One Way Rooter & Plumbing opened in 1979 and has worked in South Gate ever since. What we get called for here is sewer and drain stoppages, cast iron drain lines that have rusted thin, galvanized supply lines that have closed up, slab leaks and water heaters that have quit. The company is licensed by the state under CSLB #537893 and is bonded and insured. Estimates are free. Call (562) 947-0110. The office answers during business hours, and the emergency line answers the rest of the time.
South Gate Service Area
South Gate is a city of about 92,000 people in southeast Los Angeles County, with the Los Angeles River running along its eastern edge. It incorporated in 1923, and the age of its housing stock is the single fact that explains most of our calls here.
- County: Los Angeles County
- ZIP code: 90280
- Working in South Gate 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.
We take calls in every part of the city: the blocks either side of Tweedy Boulevard between Alameda Street and Atlantic Avenue, Hollydale down at the south end, the neighborhoods off Firestone Boulevard, State Street, Long Beach Boulevard and California Avenue, and the streets running toward the river. The cities next door are on our route as well: Downey, Paramount and Bellflower.
Plumbing Problems in South Gate Homes
Cast Iron Drain Lines That Have Aged Out
South Gate’s farmland went to houses and factories between 1910 and 1940, and the drain systems that went in with those houses were cast iron inside the walls and clay or cast iron out to the street. Cast iron does not wear evenly. The top of the pipe stays dry and holds, while the bottom sits in waste water and corrodes, so the wall thins from the inside along the invert until the pipe has a channel instead of a bore. Long before it opens up, the rough scale that forms on that surface starts catching everything that passes. A house with eighty-year-old cast iron drains stops more often each year, and cabling it clears the passage without touching the roughness that caused it. The camera is what tells you which one you have, because a line that only needs cleaning and a line that has lost its floor look identical from the cleanout.
Galvanized Water Lines and Pressure That Has Faded
The same era brought galvanized steel supply pipe. Galvanized rusts closed from the inside, and it does it slowly enough that nobody notices. The bore fills with scale over decades until a three-quarter-inch line is passing what a quarter-inch line should, and the household adjusts to it without registering the change. What people finally call about is brown or rusty water on the first draw in the morning, a shower that dies when someone opens a tap elsewhere, or hot water that arrives at a trickle because the hot side has scaled worse than the cold. There is no repair for a line in that condition, since cleaning it out removes the only thing holding the wall together. The answer is a copper repipe or a pipe replacement of the affected runs. Leaking pipes in a galvanized system usually mean the rest of the system is at the same stage.
Duplexes and Added Units on One Lateral
A lot of South Gate housing is small lots carrying more than one household — duplexes, triplexes, converted garages and rear units, many of them added long after the original house went in. Those additions were frequently tied into the sewer lateral that was sized for one family. More fixtures on the same line means more solids and more grease moving through a pipe with the fall it was given in 1940, and it means a stoppage anywhere on that line takes out every unit at once. When a back unit backs up at the same time as the front house, the problem is in the shared run and not in either kitchen. We locate the cleanout, find out how the units are tied together, and camera the shared length before quoting.
Raised Foundations and Postwar Slabs
Houses from the twenties and thirties here generally sit on a raised foundation with the supply lines run in the crawl space. That is the easier case: a leak is visible, the pipe is reachable, and a repair does not involve breaking concrete. Postwar construction, put up for the war workers and returning veterans who filled the city in the forties and fifties, went in on slabs with the water lines under the concrete. A leak in one of those shows itself as a bill that climbs on its own, water audible with every fixture closed, or a warm patch on the floor. Slab leak detection comes first on those, because locating the line before opening it is what keeps the concrete work small.
South Gate Drain Cleaning and Sewer Repair
Drain cleaning covers the kitchen line packed with grease, the tub or shower slowed by hair and soap, a bathroom sink with a loaded trap, a laundry standpipe that floods the floor, and a toilet that stopped on what went into it. We find out whether the stoppage sits in the fixture arm, the branch or the main first, because the access and the machine are different for each and sending the wrong one down accomplishes nothing. Main line work goes to our rooter service.
