Water Service Line
One pipe carries all the water your building uses. Most people never think about it until the day it stops or starts leaking under the sidewalk.
What it is
The service line runs from the city main under the street, through the curb valve, in through the cellar wall, to the meter and the building's main shut-off. Everything downstream of it is the building's plumbing. Everything upstream is the city's.
Signs the service line is the problem
- Pressure and volume both down everywhere at once, not just on the top floor. A pressure problem confined to upper floors is usually something else, covered under water pressure
- The meter turns with every fixture off. The most reliable single test there is
- A wet or sunken patch in the sidewalk or cellar floor on the line's route
- Water bills climbing with no change in how the building is used
- Discoloured water that does not clear after running, and is not confined to one apartment
Lead service lines
A great many older Manhattan buildings were originally connected with lead. The city has been working through replacement, and the status of any given address can be looked up in the city's service line inventory. If you do not know what your building has, that is worth finding out regardless of whether anything is currently wrong with it.
Where a line is lead, replacement is the answer rather than repair. Filtration at the tap is a stopgap that addresses the water you drink and not the pipe. See water filtration.
Anything that involves opening the roadway or the sidewalk in New York City requires permits from the Department of Transportation and coordination with DEP. Where that is what your building needs, we will tell you plainly that this is the route, so you can plan for it rather than discover it.
Inside the cellar
Plenty of service line complaints turn out to stop at the cellar wall. The usual culprits are a main gate valve that has seized part-open, a meter with a clogged strainer, or a reduced-size section added during some earlier repair that now throttles the whole building. Those are all fixable without touching the street, and they are worth ruling out first because the difference in cost is enormous.
Need this doing?
Call and describe the problem. You will get the price before anyone starts.