About this guide

A plain-language plumbing guide for Bay Area homes.

Bay Area Plumbing Service is a free resource that explains how home plumbing works, what tends to go wrong in Bay Area houses, and when a job is worth calling a licensed plumber for. We do not sell plumbing work. We just help you understand yours.

What this is

An education site, not a plumbing company.

Most plumbing pages online are really sales pages. You came in with a question about your water heater or a slow drain, and you left with a phone number and a pitch. This site is the opposite. It is built to answer the question.

Everything here is informational. We walk through how Bay Area water systems work, which utility serves your city, why hard water from Zone 7 wears out fixtures faster, what the EBMUD sewer lateral rules mean when you sell a home, and what kinds of pipe you are likely to find based on when your house was built. The goal is for you to read a page and actually understand your own plumbing a little better.

To be clear about what we are not: Bay Area Plumbing Service is not a licensed plumbing contractor, and we do not offer plumbing services. We do not come to your house, diagnose anything, quote work, or do repairs. When a job needs a pro, we say so and point you toward verifying any plumber's license at cslb.ca.gov before you hire them.

Who's behind it

Written by one person, not a company.

This guide is written by Andrew Kuznetsov, who lives and works in the Tri-Valley and has spent years inside Bay Area homes. The local detail comes from that: the same water, soils and housing stock the guides describe.

Andrew put this site together to share what he has picked up about how Bay Area plumbing actually behaves: the water, the soils, the housing stock, the city rules. He is not posing as a licensed plumber on these pages, and nothing here is a substitute for one. It is one person trying to make a confusing subject clearer for the homeowners around him.

How to use it

Start with your city, then dig into the guides.

The city pages cover what is specific to where you live: your water utility, hardness, permit and sewer-lateral notes, and the pipe types common for your home's age. The guides go deeper on single topics, from low water pressure to water heater lifespan to what backflow prevention is and why it matters.

Read what is useful, skip what is not. And when something is clearly past a homeowner fix, treat that as your cue to call a licensed plumber and verify their license first.

Browse city guides →