Placerville
Open 24/7- 4330 Panorama Dr, Unit 36
Placerville, CA 95667 - (530) 499-2223
- Open 24 hours, 7 days a week
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Hear from Our Customers
Camino sits at 3,133 feet. That single number explains most of what we get called for up here. Winter nights on the ridge run colder and longer than they do down the grade in Placerville, so the pipes that survive a valley winter are the ones that split in Camino: an exposed hose bib on the north side of the house, a supply line crossing an open crawl space, the run out to a barn or a well house that nobody thought about until it burst.
The second thing is the geology. El Dorado County water carries a heavy mineral load from the Sierra Nevada, and that scale builds inside water heater tanks and narrows older supply lines until the pressure drops. On a ridge property the effect compounds, because a long run from the source to the house gives the scale more pipe to settle in. Knowing that is the difference between replacing a fixture and finding the actual restriction.
The third is simply where you live. Properties off Carson Road and the lanes above it sit on acreage, at the end of real driveways, often with the well on one side of the parcel and the septic field well away from it. A plumber who has never worked a property like that guesses. We ask what you are on before we quote, because the answer changes the job.
Murray Plumbing is a licensed, owner-operated plumbing contractor working out of Placerville, six miles down Highway 50 from Camino. California C-36 license number 916322 sits behind every job and takes about thirty seconds to confirm at cslb.ca.gov. That is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the difference between having real recourse if something goes wrong and having none.
What customers actually comment on is quieter than the license. It is that the invoice at the end matches the number they agreed to at the start, with nothing added while the work was happening. Our Placerville listing currently averages 5.0 stars across 513 Google reviews, which is a long enough run to mean something rather than a handful of recent ones.
Camino is small, and on a ridge where everyone shares the same two roads, a contractor who leaves a mess or moves the price does not get a second call. We would rather be the name people pass along at the apple sheds in October than the cheapest quote in the county.
You call, a person picks up, and you describe what is happening. From that you get three things before anyone drives anywhere: when we can be at your place, what the job most likely involves, and what it is going to cost. Camino is a short run up the highway for us, so same-day service is usually available rather than a two-day window.
On site we look first and tell you what we found before anything is opened up. On older ridge properties that sometimes turns up more than the symptom you called about, a supply line that froze and refroze over several winters, or a pressure problem that starts at the well rather than at the fixture. You hear it plainly, with options. The written estimate comes before the work, and that number does not move unless the scope does, in which case you are told why first.
Because Camino is unincorporated, there is no city hall to go to. Plumbing permits run through the El Dorado County Building Division, and anything touching a septic system or a well goes through County Environmental Management, which has its own site evaluation and approval steps. We handle that paperwork on the jobs that need it, so you are not learning the county’s process on a deadline.
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Plumbing repair in Camino covers conditions you would not meet on a flat Sacramento lot. At 3,133 feet the freeze season is longer, so frozen pipe repair in Camino and pipe repair are winter staples rather than rare calls. Mature oak and pine root into drain lines across the ridge, which is why sewer camera inspection comes before any digging, and sewer cleaning or sewer repair after it, once we can see what is actually in the line.
The rest of the work is the ordinary run of a house, done properly: water heater repair, replacement and installation, drain cleaning, leak repair and leak detector installation, toilet repair, gas line repair and new gas lines, pressure regulator work, and water main or water line repair out across the property. Where a house still runs on failing original pipework we will talk honestly about repiping, including when it is not needed yet. Homes plumbed with Kitec need identifying first, because the fittings fail from the inside. For orchards, tasting rooms and the sheds that open for the Apple Hill season there is commercial plumbing as well.
Many Camino parcels carry their own well and their own septic field. The county sets a five-acre minimum for a rural parcel to hold both and requires 100 feet between a well and a leach field, which is exactly why these systems end up spread across the lot with long buried runs between them. Well-fed plumbing asks different questions than a metered connection does: pressure tank condition, how the system behaves when it is drawn down hard, and whether the problem you are feeling at the tap actually starts at the pump. We work on both kinds of property, and the approach is the same either way. Find the real fault, say what it is in plain terms, then fix that.
