One Way Rooter & Plumbing has taken Cypress calls since 1979. We do water heater repair and replacement, drain and sewer work, camera inspections, slab leak location and repair, and repiping. Our California contractor license is #537893 and we carry a bond and insurance. Estimates are free. Phone (562) 947-0110 while the office is open, or use the same line for an after-hours emergency.
Cypress Service Area
Cypress sits at the north-west corner of Orange County. Call (562) 947-0110 to schedule an appointment.
- County: Orange County
- ZIP codes: 90630
- Working in Cypress since: 1979
- License: CSLB #537893, bonded and insured
- Office hours: Monday to Friday 7:30am to 5pm, Saturday 8am to 12:30pm, Sunday closed. Emergency line answered 24 hours.
The whole city is covered, from the Walker Street and Ball Road neighborhoods to the blocks off Lincoln Avenue and Valley View Street, the streets around Oak Knoll Park and Cypress College, and the area near Los Alamitos Race Course. We also run to the cities close by, including Brea, La Habra, Cerritos, Artesia and Lakewood.
Plumbing Problems in Cypress Homes
Plumbing in the 1960s Tract Homes
Cypress incorporated in 1956 under the name Dairy City, put together by dairy farmers who wanted to keep developers off the land, and took its present name the year after. The dairies sold off through the 1960s and none were left by the seventies, so the housing that stands on that ground today largely dates from that build-out. Practically, that means a city full of single-story slab houses roughly sixty years old, with the water supply running inside the concrete. The plumbing in those homes is now at the age where original copper starts perforating and original valves stop sealing, and because the tracts went up together the failures arrive in the same window across a neighborhood.
Copper Under Sixty-Year-Old Concrete
A copper supply line buried in a slab is attacked from two directions. Soil chemistry works on it from the outside, and where the pipe sits against gravel, rebar or a rough edge of concrete, ordinary vibration wears the wall thin at that one contact point. Neither shows up as a puddle. The water goes into the ground under the floor, and the house tells you about it through a bill that keeps rising, running water you can hear when the house is quiet, or one part of the floor holding heat that the rest of it does not. We locate the failure before opening anything, since a hole the size of a dinner plate and a trench across the living room are two very different repair bills.
Roots in Older Laterals
The sewer lateral out to the street is as old as the house on most Cypress lots, and the street trees planted with the tract are the same age. Roots go where there is water, and a clay lateral gives them an opening every few feet at the joints, which decades of ground movement have worked apart. Once a root is through, everything that passes catches on it. The house shows this at its lowest fixture first, and the stoppage returns a few weeks after a cable clears it because the cable takes out the roots and leaves the opening. A camera in the pipe distinguishes roots at a joint from a broken section or a low spot holding water, and that distinction is what the repair estimate rests on.
Regulators Past Their Service Life
The pressure regulator where the water enters the house is a wear part, and on a sixty-year-old property it has usually been replaced never or once. When one fails it lets street pressure into the house, and the house responds with symptoms that get blamed on other things: a toilet refilling on its own, water seeping from the heater’s relief valve, a washing machine hose that lets go, a knock in the wall when a faucet closes fast. A gauge on an outside hose bib settles it in under a minute, which is why we take that reading before starting a fixture-by-fixture hunt.
Cypress Water Heater Repair and Replacement
Losing hot water is the call that comes in first thing in the morning. Water heater repair begins with working out which component stopped, because the fix for a failed thermostat and the fix for a finished tank are not remotely the same amount of money. A dip tube that has cracked dumps incoming cold at the top of the tank, so it leaves through the hot outlet and the aerators fill with plastic flakes. On electric units the mineral coat on the element eventually burns it out. Burner assemblies, gas control valves and relief valves each fail into lukewarm water or a unit that will not stay lit. We set thermostats to 120 degrees.
Orange County water is hard, and the heater is where that shows up first. The dissolved mineral leaves solution as the water heats and lands on the bottom of the tank or on the element. A layer of sediment on the floor of a gas tank sits between the burner and the water, so the burner has to run longer and the steel over the flame gets hotter than the design intends. That is why gas heaters here commonly reach 6 to 8 years and electric units 8 to 10 rather than the figure on the label. Emptying and flushing the tank annually removes most of the deposit, and a softener stops it forming in the first place. When the tank itself is finished, the signs are rumbling from sediment, rust breaking out at the cold inlet or the relief valve, or water coming through the tank wall, which no patch will hold. We read the manufacture date out of the serial number and tell you the age before you choose, and we install tank heaters as well as handling tankless installation.
