Why this call
What is going wrong in a Pasadena house?
A Craftsman in Bungalow Heaven and a slab ranch in Hastings Ranch fail on different clocks. Fir and oak cup the same night a supply line runs under a plaster wall, and the stain keeps moving after the valve is shut because the plaster is holding water from the back. East of Lake Avenue the leak is already under the concrete. The room goes warm before anyone sees a puddle, and fans on the surface do not touch it.
- Crowned oak or fir along a wet plaster wall in a prewar bungalow.
- A warm floor in a Hastings Ranch house with no standing water yet.
- A closet water heater that has already marked the plaster behind it.
Say which house it is, bungalow with a crawl space or ranch on a slab, and whether the line is still open. A wet yard after a storm in the Arroyo is not this job. Water on a wood floor, or water that has come up through the slab, is the call that gets a crew scheduled.
The houses
What gets wet in Pasadena?
Pasadena’s prewar grid is Craftsman bungalows and 1920s Spanish Revival, thickest in Bungalow Heaven and Madison Heights. Those houses have plaster, fir floors, and crawl spaces or partial basements. A supply line that runs all night cups the oak and stains the plaster from the back. Hastings Ranch and the east-side streets are a later fabric: slab ranches, where a hot-water leak travels under the concrete and shows up as a warm room before it shows up as a puddle. The two houses do not dry the same way, and the call needs to say which one it is.
The water
How does water usually get into a Pasadena house?
Winter storms off the San Gabriel Mountains push water down the Arroyo Seco and Eaton Canyon. Hillside streets above the arroyo and houses tucked against the foothills take runoff at doors and garages. That outside water is not the same event as a burst angle stop under a 1912 kitchen sink. The indoor emergencies are supply lines in bungalows, water heaters in tight closets, and slab leaks under the ranches east of Lake Avenue. Standing water on a wood floor or standing water that has come up through a slab is the job. A damp yard after a storm is not.
The map
Which parts of Pasadena does this page cover?
Bungalow Heaven, Madison Heights, the blocks around the Playhouse, Lamanda Park, Hastings Ranch, and the lower Arroyo are all Pasadena and they leak differently. Altadena is unincorporated and sits on Pasadena’s north edge. South Pasadena, Arcadia, and Sierra Madre are separate cities with their own pages. If the house is in Pasadena proper, this is the page.
ZIP codes
Codes covered on this Pasadena page
- 91050
- 91051
- 91101
- 91102
- 91103
- 91104
- 91105
- 91106
- 91107
- 91109
- 91110
- 91114
- 91115
- 91116
- 91117
- 91121
- 91123
- 91124
- 91125
- 91126
- 91129
- 91131
- 91175
- 91182
- 91184
- 91185
- 91186
- 91187
- 91188
- 91189
- 91191
- 91199
A shared ZIP can sit on a city line. Use the city the house is actually in, not only the number on the mail.