Plumbing Services in Lititz, PA

A borough that runs its own utilities

Lititz bills its residents for water, sewer and trash, so the borough office is your first call for a main break, a pressure problem on the street, discoloured water or sewage in the road. Everything on your side of the meter and the property line, including the sewer lateral, falls to you and your plumber.

Check the lead service line map first

The borough publishes a lead service line inventory map, along with guidance on where to find your service line and what lead pipe looks like. Use it before you do anything else with an older water line.

How to check at home:

1. Find the pipe where water enters the basement, just before the meter.
2. Look at the colour. Lead is dull grey and soft; scratched gently with a key, it shows shiny silver. A magnet won’t stick to lead or copper but will stick to galvanized steel.
3. Compare with the borough’s map and records for your address.

If the line is lead, galvanized or unknown, talk to the borough before replacing your side, because coordinated replacement avoids disturbing lead twice. Until it is replaced, running the cold tap for a minute or two before drinking water that has sat overnight, and using a filter certified for lead, are sensible precautions. Our page on water line replacement explains how the work is done and what affects the cost.

Sewer laterals are borough-supervised work

Borough code places the installation and repair of sewer laterals under the supervision of the borough manager or another authorized person. In practice, that means lateral work isn’t something to arrange quietly: ask the borough about permits and inspection before a contractor digs, and let the plumber know they will need to work within the borough’s requirements.

The diagnosis comes first. If drains back up or the main line clogs repeatedly, a sewer camera inspection shows what is in the pipe and where. Keep the video and the measured distances; they tell you, and the borough, which section is involved. Broken sewer line repair and sewer line replacement explain the options from there.

Old core, newer edges

About a third of Lititz homes were built in 1939 or earlier and nearly half before 1960, according to Census estimates, but more than one in eight went up in 2000 or later, and almost two-thirds are owner-occupied. The median home dates to 1962.

That makes two different sets of problems:

• Pre-war houses near the centre: clay or cast iron laterals, old cast iron stacks, galvanized supply pipe and, occasionally, lead service lines.
• Newer houses: PVC drains and copper or PEX supply, where the calls are more often water heaters, fixture valves, sump pumps and occasional hidden leaks found with leak detection.

Remodelling in the historic centre

Older Lititz homes reward a little planning when a kitchen or bath is being redone. With walls open, it costs comparatively little to replace a cast iron stack that is scaling or cracking, swap galvanized branch lines for copper or PEX, add an accessible cleanout to the building drain, and install a quarter-turn main shutoff that will actually close in an emergency. If the house still has a lead or galvanized service line, coordinating that replacement with the borough at the same time avoids digging twice.

Ask the plumber which parts of the job need borough permits, and remember that any lateral work falls under the borough’s supervision.

Newer homes: watch the hidden stuff

In houses built since 2000, plumbing failures are less about old pipe and more about components: water heater tanks reaching the end of their life, supply hoses under sinks and behind washers, and sump pumps that sit idle until the first big storm. A leak sensor next to the heater and under the washer is cheap insurance, and testing the sump pump with a bucket of water each spring catches most failures before they matter.

Winter

The nearest NOAA station records roughly 109 nights a year at or below freezing and an average winter low near 24°F. Pipes along exterior walls, under kitchen sinks and in unheated porches freeze first. Disconnect hoses and shut outdoor faucets off from inside before the first hard freeze, and see burst and frozen pipe repair if a line splits.

Lititz plumbing questions