Cypress Drain and Sewer Work
Drain cleaning is the job we get called for most: the kitchen line that has closed down with grease, the shower filling around your feet, the basin with a trap full of hair, the toilet that stopped taking water, and the laundry drain that overflows when the washer empties. Before anything goes down the pipe we establish whether the stoppage sits in the fixture arm, in a branch, or in the house main, because that determines what tool goes in and how far. Running a cable makes a hole through the blockage and leaves the deposit that produced it coating the pipe. Hydro jetting removes that coating with water pressure and gives the line its original diameter back. A drain that closes down every few months is covered under recurring clogged drains, and a single clearing of the main is rooter service.
Two fixtures backing up at the same time, or a low drain gurgling while another one runs, moves the problem out to the lateral. We start there with a sewer camera inspection, which shows the inside of the pipe on a monitor and marks how far out the fault sits. On a Cypress lateral of this age that footage decides between clearing the roots, a spot sewer line repair, a trenchless repair that leaves the front yard and the driveway alone, and a complete sewer line replacement. We look at the pipe before we recommend replacing it.
Slab Leaks in Cypress
A pressurized water line failing under a slab keeps losing water until somebody shuts it off. Slab leak service opens with location work rather than demolition. We listen for the escaping water acoustically and isolate pressure run by run, which is what keeps the concrete opening down to the size of the repair. Leak detection also takes in gas lines and irrigation, and on more than a few calls the irrigation valve turns out to be what the meter has been reading.
What You Might Notice First
- The sound of water moving with every fixture in the house shut
- Pressure that has dropped or that swings while nothing else changed
- Carpet damp at the edge of a room, or mildew low on a wall
- A water bill going up each month against steady usage
- Floor that stays warm along a line, which points at the hot side
With the leak located we price the options before starting. One failure in sound pipe gets spot-repaired through a small opening. A run that has already failed once, or a length of original galvanized still in the floor, is normally rerouted overhead or replaced through a copper repipe, because a third opening in the same floor costs more than doing the run properly the first time. A break out between the meter and the house is water line repair, or a water line replacement where the whole run is spent.
Other Plumbing Work We Do in Cypress
- Leaking pipes and pipe replacement
- Toilet repair and replacement
- Garbage disposals
- Sump pumps
- General plumbing repairs and inspections
- Commercial plumbing for Cypress businesses
- Emergency plumbing, answered 24 hours
Cypress Plumbing FAQ
How soon can a plumber get to Cypress?
Call during office hours to schedule an appointment. After closing, the emergency line reaches a plumber who will tell you on that call whether the job can wait until morning.
What are your hours?
Weekdays 7:30am to 5pm, Saturday 8am to 12:30pm, closed on Sunday. The emergency line is answered every hour of every day, holidays and Sundays included.
Is Saturday service available?
Yes, Saturday morning through 12:30pm is regular scheduled work. Sundays are emergency calls only, taken on the 24-hour line.
Are estimates free?
Yes. We look at the problem and quote a price before any work starts, at no cost to you. Where diagnosis needs equipment, such as sending a camera down the sewer, we quote that first and you decide.
Are you licensed, bonded and insured?
Yes on all three. One Way Rooter & Plumbing works under California contractor license #537893. The CSLB publishes the record, so you can check the license before booking anything.
Do you cover all of Cypress?
Yes, the whole of 90630, from Valley View Street to Walker Street and from Ball Road to Lincoln Avenue. La Habra, Brea and Rowland Heights are covered as well.
My house is from the sixties and still on its original pipe. Should I repipe?
Age by itself does not decide it. A house of that period still carrying galvanized supply is a candidate, because galvanized rusts closed from the inside and delivers brown water and weak pressure at the fixtures furthest along the run. The same house in copper may be fine for years yet. What puts one on the list is a second leak in the same buried run or a pressure loss across every fixture rather than one. We check the pressure and look at the pipe before saying whether repiping is worth doing.
Do you do sewer camera work for a home purchase?
Yes. A camera run down the lateral before closing is worth the money on a house of this age, since the lateral is one of the few parts of the plumbing a walkthrough cannot show you. You get to see the footage yourself, and it becomes something to negotiate over. Book it as a video inspection when you call.
Call a Cypress Plumber
Call (562) 947-0110 to get a plumber to your Cypress address, or send us a note on the contact page. For a burst pipe, a backed-up sewer or no water late at night, dial the same number and ask for the emergency plumber line.
