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Low water pressure that’s been annoying you for months often turns out to be a corroded galvanized pipe slowly closing off from the inside — a problem extremely common in North Highlands homes built before 1980. Once we replace it, you’re not adjusting the shower handle anymore. You’re not running the kitchen faucet on full just to get a trickle. You just have water pressure again, the way it’s supposed to work.
The same goes for a slow drain that gets worse every August. That’s not a coincidence in North Highlands — it’s tree roots following moisture into aging clay sewer laterals during Sacramento’s long dry summers. Left alone, it becomes a full backup. Caught early, it’s a drain cleaning or a targeted pipe repair. The difference between those two outcomes is whether you called before it got bad or after.
For landlords and property managers dealing with tenant calls in North Highlands, the stakes are even more direct. A broken water heater or a backed-up sewer line in a rental unit isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a habitability issue. Fast, licensed plumbing repair that shows up when promised and documents the work protects your tenants and your property at the same time.
Ryan Murray started this company in 2009 after the housing market collapsed, earning his contractor’s license and learning the service side of plumbing from the ground up. We’re not a call center dispatching whoever’s available — we’re a locally built operation with 15-plus years of experience serving Sacramento County homeowners, and a 4.7-star Google rating across 93 reviews to show for it.
North Highlands sits squarely in the Sacramento County service area we’ve been working in for years. The mid-century housing stock throughout the community — the same neighborhoods that grew up around McClellan Air Force Base — presents specific plumbing challenges that a franchise reading from a script won’t recognize on sight. Corroded galvanized supply lines, cracked clay sewer laterals, aging water heaters in slab-on-grade homes — these aren’t abstract problems here. They’re what our team has been diagnosing and fixing in North Highlands and the surrounding area for over a decade.
Every technician is fully licensed, insured, and background-checked. The price is agreed upon before work starts. And if something isn’t right, we make it right.
When you call Murray Plumbing, the first thing that happens is a real conversation about what’s going on. You describe the problem — low pressure, a slow drain, a water heater that stopped working, a pipe that’s visibly leaking — and based on that, you’ll get a clear sense of what the visit involves and what to expect when our technician arrives. Most calls result in a same-day appointment.
On-site, our technician diagnoses the actual source of the problem before any work begins. In North Highlands homes, that often means checking for the specific issues common to older construction: galvanized pipe corrosion, root intrusion in aging sewer laterals, mineral scale buildup from the area’s moderately hard water supply, or underslab leaks in slab-on-grade homes that don’t show visible signs on the surface. Once the diagnosis is clear, you get an upfront, flat-rate price. That’s the number. Not an estimate that grows once the work starts — the price you’re quoted is what you pay.
If the repair requires a permit through Sacramento County — which governs all building and plumbing work in North Highlands as an unincorporated community — we handle that coordination. The work gets done, inspected, and documented. You’re not left managing paperwork for a repair you didn’t ask to manage.
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We handle the full range of residential plumbing repair in North Highlands — from a leaking pipe under the kitchen sink to a full sewer lateral replacement. Drain cleaning and hydro jetting address the root intrusion and buildup that aging clay and cast-iron lines accumulate over decades. Camera inspection lets you see exactly what’s happening inside your sewer line before any repair decision is made, which matters when a tree root problem could be a simple cleaning or a sign that the lateral needs replacement.
Water line repair and waterline replacement cover everything from a pinhole leak in a corroded supply line to a full repipe of a home that’s still running on galvanized steel. Water heater repair, replacement, and maintenance address one of the most common failure points in North Highlands’ older housing stock — and if your water heater has been fighting moderately hard water for years, the scale buildup inside the tank is likely shortening its life faster than the age alone would. We offer tankless and energy-efficient water heater options for homeowners looking to upgrade rather than replace like-for-like.
Trenchless sewer repair is available for lateral damage that would otherwise require digging up your yard — a meaningful option in North Highlands neighborhoods with mature landscaping. Leak detection, water softening, filtration, and reverse osmosis systems round out our service range, so whatever the plumbing issue is in your North Highlands home, you’re not being referred somewhere else.
The most common cause in North Highlands specifically is galvanized steel supply pipe. Homes built before 1980 — which describes a large portion of the housing stock in this community — were frequently plumbed with galvanized pipe, which corrodes from the inside out over time. As the corrosion builds up, the interior diameter of the pipe narrows, and water pressure drops. You might notice it first at one fixture, then gradually throughout the house.
