Emergency Plumbing, Sewer & Rooter — Open 24/7
Plumber in East Los Angeles, CA
An East LA emergency reaches a licensed plumber dispatched from our own shop in Montebello, minutes away. Open 24 hours a day, free estimates, and honest pricing agreed before anything is touched.
- 24/7 emergency service
- Free estimates
- Same-day availability
- Priced before work starts
- Financing available
- Se habla español
I want to thank Eric and the team at RPM They came on time, gave a reasonable price and did the job all while keeping my house and work area clean. The quality of customer service is second to none 10 out of 10 would recommend!
Plumber that came to do the service Erick.. was very professional and was very knowledgeable. He took care of my problems. Thank you Erick and RPM Plumbing. I will for sure use them in the future.
Request a free estimate in East Los Angeles
No charge for the estimate, and we price the job before any work starts. Prefer to talk? Call (888) 855-6680 — someone answers 24/7.
- Serving
- East Los Angeles, Montebello and Monterey Park
- Hours
- Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- Dispatched from
- 1601 Paramount Blvd., Montebello, CA 90640
- License
- Licensed, bonded and insured — CSLB #1004038
- Estimates
- Free, with the price agreed before any work starts
- Languages
- English and Spanish
- Financing
- Available through Hearth for larger repairs and replacements
- Emergencies
- Nights, weekends and holidays on the same number
Local, Licensed & Available 24/7
About Our East Los Angeles Plumbers
Rooter & Plumbing Masters works in East Los Angeles from our own shop in Montebello, the city on its eastern border. Our licensed East Los Angeles plumbers clear stopped sewer lines, find leaks before they spread, replace water heaters and repair gas piping. The work is in houses, duplexes and apartment buildings, and in the shops and restaurant kitchens on Whittier Boulevard and Cesar Chavez Avenue. You get a free estimate first, and no job begins before you have approved the price.
East Los Angeles is not a city, and it is no part of the City of Los Angeles either. It is an unincorporated community of Los Angeles County, roughly 7.4 square miles, with 118,786 residents in the 2020 census. It belongs to none of the cities surrounding it: Los Angeles to the west and north, Monterey Park to the northeast, Montebello to the east and Commerce to the south. A plumbing job feels the difference. The permit, the sewer main and the rules for opening the street are all Los Angeles County’s, and no city’s building, water or sewer department has any part in them.
The reason goes back to water. According to the county’s historic context statement, this land was once part of a rancho held by the Lugo family. Its first housing tracts were laid out late in the nineteenth century, one of them sold in 1887 by a group of clergy raising money to build a college. In 1903 the residents asked for two things, a streetcar line and annexation to Los Angeles, and they wanted annexation mostly for the city’s water. The streetcar arrived in 1905. The annexation did not: access to the water was refused because the residents could not pay to have the system extended. East Los Angeles stayed outside the city limits, and it has been outside them ever since.
It filled with houses anyway. By July 1923 the population had reached 12,000, with 2,500 new homes. City Terrace, on the hills in the northwest corner, was planned in the early 1920s, and its houses were mostly small, one story high, in the Craftsman, Pueblo Revival and Mission Revival styles. By 1927 single-family houses had gone up across part of the area south and west of what is now Beverly Boulevard, and by the mid-1950s tract houses had taken most of the farmland north of it. In the mid-1960s two freeways, the 710 and the 60, were built through the middle and split the community into four sections. Older neighborhood names are still on the map: Belvedere Gardens, Maravilla, Eastmont, City Terrace.
That history is in the pipes. The county’s Metro Area Plan finds that about 86 percent of the housing here was built before 1970, and that most of it has gone at least half a century without being updated. Two thirds of the homes are rented, and the average household is 4.1 people against 3.0 for the county as a whole. In a house from the 1950s or 60s the drain lines are typically cast iron and clay, and they are failing now. A large share of East Los Angeles went up a generation before that.
Plumbing Problems We See Most in East Los Angeles
A main line that stops up in an old house. Roots get into clay pipe at the joints, and cast iron roughens and scales with age. The first sign is usually low in the house: a shower drain that gurgles or a toilet that rises when the kitchen sink empties. Drain cleaning in East Los Angeles starts at the outside cleanout. Once a main line is open we send a camera down it, free of charge, to see what blocked it. The pipe out to the main belongs to the owner, and how the county handles the part under the street is covered further down.
