Emergency Plumbing Services

If you have an active leak, a sewer backing up into your home, no hot water with the floor under your water heater wet, or you can smell gas — call EZ Plumbing at (818) 908-2710 now. We’re a California-licensed C-36 contractor (#583868) and we’ve been answering emergency calls in Los Angeles since 1989. A real person picks up, day or night, including weekends and holidays. The questions we ask in the first 30 seconds are designed to help you stabilize whatever is happening before we arrive.

The rest of this page explains the things people actually want to know in the middle of a plumbing emergency — what counts as a real emergency versus what can wait until morning, what to do in the first 90 seconds before we get there, the specific failures we see most often in Los Angeles homes, what permits and inspections come into play after the immediate problem is solved, and what emergency work usually costs and what drives the variance. There’s also a section on when you probably shouldn’t dispatch us yet, because not every plumbing problem benefits from an emergency rate.

When You Should Call Right Now — and When It Can Wait Until Morning

Not every plumbing problem is an emergency, and treating non-emergencies like emergencies wastes your money and our schedule. Here’s how we sort them on the dispatch call.

Call right now if you have any of these: water visibly entering your living space from a pipe, fixture, ceiling, or wall — anywhere it shouldn’t be. A sewer line backing up through a floor drain, shower, or lowest toilet (this is a Category 3 contamination event and gets worse by the hour). The smell of gas, even faintly, anywhere on the property — leave the building and call 911 plus SoCalGas at 1-800-427-2200 first, then us. A water heater that has visibly ruptured, or whose drip pan is overflowing, or that is producing scalding-hot water with the thermostat unchanged. No water at any fixture in the house when the city main is on (suggests a slab leak draining your supply line). A frozen and burst pipe during one of the rare LA freezes (rare but real, especially in High Desert-adjacent areas like Sylmar or the Antelope Valley).

It can probably wait until business hours if: a single faucet is dripping (annoying but not damaging). One toilet won’t flush properly but other toilets work (localized clog, not main-line). The kitchen drain is slow but not backing up. You hear water hammer or banging pipes (a real problem but not damaging anything in the next 8 hours). Water pressure across the whole house is lower than usual but flow is still adequate. A garbage disposal is jammed or humming. Any visible damage that has already happened and is no longer progressing — the leak has stopped, the wet spot is contained — get an appointment, but you’re not in the time-critical window where emergency rates are justified.

When in doubt, call. The dispatcher will tell you honestly whether it sounds like an emergency or something that should be scheduled. Saying “this can wait until 8 a.m.” is something we do every day; we’d rather schedule you tomorrow than charge you emergency rates for a problem that isn’t actively getting worse.

The First 90 Seconds: What to Do Before We Arrive

The single highest-leverage thing you can do in a plumbing emergency is shut off the water at the source — which means knowing where your shutoffs are before you need them. If you’ve never located them on your property, take five minutes after the next problem ends and walk through this list.

For water leaks: shut off the right valve

Localized leak (under a sink, behind a toilet, at a single fixture): close the angle stop directly below or behind that fixture. Turn the small chrome or brass valve clockwise until it stops. If the angle stop is corroded or won’t move (common in pre-1980 LA homes with original valves), don’t force it — go to the main shutoff instead. Forcing a stuck angle stop is the most common way a small drip becomes a flood while you wait for help.

House-wide leak or the angle stop is stuck: find your main water shutoff. In most Los Angeles single-family homes with a raised foundation, this is either (a) at the front of the house near the hose bib on the side closest to the street, (b) in a small concrete box at the property line by the sidewalk (your water meter is here too — there’s usually a smaller plumber’s shutoff in the same box or a separate “house valve” within a few feet), or (c) in the garage near the water heater. Slab-foundation homes (typical mid-century Valley construction) usually have the shutoff at the front of the house exterior, often near the hose bib, sometimes inside the garage where the supply line surfaces. Apartments and condos have a unit-level shutoff somewhere in the unit — laundry closet, under a vanity, or in a utility cabinet — plus a building-level one only the property manager can access. Find yours now, write the location somewhere you’ll remember, and consider tagging it.