The fix depends on how far the corrosion has progressed. In some cases, we can replace a targeted section of pipe to restore pressure. In others, particularly in North Highlands homes where the galvanized runs are extensive and the corrosion is advanced, a full repipe is the more practical long-term solution. We can assess the actual condition of your supply lines and give you an honest read on which approach makes sense — and what it will cost before any work begins.
The most reliable way to confirm root intrusion is a camera inspection — a small camera is run through your sewer lateral so you can see exactly what’s inside the pipe. Guessing based on symptoms alone often leads to the wrong repair. That said, certain patterns are telling: a drain that gets progressively slower through summer and into fall, gurgling sounds from your toilet when water drains elsewhere in the house, or a sewer backup that happens after heavy rain are all consistent with root intrusion in aging sewer lines.
North Highlands’ combination of mature shade trees — many planted when the neighborhoods were built in the 1950s and 1960s — and older clay or cast-iron sewer laterals creates exactly the conditions where root intrusion is common. Roots follow moisture, and during Sacramento’s long dry summers, the moisture around sewer pipe joints is one of the few reliable sources underground. If the camera confirms roots, we can clear them with hydro jetting. If the lateral itself is damaged, trenchless repair can fix the pipe without digging up your yard.
North Highlands is an unincorporated community, which means there is no city government here. All building and plumbing permits are issued through Sacramento County’s Department of Community Development, not a city building department. This is a distinction that matters practically — the permit application process, inspection scheduling, and code compliance all run through the county.
Not every plumbing repair requires a permit. Minor repairs like fixing a leaking faucet, replacing a toilet, or clearing a clogged drain typically don’t. Larger scope work — sewer lateral replacement, repiping a home, water heater replacement in many cases, or any work that opens walls or floors — generally does require a permit and inspection. We handle permit coordination for work that requires it, so you’re not navigating Sacramento County’s process on your own. All work is performed to California Plumbing Code standards and any applicable county amendments.
The Sacramento Suburban Water District’s service area near North Highlands delivers water classified as moderately hard — approximately 85.9 parts per million of dissolved minerals. That’s harder than Citrus Heights and significantly harder than Folsom. Over time, those minerals accumulate as scale inside your water heater tank, coating the heating element and reducing efficiency. A water heater working against significant scale buildup runs longer to heat the same amount of water, wears out faster, and often fails earlier than its rated service life.
The same mineral buildup occurs inside older galvanized pipes, compounding the corrosion that’s already narrowing the interior diameter. If you’re dealing with low pressure and you’re on a home with galvanized supply lines, hard water has likely accelerated the problem. Water softening and filtration systems can address the root cause rather than just treating the symptoms. We offer water softening, filtration, and reverse osmosis options for North Highlands homeowners who want to stop replacing the same equipment on a shortened cycle.
Call Murray Plumbing. We provide 24/7 emergency service — not a recorded message that routes to a callback queue, but real availability for situations that can’t wait until Monday morning. A burst pipe, a sewer backup, a water heater that’s actively leaking, or water coming through the ceiling are the kinds of problems where waiting hours makes the damage significantly worse and the repair significantly more expensive.
When you call, describe what’s happening and where. If there’s active water flowing where it shouldn’t be, the first priority before anyone arrives is finding your main shutoff valve and turning it off — that stops the damage from spreading while you wait. Our emergency response follows the same process as any other call: diagnosis first, upfront price before work begins, and the repair done right rather than patched temporarily. Emergency availability doesn’t mean emergency pricing surprises — the flat-rate model applies regardless of when you call.
You can verify any contractor’s license directly on the California State License Board website at cslb.ca.gov. Every licensed plumbing contractor in California holds a C-36 classification, and the CSLB database is public — you can search by company name or license number and see whether the license is active, what classification it covers, and whether there are any disciplinary actions on record. This takes about two minutes and tells you more than any company’s own marketing will.
This matters in North Highlands for a practical reason: unlicensed plumbing work can void a homeowner’s insurance claim if something goes wrong as a result of the repair. In a community with a significant rental market, it also creates liability exposure for landlords who hire unlicensed contractors to handle tenant repairs. Murray Plumbing is fully licensed under California’s C-36 classification and fully insured — and you’re welcome to verify that before you book. Providing a license number upfront rather than making you ask for it is a basic standard of accountability that any legitimate plumbing contractor should meet without hesitation.
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