran a leak search, and found it: an irrigation line broken at a sprinkler valve.

Looking for a leak, finding 125 PSI

This homeowner called about water leaking somewhere on the property. We check the water pressure first on every call, and this house measured 125 PSI, about 45 PSI over the 80 PSI limit in the plumbing code. Pressure that high strains every fixture and keeps creating new leaks, so we recommended a pressure reducing valve, plus an expansion tank at the water heater so heated water has room to expand once the system is closed.

A wet spot in the garden

Soil in one planting bed stayed wet. We read the meter with the irrigation shut off at the backflow, and it kept spinning, which told us the leak was on the house water line, not the sprinklers. We dug a small test hole at the wet spot and found a run of PVC where two different grades of pipe had been joined. We replaced the failing section with copper so there are fewer joints left to fail.

Two sump pumps that quit before the rain

This backyard drains storm water through two sump pumps, and neither one was running. The problem was the power: both pumps ran off an extension cord routed through the garage, and the cord was damaged. We tested the pumps from an inside outlet to rule them out. If your yard depends on a sump pump, test it before the first big storm, not during it.

Recent Jobs in Saratoga

Roots in a clay sewer line, and why the cleanout matters

Roots had grown into the joints of the clay section of this home’s sewer line, the part that runs out toward the street. The home had no cleanout at the property line, and without one, West Valley Sanitation District does not service that section, so it falls to the homeowner. We worked from the cleanout by the foundation: inspected under the house, ran a camera, hydro-flushed the line with a root-cutting nozzle and applied a foaming root treatment that slows regrowth for up to a year. We were also straight about what is left. The cast iron near the house has heavy scale and the clay has offset joints, so the lasting fix is replacing the cast iron section and adding a property-line cleanout.

A dead yard with one healthy bush

Everything in the yard had died except one big, thriving bush, and the homeowner suspected a leak underneath it. We checked the water lines under the house and outside, then isolated the line from the meter and read it every 15 minutes. The loss was about a pint an hour. Finding a leak that small would mean pressurizing the irrigation and likely a helium tracer test, which typically runs $2,000 to $3,000, so we told the homeowner it was not worth the money and charged a flat rate for the diagnosis.

A buried backflow preventer nobody knew about

San Jose Water flagged a jump in the irrigation bill from about $700 to $1,900. With the irrigation shut off, the meter stopped, so the loss was on the irrigation side. We found and dug out a backflow preventer that had been buried and forgotten for years. The homeowner did not know it was there, and it gave us the right place to test from.