Licensed & Insured · CA LIC #982663
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Pacifica, San Francisco, Burlingame, CA · Serving the Bay
PACIFICA, CA • LIC #982663 • 24/7
We answer the phone day, night, weekends, and holidays average response under 60 minutes.
Works Plumbing serves Hillsborough from the flats near El Camino up through Carolands and Tobin Clark. On lots this size the pipe outside the house is usually the problem, so that is where we start.
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Hillsborough has a half acre minimum lot and a 2,500 square foot minimum house, so buildings sit far back behind lawns, courts and retaining walls. The private sewer lateral and the private water service both have to travel that distance before they reach anything the town owns. Long runs collect more joints, more grade changes and more chances for a slow failure to go unnoticed. Add hillside grades in the upper neighborhoods and you get lines under real strain. What owners usually notice first is a recurring backup, a wet spot in a lawn, or a water bill that will not settle down.
Long service lines are hard to read from inside the house. A wet patch in a lawn can sit sixty feet downhill of the actual break, and on an estate lot the meter is often nowhere near the building. We use pressure isolation and acoustic leak detection to narrow the dig to a few feet rather than trenching the entire run through finished landscaping.
They showed up in under an hour, quoted me before touching anything, and cleaned up after. Exactly how it should be.
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Every job comes with upfront pricing, licensed and background-checked technicians, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee . No surprises, no pressure, ever.
Find your cleanout and your water shutoff before you need them. On a half acre lot they are often far from the house, and nobody wants to hunt for them at midnight.
See how we handle it:
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Send the address and what you are seeing. We arrive with camera and locating equipment, because on a Hillsborough lot the diagnosis is most of the job.
Pipes, faucets, fixtures, toilets, garbage disposals we fix what’s broken, fast.
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Hydro jetting, rooter service, camera inspection. Clogs gone, drains flowing.
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Tank and tankless install, repair, and replacement. Hot water within 24 hours.
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Installation, repair, leak detection performed by certified technicians.
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Non-invasive camera inspections find leaks fast without tearing up your home.
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Burst pipes? Flooded basement? We answer the phone day, night, weekends, holidays.
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Whole-home repipe and trenchless sewer repair. Less mess, longer life.
Learn MoreA look at real Works jobs around the Peninsula.
Hillsborough is zoned residential only. There is a half acre minimum lot, a minimum house size, and no commercial district anywhere in town. That one planning decision shapes nearly every plumbing call we take here. Houses sit deep in their parcels. A sewer lateral that runs thirty feet in a neighboring city can run well past a hundred feet in Lower Hillsborough, Country Club Manor or Carolands, crossing lawns, driveways, retaining walls and established landscaping before it reaches the town main. The same is true of the private water service. Longer runs mean more joints, more grade change and more places for a defect to sit unseen for years. That distance changes the diagnosis, not only the repair. A backup at a fixture tells you very little about where the obstruction sits when the line is that long, so we camera the run and mark the defect on the surface with a locator before anyone opens ground. The town adopted a Private Sewer Lateral Inspection Ordinance in 2012 as part of its work to keep raw sewage out of San Francisco Bay, and it inspects and repairs public mains in phases, with reduced costs for owners who repair their lateral alongside that work. The program is described on the Town of Hillsborough sewer lateral program page. Water comes from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission through the town system, so pressure follows your hillside zone.
Here are the questions we hear most. Don’t see yours? Give us a ring, a real human answers, day or night.
The Town of Hillsborough operates the distribution system and buys all of its water from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Roughly 85 percent of that supply is Hetch Hetchy water, with the balance coming from the Alameda County and Peninsula watersheds. Customers sometimes notice slight seasonal changes in taste or hardness as the blend shifts.
The town adopted a Private Sewer Lateral Inspection Ordinance in 2012, and Hillsborough is among the San Mateo County towns that require an inspection or test and a compliance certificate in connection with a transfer. Confirm the current requirement with the town before you list, since the program is tied to phased main repairs.
Length is the usual reason. With a half acre minimum lot and deep setbacks, the private lateral you own can run several times farther than a lateral on a standard city parcel. More footage means more pipe, more restoration through finished landscaping, and more time locating the defect before any digging starts.
In most cases yes. We isolate the service, watch the meter, then use acoustic equipment and line locating to pin the break to a small area. On an estate lot that difference matters, because a blind trench across a lawn, a courtyard and a driveway costs more to put back than the plumbing repair itself.
It does. The town system uses storage tanks and pump stations to serve a wide range of elevations, so pressure differs between the flats near El Camino and the upper neighborhoods toward Interstate 280. Before we replace a fixture for weak flow, we read the static pressure and check the regulator.
Almost none, because the town has no commercial zoning. Aside from schools, town facilities and a golf course, Hillsborough is residential. That is why our work here is nearly all single family estate plumbing: private laterals, private water services, water heaters, fixtures and irrigation ties on large parcels.
We also serve Burlingame, San Mateo, Millbrae and Foster City on the same routes.
We’ve earned our reputation one happy homeowner at a time.
“I had a backed up kitchen drain and David from Works Plumbing came out and cleared the line in a matter of minutes. Very professional and very knowledgeable. Definitely recommend!”
“Great professional and quick service! Shamir was friendly, efficient, and professional. He fixed the leaking problem in my sink and garbage disposal in under an hour. Highly recommend!”
“Thank you again for another job well done, and thank you for responding right away. I will continue to recommend Works Plumbing because they respond right away and get the job done efficiently.”
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