The stoppage that keeps coming back. Cleaning cannot fix a cracked pipe, an offset joint or a belly that holds water. If the camera shows a single bad spot, drain repair takes care of it. If the line is gone from end to end, we talk about drain replacement. Anyone buying a house this old should order a sewer camera inspection while the sale is still open. The buyer’s inspection includes the video and a written summary.
Grease, in home kitchens and restaurant kitchens. Run a cable through a greasy line and you get a hole in the grease, which fills in again within weeks. Hydro jetting is our usual answer for a kitchen line that clogs over and over, since it washes the buildup off the pipe wall. The county’s sewer district asks for help at the sink as well: let grease cool, pour it into a can and put it in the trash. Restaurants, markets and apartment buildings are served by our commercial plumbing crews.
Water turning up in the wrong place. A brown ring on a ceiling, a wet baseboard, a floor that is warm underfoot, a bill that jumped for no reason. Leak detection comes before any demolition. We locate the leak with listening equipment, and with tracer gas when listening is not enough. Under a slab there are two repairs, opening the floor at the leak or running a new line around the slab, and we usually recommend the reroute. If concrete is cut, it gets a rough patch; finished flooring is not part of our work. One failed section is a pipe repair, and a house that leaks in a new place every year is a candidate for repiping.
Hard water and a worn-out water heater. Cal Water’s 2025 water quality report for its East Los Angeles system gives the hardness of its well water as 143 to 390 parts per million, 260 on average, which is roughly 15 grains per gallon. The company’s own scale calls anything from 150 to 300 hard, and it notes that hard water can leave mineral buildup in pipes and water heaters. A heater that has stopped heating can often be repaired. One that is leaking from the tank is replaced, every time. Our water heater service in East Los Angeles handles both, and a replacement goes in under a county plumbing permit.
A gas smell, a tag on the meter, a new stove. The county’s environmental review of the area plan confirms that Southern California Gas Company supplies East Los Angeles. When you smell gas, leave the building before you do anything else, then call SoCalGas at 1-800-427-2200 or 911 from the street. The utility shuts off the gas and makes the building safe. Gas line repair in East Los Angeles is what comes next: we fix or replace the leaking pipe and pressure test the system before service is restored. We also run new lines to ranges, dryers, water heaters and backyard grills, and the trench for an outdoor line is part of the job. An earthquake gas valve is not required here, but we install the motion-type valve for owners who want one, along with other emergency shutoff valves.
Get Our Services
Talk to a Plumber Who Works in East LA
You do not need the right term. Describe what you see and we will sort out which job it is. Water coming through a ceiling or sewage coming up in a tub is emergency plumbing, and the phone is answered at every hour for exactly that. A faucet that drips, a toilet that keeps running or a valve that will not close is everyday plumbing repair, booked for a day that suits you. Owners, landlords, managers and shopkeepers all get a free estimate and a price settled before we start. Our East Los Angeles plumbers pick up at (888) 855-6680, day or night. Se habla español.
Experienced Professionals
Expert Plumbing Repair in East Los Angeles, CA
Our East Los Angeles work runs from the hillside streets off City Terrace Drive down to Olympic Boulevard, and along the commercial streets the county plan lists: Whittier Boulevard, 1st Street, 3rd Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue. Our crews work with sewer cameras, hydro jetters and electronic leak detection, the listening equipment we use to find leaks. Housing here is dense, and a sewer line often runs under a driveway, a walk or a paved yard, so it is worth asking whether a failed line can be renewed without a trench. There are three ways: a liner cured in place inside the old pipe, a new pipe pulled through as the old one is burst, and an epoxy coating sprayed onto the inside of cast iron. The camera shows which of them the pipe will accept. Inside the house we repair and install sinks and showers and bathtubs, and for a building with drains that need regular attention we set up plumbing maintenance on a schedule.
Full-Service Plumbing in East Los Angeles
East Los Angeles Sewer Laterals
Who Owns the Sewer Line in East Los Angeles?
You own the lateral, and the county owns the main. With no city here, there is no city sewer department. The mains in East Los Angeles streets are maintained by the Consolidated Sewer Maintenance District, which Los Angeles County Public Works operates for the unincorporated areas and 38 cities, some 4,600 miles of pipe in all. The county’s environmental review describes the local system as sewers from 6 to 27 inches across that drain south into two trunk lines of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, a separate agency that carries the flow to treatment.
The pipe between your building and the main is another matter. Public Works states it flatly: a sewer lateral is entirely owned by the private property owner it serves, and that owner answers for its entire length, the piece in the public right-of-way under the pavement included. The county code adds the obligation to keep a house lateral in safe and sanitary condition. The sewer charge on your property tax bill goes to the public mains, not to your lateral.
