Plumbing in Unionville

Homes and streets in Unionville

Main Street Unionville, with Toogood Pond to the north and the old planing mill area nearby, keeps a cluster of heritage houses and converted storefronts. Spreading out from it are streets built from the late 1960s through the 1980s: side-splits, back-splits and two-storey brick houses on mature lots. Later infill and townhouse pockets fill in the gaps.

Heritage buildings here have usually been replumbed more than once, and every renovation leaves its own layer. In the post-war and 1970s houses, original copper supply and cast iron drain stacks are common, with clay or early plastic laterals running out under big trees.

Plumbing problems we see there

• Cast iron drain stacks cracking along the seam or scaling inside, causing slow drains on every floor.
• Clay laterals with root intrusion beneath mature maples.
• Original copper with pinhole leaks along basement ceilings.
• Side-split houses with a split-level drain layout that clogs at the transitions.
• Basement floor drains backing up during heavy summer storms.

Seasonal concerns

Late summer is root season in older laterals, so slow drains often appear in August and September. In winter, pipes along exterior walls of rooms over garages are the weak spot, and outdoor taps not drained in fall split as soon as the first hard frost arrives.

Services most requested

Most visits here are for to Unionville for drain cleaning, camera inspections of older laterals, and toilet repairs on original fixtures. Heritage properties sometimes need a careful approach to openings in plaster walls, and we plan cuts with you before starting. Neighbours in Markham Village share many of the same pipe types.

When you call, mention the age of the house and whether it has been renovated. It helps us bring the right fittings for cast iron or copper.

Working around plaster and old floors

Several houses near the Main Street core still have lath-and-plaster walls and wide-plank subfloors. Plaster cracks badly if cut with the wrong blade, so we score it first and open the smallest square that reaches the pipe. Under old floors we check joists notched by earlier trades before running anything new through them. If a fixture has been moved over the years, we trace its drain back to the stack rather than trusting the layout, because abandoned lines sometimes remain capped in the ceiling below and can confuse the picture.

Straight from the phone log