Plumber InGastonia

Loray village and the mill-era neighborhoods

Gastonia's Loray Mill Historic District takes in the five-story brick mill and some thirty blocks of frame mill houses built mainly between the early 1900s and the 1920s. York-Chester, the city's other large residential historic district, has houses dating from about 1856 to 1955.

Plumbing in houses this old has usually been patched many times. It is common to find a cast iron stack tied into PVC, galvanized supply feeding copper, and a clay lateral that nobody has looked inside. Each transition is a place for leaks and clogs to start. Before you buy or renovate, a sewer camera inspection and a plumbing inspection tell you what is original, what was replaced and what is close to failing.

Homes from the 1950s through the 1970s

More than a third of the city's housing dates from 1950 to 1979. Drains from those decades are cast iron, and after 50 to 70 years the bottom of the pipe is often rusted thin. Sewer laterals are clay or cast iron buried in Piedmont red clay, and tree roots find the joints.

Supply lines changed over the same period. Galvanized steel gave way to copper, and homes built from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s may have polybutylene, a gray plastic pipe with a record of failing. Hydro jetting clears roots and scale from a line that is still sound. When the camera shows a collapsed or separated section, sewer line repair is the lasting fix.

• Several drains slow at once
• Toilets gurgle when the washer drains
• A soggy or sunken strip in the yard
• Brown water after the house sits empty

Two Rivers Utilities backflow requirements

Two Rivers Utilities (TRU) requires an approved backflow assembly for commercial and industrial customers, and for residential customers with an irrigation system, a pool or both. Irrigation systems installed after 2003 need an assembly that is inspected at installation by Gaston County Building Inspections.

Testing has to be done by a certified tester on TRU's approved list, and the report goes to the utility. If an assembly fails, you have 10 days to have it repaired or replaced, and only a licensed plumber may install or repair one. That is where a plumbing company helps: Alpha Drain is licensed and insured, tests for $199 per assembly, and handles backflow repair and the retest. Confirm that any tester you hire is on the current TRU list.

• Commercial services: tested annually
• Residential irrigation: every 3 years
• Residential domestic assemblies: annually
• Failed test: 10 days to repair or replace
• Keep test and repair records for 3 years

Franklin Boulevard businesses and rental property

Franklin Boulevard is one of Gastonia's main east-west roads and a long commercial strip. Every commercial water service on it falls under TRU's annual testing rule, and the customer has to keep three years of test and repair records.

Restaurant drain lines collect grease and need periodic hydro jetting, not only a cable through the clog. Property managers and landlords with older rental houses deal with the same cast iron and clay described above, usually at a bad hour. Alpha Drain is open 24/7, and labor on repairs carries a 1-year warranty (drain cleaning is excluded). Tell us how many units or assemblies you manage and we will set up a single schedule for them.

Gastonia neighborhoods we serve

York-Chester, Loray Mill village, Highland, Brookwood, Gardner Park, Sherwood Forest, Armstrong Park, Fairmont Park, Country Club, Forest Brook, Robinwood Village, Kinmere, Cramer Woods, and the streets in between.

Gastonia ZIP codes we serve: 28052, 28054, 28056.