Plumber in Fontana, CA: Old Fontana and New

Baseline is the line we use. Old Fontana is more or less everything south of Baseline, and that is where most of the homes from the 1950s and 60s are. New Fontana is north of Baseline, where a lot of new homes are still going up.

The plumbing follows the age of the house. In the newest North Fontana homes, we aren't doing many repairs yet. In old Fontana, the original pipe is reaching the end of its life.

Homes built from the '70s through the early 2000s. Houses from the '70s, '80s, '90s and early 2000s are starting to show slab leaks, and the '70s homes are the most prone.

In North Fontana, we fix them by rerouting: we abandon the leaking line under the slab and run a new PEX line up and over, usually through the attic. A reroute generally runs $3,000 to $5,000. We don't jackhammer the slab unless there is no other way, for example in a house with vaulted ceilings.

The causes are the same ones we see across the area: thin Type M soft copper, very hard water, years of small shifts from tremors and earthquakes, and high water pressure. One slab leak usually means another is not far behind. See how we find them on our slab leak detection page.

Mostly roots. In the older part of Fontana, roots grow into the hub joints of clay sewer pipe. The sewage feeds them, so they keep getting bigger until they separate or break the pipe. Inside homes built before the '70s, the cast iron is often rotted out and heavily scaled, which causes repeat backups too.

Clearing the roots buys you about 6 months before they grow back. Once a root has a way in, the only permanent fix is to line the pipe or replace it. Our sewer line repair page explains both, and drain cleaning in Fontana covers clearing a backed-up line.