Who Repairs a Sewer Lateral under the Street in East Los Angeles?
The owner arranges it, on the county’s terms. Our part starts with clearing. We clear a lateral all the way to the county main, working from the outside cleanout, or through a pulled toilet or the roof vent where a house has none, and a cleanout can be added once the line is flowing. The camera inspection that follows a main line clearing tells you whether the fault is in the yard, below the sidewalk or out under the street. When the pipe has to be repaired, our first choice is a method with no trench, and we dig only if there is no other way. For the street, the county’s rule is that nobody may install, remove, alter or repair a house sewer in a public way until Public Works has issued a permit. Its code names no license class for the work. It defines a licensed contractor as one whose state license covers the activities listed on the permit, and the application asks for that contractor’s license number and insurance. If a repair means opening the street, we do that part as well, under the Public Works permit, and take the repair through to the county main.
What the County Requires for Sewer Work in the Street
A Road Excavation Permit. It is applied for on EPIC-LA, the county’s online permit portal, with a site plan, traffic control plans that the Traffic and Lighting Division has approved, and a letter of authorization if someone other than the owner applies.
A wide definition of the street. Public Works says the road right-of-way normally takes in both sidewalks and everything between them, and now and then a few feet beyond.
County crews at the main. Under the sewer code a new tap into a public sewer is normally made by the county, so a new connection also needs a tap and saddle receipt from Building and Safety.
An allowance for emergencies. An excavation needed to protect life or property may begin at once, provided the permit application follows no later than the next business day.
Thicker pavement going back. The highway code calls for the replaced surface to be an inch thicker than what surrounds it, with a two-inch minimum.
If Sewage Backs Up in East Los Angeles
Stop sending water down. No laundry, no dishwasher, no showers until the line is open. Anything added to a blocked line surfaces at the lowest fixture.
Check the manhole in the street. If sewage is rising from it, the public main is the problem, and the county clears its own main. Public Works answers urgent sewer calls around the clock at (800) 675-4357 and tells residents to call even if they cannot tell whose pipe is blocked.
Tell us about the cleanout. A capped pipe by the foundation or near the front property line is the cleanout. If you cannot find one, say so on the phone and the crew will plan around it.
Keep any letter from the county. When the district’s cameras find roots or debris coming from a private lateral, it mails the owner a courtesy notice. It also holds that a lateral problem, once the owner knows of it, has to be repaired as soon as possible.
Water in East Los Angeles
Who Supplies Water in East Los Angeles?
California Water Service, a private utility better known as Cal Water, through its East Los Angeles District. Los Angeles County Public Works’ water service map and the State Water Board’s map of drinking water systems agree on this, and both show Cal Water across the whole of unincorporated East Los Angeles. Cal Water has served the area since 1928. It blends groundwater from its own local wells with water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which comes from the Colorado River and the State Water Project. The company’s 2025 report lists 272 miles of pipeline, 11 active wells and 17 storage tanks in the East Los Angeles system.
Cal Water divides the leaks this way: it repairs the system up to your meter, and the customer finds and fixes whatever leaks between the meter and the house, or inside it. For a broken main, water in the street or a loss of pressure, the district answers (323) 722-8601, and the same number takes calls after hours.
Where Is the Water Shutoff for My House?
Not in the box at the curb. Cal Water says the valve in the cement box by the street can be turned off only by the water company. The one meant for you is the house valve, which the company says is generally outside near a hose bib, most likely under the front faucet where the garden hose attaches, and sometimes inside the house or the garage. Find it on a dry day and make sure it turns. A house valve that is frozen in place, buried or simply absent is something we replace, and emergency shutoff valves in East Los Angeles has the details.
How Do I Tell Whether I Have a Leak?
