Plumbers in Aurora Village

Housing around Yonge and Wellington

The streets around the main intersection hold some of the town’s oldest buildings. Brick and frame houses from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sit beside postwar infill and newer townhouses. Many of the older homes have been renovated more than once, so a single house can have original cast iron, mid-century copper and modern plastic all in the same basement.

That patchwork is the main thing to know about plumbing here. Each change was made to the standard of its day, and joints between eras are where trouble tends to start.

Older drain and supply lines

What we commonly find in Aurora Village homes:

• Cast iron stacks and drains. Durable, but after many decades they can crack, rust through at the bottom of horizontal runs, or scale up inside and slow every drain.
• Galvanized steel supply pipe. It corrodes from the inside, narrowing the bore until pressure upstairs is weak and the water can run brown after sitting.
• Clay or older sewer laterals. Joints let roots in, especially under big old trees along the street.
• Lead service lines. Very old homes may still have a lead pipe between the street and the meter. The Town and the Region have information about identifying and replacing them.

None of this means a house is in bad shape. It means a camera look at the main drain and a walk along the supply lines are worth doing before a big renovation or after buying.

Mixed-use buildings

Shops with apartments above are common along Yonge Street. In these buildings, plumbing for the commercial space and the residential units often shares stacks and a single water service. A blockage or a leak upstairs can affect the business below, and the reverse. When we work in mixed-use buildings, we coordinate shutoffs with owners and tenants, and we look at backflow requirements, which apply more broadly to commercial properties.

Working in tight basements

Low ceilings, stone foundations, crawlspaces and narrow stairs are part of life in many century homes. Water heaters squeezed into corners and drains running across floors are typical. We bring compact tools and plan replacements around getting old equipment out and new equipment in without damaging stairs or walls.

When a pipe lets go in a house like this, water finds its way quickly into old plaster and wooden floors. Our burst pipe guide covers what to do in the first minutes, and our emergency plumbing page explains how to reach us. For hot water trouble in a cramped mechanical corner, see water heater repair.

Just up the road, the homes of Aurora Heights tell a different story, built mostly a few decades later.