Pipe Patrol Plumbing of San Diego County

The handyman truth.

All over the county the story repeats. The handyman quoted less and the number was the appeal. Here's what the number leaves out.

A handyman carries a little of everything, which works fine right up until the job needs the machine he doesn't own. A hand snake is a real tool. It just isn't the tool for every long or recurring main line problem.

When the job goes past what's on his truck you've already paid and waited, and now you're starting over with the problem another week worse. A good share of what gets fixed out here started as somebody's economical fix.

Every job, big or small.

From a slow kitchen drain to a full sewer line replacement under a slab, here's everything covered across San Diego County. Call (858) 324-6400 for service anywhere in the county.

San Diego County helped change how much water a toilet uses.

This region ran out of its own water in 1946. That isn't a figure of speech. The County Water Authority's own record puts it plainly, that 1946 was the last year there was enough local supply to meet demand. To get Colorado River water after that, the county joined a Los Angeles agency, and the price of admission was handing over the City of San Diego's own claim to the river.

By 1991 the county was buying 95 percent of its water from Los Angeles. Then five years of drought hit, and that agency cut deliveries by 31 percent and held the cut for 13 months. The Water Authority's own history calls it economic havoc and says it produced a regional pledge of never again.

Here's what ended up in your bathroom. That same year, the Water Authority sponsored a state bill requiring that toilets sold or installed from 1994 forward use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush. Congress adopted the same standard nationally the year after. Everything since has been that instinct. Roughly 3 billion dollars over three decades, a raised dam, and a desalination plant in Carlsbad, with imports down from 95 percent to about 10. Arizona and Nevada are now in talks to buy water from us.

Every town here has its own version of it. San Diego built a wooden flume more than 30 miles long and threw a parade for water that turned out to be from a local well. Escondido burned its own bonds in a park while 3,000 people watched. La Mesa voted 429 to 1, Poway said no to a dam twice before saying yes by 87 percent, and Coronado ran pipe under 3,000 feet of bay because it had none at all.

What that means at your house is the water itself. Most of what comes out of a tap here starts in the Colorado River or Northern California, and both pick up calcium and magnesium from the rock they move through long before anybody pipes them anywhere. Reports put this county's water anywhere from 13 to 18 grains per gallon depending on the year, the source, and which plant treated it. The number nobody argues about is 10.5, which is where very hard starts. We're past it either way, and that's what your water heater is dealing with.