24-Hour Emergency Plumber in Burbank

Plumbing in Burbank: what to know

Burbank became a city on July 8, 1911. Inside its limits are Hollywood Burbank Airport, the Warner Bros. and Walt Disney studios and Magnolia Boulevard, and its neighborhoods range from Magnolia Park, Downtown Burbank and the Media District to the Rancho Equestrian District, a district of horse properties. Past the flats, the Burbank Hills lead up toward the Verdugo Mountains and Stough Canyon. On the far side of the city line are Los Angeles and Glendale.

Burbank's housing count in the US Census (ACS 2024 5-year) is about 46,200 units. Half were standing by 1959, the median year built; 72 percent went up before 1980; and 44 percent are detached single-family houses, so most of Burbank's homes are apartments, condos and other attached units. Many of the houses on the flats date from the 1920s through the 1950s. Open a wall in one of them and you tend to find galvanized steel supply pipe or early copper, and under the yard a clay sewer lateral carrying waste out to the main in the street.

Those materials age in ways a plumber can predict. Galvanized pipe rusts on the inside until a shower that once ran strong barely trickles, or the first water out of a tap runs brown. Old copper thins and pinholes, often inside a wall nobody has opened in decades. Clay laterals were laid in short lengths, and roots from mature trees find the joints until the lowest drain in the house backs up. The foothill homes in the Burbank Hills add the problems of a slope: a sewer line that has a long way to go before it reaches the street, and a pressure regulator that can wear out under the pressure arriving from the main.

Burbank Water and Power, owned by the city, provides both the water and the electricity, and SoCalGas supplies the gas. Out in the yard, the private sewer lateral belongs to the owner, who keeps it in repair all the way to the public main, on the flats and in the hills alike. Plumbing permits come from the City of Burbank: we pull them for gas lines, repipes, lateral repairs and water heater swaps, then close them once the city inspection passes. Every Burbank call is dispatched from Los Angeles and gets our 24-hour emergency response.

Burbank borders Los Angeles and Glendale. We serve those cities as well, and their calls are handled from our Los Angeles location like every other. A person answers at any hour, the plumber finds where a leak or blockage begins before cutting into a wall or a floor, and work starts only after you sign the written estimate.