Main Water Line Replacement
in Mountain View, CA
The line running from your meter to the house, replaced or repaired by our crew across Mountain View. We locate the leak before we dig and pull the new line through rather than trenching the yard.
A Failing Service Line Rarely Starts With a Flood
The main line is the one pipe in the house that can fail quietly for months, because most of it is buried and none of it is somewhere you look.
Grass greener in one strip than the rest of the lawn, or ground that stays soft in a dry stretch. Water is finding the surface somewhere along the run.
Shut every fixture in the house and watch the meter. If it is still turning, water is going somewhere between the meter and the house.
Not one weak faucet. Every fixture down together points upstream, at the service line or the regulator rather than at the plumbing inside.
A service line leak is the usual answer when the household did not change and the number did.
We Draw the Plan and Get the City Permit
Replacing the line from the meter to the house needs a city permit. For main water line work we draw the plan ourselves and get the permit from the city, so you are not the one filling out forms or standing at the permit counter. Work starts once the permit is issued.
You get a written price before any work starts. The replacement itself typically takes 1 to 3 days depending on the project, the length of the run and what sits on top of it.
The city inspects the work, and one of our people is at the inspection with the paperwork, so you never need to be home for it.
A Leak Before the Meter and a Leak After It Look the Same
The city runs the water system for most of Mountain View, with a few small areas served by Cal Water instead. Which one reads the meter at your curb depends on your street, and the first thing we do on any water line call is work out which side of that meter the problem sits on.
That boundary is where most of the confusion happens, because a leak on either side of it looks identical from the sidewalk. We locate the leak first and tell you which side it is on. If it turns out to be on the utility's side of the meter, we will say so.
We Find the Line Before Anyone Touches the Lawn
Plenty of water line work goes wrong at the beginning rather than the end, when somebody starts digging on an assumption about where the pipe runs. We locate the line electronically and narrow down the leak before the first shovel goes in.
That matters more on older lots than it might elsewhere. Service lines were installed across several decades under several different conventions, they do not always run where the plans say, and they have often been rerouted at least once by somebody whose paperwork is long gone.
The New Line Gets Pulled Through, Not Laid in a Trench
We use trenchless and pipe bursting equipment. Instead of an open trench from the meter to the house, the work needs a pit at each end and the new line is drawn through the ground between them. Your lawn, your walkway and your driveway mostly stay where they are.
Where a run passes under something that cannot be worked around, or where the existing path is too tight to pull through, open excavation is the right answer and we will tell you that at the estimate rather than partway through the day.
The Age of the Street Usually Predicts the Pipe
Old Mountain View and the streets off Castro. Galvanized service lines that have rusted closed from the inside. Pressure falls off so gradually that the household stops noticing, and the first real signal is often a repipe estimate that mentions it.
Monta Loma, Cuesta Park, Waverly Park and the postwar tracts. Copper service lines of varying quality, with mature trees planted directly over the run in a good number of yards. Trenchless earns its keep here more than anywhere.
Whisman Station, The Crossings and the newer blocks. Modern materials in good condition, where a failure is usually a single point rather than the whole line, and a repair beats a replacement.
Water Lines We Replaced in Mountain View
Entry pits, the new line going in, and the yard once we were done. Every job on a Mountain View address.
Financing through Synchrony with $0 down and 0% interest when you pay the full balance within 6, 9, 12, or 18 months. You pay exactly the amount on our invoice. Subject to credit approval.
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Water Line Work Across Mountain View
We are based in Sunnyvale, right across the city line, which puts a Mountain View call within a short drive rather than across the valley.
Old Mountain View, Monta Loma, Rex Manor, Shoreline West, Cuesta Park, Waverly Park, Varsity Park, Gemello Park, North Whisman, Whisman Station, Sylvan Park
The map shows where we work most weeks, not a fence. We are based next door in Sunnyvale and take Mountain View jobs all the time. One call tells you whether we can reach you.
My water bill climbed and nothing changed at home. Where do I start?
Turn off every fixture in the house, then watch the meter dial. If it keeps moving with everything closed, water is escaping somewhere between the meter and the house, and that narrows things down before anyone comes out.
How do you find the leak without opening the whole run?
Electronic locating equipment traces the path of the pipe, and pressure testing narrows down where along it the water is going. By the time we break ground we know the spot, not just the general area.
Does a new service line come with a new pressure regulator?
Often it should. A regulator wears out on its own schedule, and replacing the line while leaving a worn one in place puts new pipe on old pressure control. We check it at the estimate and tell you whether it is worth doing together.
What if the leak is on the utility’s side of the meter?
Call us first anyway. We locate the leak and tell you which side of the meter it is on, and if it is on the utility’s side we say so and you are not paying us for it.
How long is the water off?
Most of the day for a full service line replacement, though not in every case. We tell you the evening before so nobody finds out at breakfast.
The line runs under my driveway. Does that change things?
It changes the method, not the outcome. Pulling the new line through takes a pit at each end instead of cutting the concrete, which is usually the difference between a repair you forget about and a driveway you rebuild.