For most significant work, yes. Water heater replacement, new or rerouted pipework and sewer line repair generally require one. The part that catches Camino homeowners out is where it comes from: Camino is unincorporated, so there is no city permit counter. Plumbing permits are issued by the El Dorado County Building Division, and anything involving a septic system or a water well goes through County Environmental Management instead, which runs its own site evaluation and site approval before it will issue one.
The permit is there to confirm the work meets the California plumbing code the county adopts, and it protects you later. Unpermitted work on a required job tends to surface at the worst moment, when you sell the house or when an insurer asks how the repair was done. On jobs that need a permit we deal with the county ourselves rather than handing you a form and a phone number.
Elevation. Camino sits at 3,133 feet, up the Highway 50 grade from Placerville, and that climb buys colder nights and more of them. A pipe that only ever gets close to freezing lower down will cross the line repeatedly through a Camino winter, and it is the repeated freeze and thaw that splits a line rather than one cold night.
The spots that fail are predictable, which is the useful part. Exterior hose bibs come first. Then supply lines running through a vented crawl space, anything on an exposed north-facing wall, and the long uninsulated runs out to a well house, a barn or a detached garage. If a tap in your house slows down in cold weather, that line is already telling you it is at risk. Insulating and heat-taping the handful of vulnerable sections before the first hard freeze costs a fraction of the burst pipe repair it prevents.
Yes, and on a Camino parcel the two are usually part of the same conversation. El Dorado County requires 100 feet between a domestic well and a septic leach field, and generally wants five acres before a rural parcel can carry both, so the well, the house and the disposal field end up spread out with long buried runs between them. That layout is where most of the problems hide.
On the supply side, well-fed plumbing is its own system: the pressure tank, the switch, the pump and how the whole thing behaves when the house draws hard. Pressure that sags only when two taps are open is a very different fault from pressure that is low all the time, and it is often not a regulator problem at all. On the waste side, we work up to the septic tank, inspect and clear the house lines, and run a camera before anyone opens ground. Work on the tank or the field itself is permitted separately through County Environmental Management, and we will tell you plainly when a job has crossed into that territory instead of quietly working around it.
A standard service call for something contained, a dripping faucet, a running toilet, a single slow drain, typically runs $150 to $350 depending on what it turns into once it is open. Water heater replacement, which needs a county permit, generally lands between $900 and $1,800 for a conventional tank, with tankless higher depending on the gas and venting work the house needs. Larger jobs, sewer line repair, a repipe, leak detection across a big parcel, vary too much with scope to quote in a range honestly.
What does not vary is how you find out. You get a written estimate before the work starts, and that figure is the one on the invoice unless the scope changes, in which case you hear why before it does. No travel surcharge for the drive up the hill either. Camino is a normal service call for us, not a remote one.
Camino is about six miles east of Placerville on Highway 50, which is where we are based, so it is one of the shorter emergency runs we make. For most of the year that means we are on your property inside the hour once we have spoken.
Two honest caveats, because they are real at this elevation. In heavy weather the grade can slow the drive, and in a widespread hard freeze we are taking burst pipe calls across the ridge at the same time, so we will tell you where you are in the queue rather than give you a time we cannot keep. What you will not get is a voicemail. Someone answers at (530) 499-2223 when you call, including nights and weekends, and that is the difference that matters when water is coming through a ceiling.
Go to cslb.ca.gov and search the license number or the business name. It takes about thirty seconds and it tells you whether the license is active, what classification it holds, and whether the bond and workers’ compensation coverage are in place. For plumbing you want a C-36 classification. Ours is California C-36 license number 916322.
It is worth doing because of where the line falls in California: any job over $500 in combined labour and materials has to be done by a licensed contractor. Hire below that line for work above it and you have no recourse through the state board if it goes wrong, and your homeowner’s insurance may decline a claim that traces back to the work. On a rural parcel where a failure can mean a flooded crawl space or a contaminated well, that is not a risk worth taking to save a little on the quote.
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