For gas smells: leave first, call from outside

If you smell gas (the rotten-egg odor of mercaptan added to natural gas), do not flip light switches, do not start a car in an attached garage, do not use a phone inside the building if you can avoid it. Leave the building. Once outside, call SoCalGas at 1-800-427-2200 — they will dispatch a technician to shut off gas at the meter and inspect for the source. After SoCalGas has made the area safe and cleared you to return, then call EZ Plumbing to repair the actual line. We are licensed C-36 (#583868) to perform gas piping repair under Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety permit; we are not a substitute for SoCalGas’s first-response role in a confirmed gas leak.

For sewer backups: stop using water in the house

When sewage is coming back up through a floor drain or the lowest toilet, every flush, shower, dishwasher, and washing-machine cycle adds to it. Tell everyone in the house to stop using water entirely until we arrive. Keep kids and pets away from the affected area — backed-up sewage is a real biohazard (Category 3 water under the IICRC standard) and the cleanup is its own job category beyond the plumbing repair. If you have a sewer cleanout outside (typically a white plastic cap at ground level near the foundation, often on the side of the house closest to the street), don’t remove it — it can release pressurized sewage onto the property and into the soil. We’ll open it under controlled conditions.

The Five Plumbing Emergencies We See Most Often in Los Angeles

Most of our emergency dispatches in any given month fall into one of five categories. The frequency varies by neighborhood and by housing era — Hancock Park and Larchmont skew differently than Valley tract homes, and post-1980 Westside developments have their own distinct failure modes. Knowing what’s likely in your specific era of construction helps both of us move faster.

1. Slab leaks in 1960s–1980s homes with copper plumbing under the slab

If you own a home built between roughly 1960 and the mid-1980s with a concrete slab foundation, the supply lines almost certainly run through or under that slab in soft-temper copper. After 40-60 years in contact with concrete and the local soil chemistry, those copper lines develop pinhole leaks — usually at points where the pipe touches a post-tension cable, a rebar tie, or where mineral-rich water has eroded the copper from the inside out. The telltale signs: a warm spot on the floor (hot-water side leak), an unexplained jump in the water bill, the sound of running water with everything turned off, and in late stages, a damp baseboard or visibly cracked tile. Slab leaks need leak detection (acoustic and thermal imaging) before any repair; sometimes the leak is repaired by spot-access through the floor, sometimes by rerouting the line through the attic or wall cavity to bypass the slab entirely. Both approaches involve LADBS oversight depending on the scope of work — your plumber will pull the appropriate permit.

2. Cast iron drain backups in pre-1960 homes

Pre-1960 LA homes — common across Hancock Park, Larchmont, parts of West Hollywood, Hollywood Hills, Echo Park, Silver Lake, Mid-Wilshire, and older sections of Pasadena — were typically built with cast iron drainage piping. Cast iron has a 50-75 year service life under normal conditions, which puts most of those drain stacks well past their design life right now. The failure mode is corrosion from the top down: oxygen-rich air at the upper vent terminations attacks the iron from inside, scale and rust narrow the pipe diameter, and eventually a section either fully blocks or develops a structural break. The emergency call is usually triggered by multiple drains backing up at once (because the main stack is constricted), or by sewage seeping through a basement wall where a buried cast iron line has broken. Camera inspection diagnoses the exact failure point. Repair options range from spot replacement (cut out the worst section, splice in PVC or no-hub cast iron) to a full drain stack replacement — the latter usually requires opening drywall on multiple floors and pulling a permit. We always recommend the camera inspection first so you can see the actual condition of the rest of the line before committing to one approach.

3. Water heater failures — sediment, scale, and the seismic strap question

Los Angeles water is moderately hard — generally in the 100-300 ppm CaCO₃ range depending on the blend MWD is delivering in your area that month. That mineral content settles to the bottom of tank-style water heaters as sediment, and over 8-12 years that sediment insulates the heating element (or burner) from the water, causing the unit to work harder, run longer, and eventually fail. The emergency call we get is usually a wet floor under the heater (tank corrosion) or a popping/rumbling sound followed by no hot water (element burned out under a sediment blanket). Replacement is the right answer for any tank past 10 years that has visibly failed — repairing a corroded tank is throwing money away. California Health & Safety Code §19211 requires water heaters to be braced or strapped against horizontal seismic forces, and Los Angeles enforces this strictly during the permit-and-inspection cycle that follows replacement. If your existing straps look like the original installation, they almost certainly do not meet current strapping standards — this is something we check on every replacement.