Cal Water’s test needs no tools. Turn off all the water in the house and the yard, washing machine and dishwasher included, then go to the meter, which is usually at the curb. On its face is a small flow indicator, typically a triangle or a star. If it is turning, water is leaving somewhere. For toilets, the company suggests a dye tablet or food coloring in the tank: wait 15 minutes without flushing, and color in the bowl means the toilet leaks. If the indicator turns and nobody can find the reason, that is where our leak detection begins.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Plumber
We proudly provide high-quality plumbing services to customers in:
- Acton
- Alhambra
- Arcadia
- Atwater Village
- Burbank
- California City
- City of Commerce
- Covina
- Downey
- Fullerton
- Glendale
- Huntington Beach
- Inglewood
- La Habra
- Lake Hughes
- Lake Los Angeles
- Lancaster
- Leona Valley
- Littlerock
- Llano
- Los Feliz
- Long Beach
- East Los Angeles
- El Monte
- Mojave
- Montebello
- Monterey Park
- Norwalk
- Palmdale
- Pasadena
- Pearblossom
- Pico Rivera
- Placentia
- Quartz Hill
- Rosamond
- San Gabriel
- San Pedro
- Santa Clarita
- Santa Monica
- South San Gabriel
- Sun Village
- Torrance
- Van Nuys
- San Fernando Valley
- South Bay
- West Covina
- Whittier
- Orange County
- Inland Empire
Rooter & Plumbing Masters is known for our customer-focused service, honest pricing, and professionalism. No matter how large our coverage area grows, we will remain the same team of professionals committed to providing our customers with the best plumbing solutions in the area.
Additional Information
Where do East Los Angeles plumbing permits come from?
From Los Angeles County Public Works, Building and Safety Division. Its East Los Angeles district office is in the community itself, at 4801 East 3rd Street, phone (323) 881-7030, and applications for unincorporated areas are filed online through EPIC-LA. The code in force is the county plumbing code, which adopts the 2025 California Plumbing Code with county amendments.
Which plumbing jobs need a permit here?
The county code requires one before any gas piping, plumbing, drainage or house sewer work. Two kinds of repair are excused: clearing a stoppage, and stopping a leak in a pipe, valve or fixture without replacing or rearranging anything. Once a defective pipe or trap is taken out and new material goes in, the code treats it as new work. We tell you which side of that line your job falls on when we give the estimate.
Can an owner take out the permit?
The county plumbing code allows it for a single-family house that the owner lives in. As a rule the code issues permits to licensed or registered contractors, and it makes an exception for the bona fide owner of a single-family dwelling who occupies it, for plumbing or drainage work in that dwelling. If that describes your house, we can pull the permit for you, or you can pull it yourself if you prefer. For other buildings the contractor takes out the permit, apart from a few narrow exceptions in the code.
Is an earthquake gas valve required in East Los Angeles?
No. The plan check guidance from the county’s Building and Safety Division says seismic gas shutoff valves are not mandatory in the unincorporated areas of the county, while noting that applicants commonly install them in new and existing buildings. Rules in a neighboring city can differ, so advice from a relative a few blocks away may not apply to your address. If you want a valve, we install the motion type.
Call Our East Los Angeles Plumbers
A toilet that bubbles when the washer drains, a water heater leaving a rust trail, a gas range that smells when it is off: none of these gets cheaper by waiting. Tell us what is going on and we will tell you what it takes to fix.
Call (888) 855-6680 for a free estimate or same-day service in East Los Angeles, CA. Se habla español.
Common Questions
Plumbers in East Los Angeles, CA — Common Questions
Is there a plumber available in East Los Angeles right now?
Yes. Rooter & Plumbing Masters runs open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including nights, weekends and holidays. Calls to (888) 855-6680 are answered by a person rather than an answering service, and crews are dispatched from our own shop at 1601 Paramount Blvd. in Montebello.
How much does a plumber cost in East Los Angeles?
It depends on what is wrong, how accessible the pipe is and whether the fix is a repair or a replacement, so no honest plumber can quote a figure over the phone without knowing those. The estimate is free, and you get the price for the job before any work starts. Financing is available if the repair is a large one.
Are you licensed, bonded and insured?
Yes. Rooter & Plumbing Masters holds California CSLB contractor license #1004038 and carries insurance. You can verify the license yourself through the CSLB's public license lookup, and we would rather you did.
How quickly can you get to East Los Angeles?
For emergency calls we usually arrive within the hour. For everything else we offer same-day availability and will not promise an arrival window before we know what else is running. Call (888) 855-6680 and the dispatcher will give you a real time rather than a guess. East Los Angeles is inside our regular service area, so it is not an out-of-area trip.
What plumbing problems do you handle in East Los Angeles?
Clogged and slow drains, sewer line backups and rooter work, hydro jetting, sewer camera inspections, leak detection, water heater repair and replacement, gas line repair and installation, repiping and pipe repair, toilets, sinks, showers and tubs, emergency shutoff valves, and commercial plumbing. Residential and commercial both.
¿Hablan español?
Sí. Se habla español — you can call (888) 855-6680 and speak Spanish with our office and with the crew that comes out. Parts of our site are published in Spanish as well.