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Chicago plumbing
Water on the floor or a drain backing up? We’ll have a licensed plumber find the cause and get your place dry and working again.
Quick check
Is this an emergency?
Do you smell gas near the water heater or the furnace?
Is water or sewage coming out right now, and you can’t stop it?
Is the house out of water, or are all the toilets unusable?
Is the water reaching outlets, the electrical panel or a unit below?
Leave the house first.
Don’t switch lights or appliances on or off. Get everyone outside, then call 911 from there. Once it’s safe, call us about the water heater.
Yes. Call us right away.
Shut the main water valve if you can reach it safely, and keep clear of wet outlets. Then call and say how fast the water is coming.
Call (312) 555-0100This one can usually wait for a booked visit.
A slow drip, one slow drain or a running toilet can usually wait for a booked visit. Put a pan under the drip, close the valve under that fixture and stop using that drain. Call when you’re ready to set a time.
Services
Chicago Plumbworks is a Chicago plumbing service for the trouble older buildings here run into: burst and frozen pipes, sewer backups and flooded basements, leaking water heaters, clogged drains, failed sump and ejector pumps, and sewer lines that need rodding or replacing. Pick the line that matches what you’re looking at. If you have water where it shouldn’t be right now, start there. The full list of plumbing services groups them by what the water is doing.
Housing stock
About four in ten Chicago homes were built in 1939 or earlier, and the median building in the city dates from 1954, according to the Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey. The age of a building tells a plumber a lot, starting with what the water line is made of and how the sewer leaves the basement. A house that old may still have a lead water line where it enters at the meter.
More than 80,000 went up between 1910 and 1940, by the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association’s count, close to a third of the city’s single-family houses. Most have a full basement with the floor drain sitting below the sewer in the street, which is how a summer storm ends up pushing water up through the floor drain. The water line comes in through the front basement wall at the meter.
About a quarter of Chicago’s homes sit in buildings with two to four units. Stacked kitchens and baths share one drain stack, so a clog low in the stack shows up first in the lowest unit’s tub or floor drain. Plumbing that runs out to an enclosed back porch is where pipes freeze first in January.
The limestone-front buildings, many of them two- and three-flats, sit on deep lots with a long sewer run out under the front yard and the parkway. Older laterals were laid in clay pipe, and the joints are where parkway trees send roots into the sewer line.
The half-below-grade apartment often has a bathroom lower than the sewer it drains to. Waste gets lifted out by an ejector pump in a sealed pit, and when that pump stops, the toilet and shower in that unit can’t drain at all.
How a visit gets set
You talk to us. A licensed plumber makes the repair once you’ve seen the price and said yes. Can’t talk right now? Send the request form and we’ll call you back.
Say where the water is and how fast it’s moving: a basement floor drain, a ceiling in the second-floor unit, a tank on the floor. If it’s still running, we’ll get you to the main valve before anything else.
We set the visit with a licensed Chicago plumber and confirm the time with you. In a building with more than one unit, say which one and how the plumber gets in.
The plumber finds the cause and writes up the repair before starting on it. You only pay for work you agreed to.
The repair gets done, and you see what failed: the roots cut out of the sewer, the corroded fitting, the pump that burned out.
Areas
Every part of the city has its own building type, and the building type tells a plumber where to look first.
Greystones and two-flats in Logan Square and Avondale, where old clay laterals run under boulevard trees. The bungalow belt through Portage Park and Jefferson Park, with overhead sewers, catch basins and basements that flood in a hard rain. Two-flats with garden units in Albany Park and Irving Park, many of them with an ejector pit under the basement bath.
Worker cottages in Bridgeport with older water lines and rear additions where pipes freeze. Courtyard buildings and condos in Hyde Park, where buyers often want the sewer scoped before closing. Larger single-family houses in Beverly, with sump pumps and mature trees over the sewer line.
Yes. Say which unit has the problem, whether it’s yours or a tenant’s, and how the plumber gets in. In a stacked building a backup often shows up in the lowest unit first, so mention any water in the garden unit or basement too.
Say on the call that it can’t wait and what the water is doing. We’ll tell you straight when a licensed plumber can get to you, and walk you through shutting the water off until then.
If water is running, shut the main valve. Keep people and pets out of standing water, stay away from wet outlets, and stop using any drain that’s backing up. Lift boxes and rugs off the basement floor. Leave the repair itself for the plumber.
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