4. Gas line leaks — and the SoCalGas / plumber handoff

Gas emergencies have a strict handoff that confuses some homeowners. SoCalGas is the first responder for any confirmed gas leak; their technician arrives free of charge, shuts off the gas at the meter if needed, and inspects to confirm the leak source. Once they have determined that the leak is on the customer side of the meter — anywhere from the meter to inside the house — their job ends and a licensed plumbing contractor takes over for the repair. EZ Plumbing’s C-36 license covers gas piping repair and modification under the California Plumbing Code, and we pull the LADBS plumbing permit and arrange the pressure test and inspection that the city requires before gas service is restored. The most common gas-leak sources we find in older LA homes are corroded threaded fittings at appliance connections (water heater, range, dryer), failed flexible connectors behind appliances (pre-1994 connectors are well past their service life), and degraded underground lines feeding detached garages or pool heaters. Never let a non-licensed handyman do gas line work — it is both illegal and a serious safety risk.

5. Burst supply lines — galvanized in pre-1960 homes, frozen lines in inland LA

Two distinct failure modes here. The slow-developing one: pre-1960 homes with original galvanized steel supply lines. Galvanized scales internally over decades — by year 50-60, the inside diameter of a 3/4-inch line can be 1/4 inch or less, and the wall is so thin that a small pressure spike causes a pinhole or split. We see these emergencies most often in the same older neighborhoods as the cast iron drains. The fast-developing one: pipe freezes in inland and high-elevation LA neighborhoods during the rare deep cold snap (Sylmar, parts of the Antelope Valley, Big Tujunga, La Cañada Flintridge, some of the foothill communities of Pasadena and La Crescenta). LA’s mild climate means most homes have minimal insulation on exterior supply lines; when temperatures drop into the 20s for several hours, exposed pipes in unheated crawl spaces, exterior walls, or attics can freeze and split. The split shows up when the pipe thaws — which is usually when you find out you have a leak. The fix is straightforward (cut, sweat or compression-fit a replacement section) but the timing is always inconvenient.

Permits, Code, and What Happens After the Immediate Repair

For some emergency work, what comes after the immediate fix matters as much as the fix itself. Most homeowners don’t think about permits in the middle of a midnight call — and they don’t need to in that moment — but knowing what’s coming helps you make informed decisions about the repair strategy.

Work that requires an LADBS plumbing permit: water heater replacement, gas line modification or repair, sewer line replacement, drain stack replacement, and most repipes. The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety requires the permit before work begins, and an inspection after work is completed. We pull permits and schedule inspections as part of the job — this is standard professional practice and protects you at home sale, insurance claim, and refinance time. Skipping permits is something you’ll regret the first time it shows up in a property disclosure.

Work that typically does not require a permit: faucet replacement, angle stop replacement, garbage disposal replacement, toilet replacement (in most cases), and any like-for-like fixture swap. The line gets drawn at modifications to the supply lines, drain lines, gas lines, or venting — those need permits regardless of whether the work is small.

California Plumbing Code requirements that come up most often in emergency repairs: water heater installations require a properly sized and accessible temperature-and-pressure (T&P) relief valve, a discharge line that terminates safely (not blocked, not above floor level, not threaded at the discharge end), seismic strapping per California H&SC §19211, proper combustion air for gas units, and code-compliant venting for atmospheric units. Sewer cleanouts are required at specified intervals and accessible locations [VERIFY: confirm CPC section number for cleanout interval requirement — believed to be in CPC Chapter 7 but cite as paraphrase rather than specific section]. Gas piping must be pressure-tested per LADBS protocol after any modification, and the test result is what the inspector confirms before gas service is restored. We don’t cut corners on any of this — the permit-and-inspection trail is your protection.