Cabling opens a hole through a blockage. It leaves the scale and grease on the pipe wall that made the blockage, and on an old cast iron kitchen line that means the drain closes again on roughly the same interval. Hydro jetting strips that layer off with water and takes the line back to its full diameter. Where the same drain stops no matter how often it is cleared, the pipe is the problem rather than the household, which is the case covered under recurring clogged drains.
Two fixtures backing up together, or the lowest drain in the house gurgling while another runs, points at the lateral. We start there with a sewer camera inspection, which shows the condition and gives a footage count to the fault. Roots at a shifted joint, a belly holding standing water, a section that has broken, and a line that just needs cleaning all call for different work. From there it is either a sewer line repair at the damaged length, a full sewer line replacement, or trenchless work through the existing path where the yard or driveway would otherwise have to come out.
South Gate Water Heater Repair and Replacement
Water heater repair begins with finding which part stopped working, because a unit with a failed thermostat and a unit with a hole in the tank present the same way from the hallway. The data plate carries a serial number with the build date in it, so we can tell you the age of the heater before you decide between fixing it and replacing it. The failures we find most often are a cracked dip tube that lets cold water mix in at the top, an electric element buried in scale until it burns out, a thermostat off its setting, a gas control valve or burner that will not light, and a bed of sediment on the tank floor that makes the unit rumble and costs it efficiency. Thermostats get set to 120 degrees.
Some of what fails is not repairable. Rust at the cold inlet or around the relief valve means the tank is corroding from the inside out, and a crack through the tank wall cannot be patched. Gas heaters in this region generally give 6 to 8 years and electric ones 8 to 10, and the mineral content of the local water pulls both numbers down by leaving scale in the tank every time it heats. Where the household has grown past the tank, or where a garage unit and a house share one heater, a new installation sized to the actual demand is the better spend.
Other Plumbing Work We Do in South Gate
- Leak detection on water and gas lines
- General plumbing repairs
- Toilet repair and replacement
- Garbage disposal repair and replacement
- Water service line repair between the meter and the house
- Hose bibs, angle stops and supply valve replacement
- Commercial plumbing for the shops and restaurants along Tweedy Boulevard and Firestone Boulevard
- Emergency plumbing, answered 24 hours
South Gate Plumbing FAQ
How fast can you get to South Gate?
Call during office hours to schedule an appointment. After the office closes, the emergency line puts you through to a plumber who will tell you on the phone whether it needs someone tonight.
What are your hours?
Monday through Friday 7:30am to 5pm, Saturday 8am to 12:30pm, closed Sunday. The emergency line is answered 24 hours, Sundays and holidays included.
Do you work weekends?
Saturday mornings are regular scheduled work. Sunday work is emergencies only, through the 24-hour line.
Do you charge to come out and quote?
No. Estimates are free. You get a price before any work starts. If diagnosing the problem takes equipment, such as running a camera down the sewer, we quote that step before we do it.
Are you licensed and insured?
Yes. California contractor license #537893, held by One Way Rooter & Plumbing, and the company is bonded and insured. The number is public and can be looked up on the CSLB website.
Do you serve all of South Gate?
Yes, all of 90280, Hollydale and the Tweedy Boulevard area included. We also work Downey and Paramount next door.
My house is from the 1930s. Do the pipes need replacing?
It depends on what is in the walls. A house of that age still on its original galvanized supply lines is a repipe candidate, and the tell is rusty water on the first draw with low pressure at the far fixtures. If a previous owner already repiped in copper, the supply side may have years left. The drain side is a separate question, and a camera down the main answers it. We check both before saying a repipe is the answer.
The back unit and the front house back up at the same time. What does that mean?
It means the blockage is downstream of both, in the shared lateral, not in either unit’s fixtures. Clearing a kitchen line in one unit will not fix it. We open the main cleanout, clear the shared run, and put a camera down it afterward to find out why it stopped, because on a line carrying more units than it was sized for the reason usually repeats.
Call a South Gate Plumber
Call (562) 947-0110 to get a plumber out to South Gate, or send a message through the contact page. For a burst pipe, a sewer backing up into the house, or no water at night or on a Sunday, call that number and ask for the emergency plumber line.