Emergency Plumbing Cost in Los Angeles — Ranges, Not Guesses

Cost ranges depend heavily on the specific failure, time of day, parts availability, and whether the immediate fix is also the final fix or just a stabilization until a larger repair is scheduled. We provide a written estimate before any work starts, including any after-hours premium, and we don’t begin until you’ve approved it in writing. Here’s what drives the variance.

The diagnostic call itself — running camera inspection on a sewer line, leak detection on a slab leak, pressure testing a gas line — is its own line item, typically in the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars depending on equipment and time required. This is separate from any repair cost because diagnosis is what determines the repair scope. We will always quote the diagnostic separately so you’re not committing to a repair before you know what you’re actually dealing with.

Stabilization versus full repair — sometimes the emergency call is to stop active damage (cap off a leaking line, isolate a section, shut off and bypass a failed water heater) and the actual repair happens during business hours when parts and additional crew are available. A stabilization visit costs less than a full repair, but you’ll have a follow-up. We are transparent about which option you’re picking and what each costs before any tool comes out of the truck.

After-hours premium — emergency work outside our standard service hours (weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) carries a premium that we disclose upfront. It is never disguised in the line items. The premium reflects actual dispatch cost, not a markup; you can see it as its own line on the estimate.

Parts and material specifics — a water heater replacement varies by tank size, fuel type, and whether the existing installation meets current code (often older installations need the gas connection, venting, or strapping brought up to code as part of the replacement, which adds material and time). A sewer line repair varies by depth, length, and whether trenchless methods are feasible — for the latter, the savings on hardscape restoration usually justify the higher per-foot cost when access is good. We quote ranges and tell you what would push the number to the high or low end.

When You Shouldn’t Call Us Yet

Some problems look like emergencies but aren’t, and dispatching an emergency crew for them is a poor use of your money. A dripping faucet — annoying, not damaging, schedule it. A running toilet — the fill valve or flapper is your $15 fix at the hardware store; if you’ve never replaced one and want to learn, this is the right problem to learn on. A garbage disposal that hums but doesn’t spin — there’s a hex-key reset on the bottom of every Insinkerator and most others; insert the key, turn until you feel the impeller free up, hit the reset button on the bottom, try again. Low water pressure at one fixture — usually a clogged aerator on a faucet; unscrew, soak in vinegar overnight, reinstall. A single slow drain in a sink or tub — try the hot water + dish soap + a plunger before calling. We’re happy to come out for any of these during business hours; you just shouldn’t pay emergency rates for them.

Where We Dispatch and How Response Times Actually Work

EZ Plumbing dispatches from the San Fernando Valley across the greater Los Angeles metro area. Response time is honestly a function of traffic and time of day. Mid-day Wednesday in good traffic, we can be in the Westside or Pasadena in 45 minutes from the call. Rush hour eastbound on the 101 or the 405 at 6 p.m. on a Friday, that same trip is 90 minutes or more. We tell you the realistic time on the dispatch call, not a marketing number.

Service areas we cover for emergency response: Los Angeles proper, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Studio City and the Valley, Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, plus Santa Monica, Culver City, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Highland Park, Eagle Rock, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Northridge, Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Reseda, West Hills, Van Nuys, Venice, Marina del Rey, and Los Feliz.

For property managers and HOAs with multi-unit buildings, we set up priority response accounts that bypass the standard dispatch queue — useful when one failure affects multiple tenants and the calculus is different. Talk to us about that during business hours; it takes about ten minutes to set up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Call EZ Plumbing — 24/7 Emergency Response

If you have an active emergency right now, call (818) 908-2710. A licensed plumber will be on the way within minutes of dispatch. We’ve been the emergency plumber a lot of Los Angeles families and property managers call first for the better part of forty years — California license C-36 #583868, in business since 1989, real people answering the phone day and night. If your situation isn’t an emergency and you’d rather schedule, you can schedule service online for business hours.

Emergency Plumbing Services in Los Angeles

EZ Plumbing provides Emergency Plumbing across the greater Los Angeles area for homes, apartment properties, HOAs, retail centers, and managed commercial buildings. View our Google Business Profile for reviews, business details, and directions.

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