45% of the roughly 121,970 housing units in Arlington County were built before 1970, and a great many of those units are condominiums and apartments rather than houses. Old pipe stacked above other people's homes is most of what makes plumbing here different.
Arlington is about thirty-five minutes from our shop in Woodbridge, and most of what we do up there is commercial. Offices, retail, restaurant kitchens and the occasional multi-unit stack around Clarendon, Ballston, Rosslyn, Shirlington and Crystal City. Tight access, worse parking, much of it after the tenants go home.
There Is No Typical Arlington Home
Look at the decades and nothing wins. Every decade from pre-1940 to the 2010s holds at least 8% of the county's housing, and none holds more than 14%. The ends are what matter. Only four of the 26 areas we cover have a higher share of pre-1970 housing, and Springfield matches Arlington exactly at 45%. Nineteen of the 26 have more 1980s and 1990s housing than Arlington's 20%, so the polybutylene window caught less of this county than most. One caveat on all of it: era predicts material, it does not prove it. Our pipe materials by decade page is the long version.
When The Leak Is In Somebody Else's Ceiling
Water travels down. In a condominium or apartment building that one fact rearranges the job, because the unit reporting the damage is almost never the unit with the failure. We get called by the owner with the stained ceiling, trace it up a floor or two, and then the real question starts: who owns the pipe that let go.
Read your governing documents before you need them. The split between unit owner and association differs building to building, and it decides who authorises the repair and who pays for the drywall. We will say plainly when a shared stack needs the association in the room rather than one owner alone. In older buildings that stack is cast iron, and cast iron rewards a camera over a cable: the bore roughens into tubercles that catch grease, and cabling scrapes a channel that closes again. Jetting cleans it.
In Arlington The Lateral Is Yours All The Way To The Main
The county maintains the public gravity sewers downstream of your connection and says it has no jurisdiction over private laterals, so the pipe is yours and so is the connection to the main itself. Do not carry a rule across from a neighbouring jurisdiction; that line is genuinely different from one of these places to the next. Arlington also runs a fully separated system with no combined sewers, and its adopted collection plan estimates 30% or more of inflow and infiltration enters through privately owned sewers upstream of the county connection.
Sixty Years Inside A Galvanized Supply Line
Galvanized steel corrodes from the inside out. The zinc goes, the steel rusts into the water, and the rust builds inward as a hard crust until a three-quarter inch pipe is doing the work of a pencil. Nobody notices. They adjust. Then two fixtures run at once and neither really runs. New fixtures will not fix that, and nor will piecework: fresh copper to one bathroom off an old galvanized trunk moves the bottleneck instead of removing it. We would rather do a whole-house repipe once than sell the same partial three times, and a lateral cabled every spring has earned a camera run.
The Lead Question, With A Rule You Can Apply Yourself
Arlington's initial service line inventory ran from February to September 2024 and found no lead service lines in the system. County rules have prohibited lead pipe since 1938, and there is an age test you can apply yourself: a home built on or after 1 August 1978 does not have a lead water service line.
Eight Grains, And What It Costs You
Hardness here is 142 mg/L, or 8 grains per gallon, with pH 7.5 in distribution, from the 2025 report. The water is purchased from the Washington Aqueduct, a division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, treated at the Dalecarlia plant from the Potomac. Hard enough to scale a tank and shorten a water heater's life, not hard enough to make a softener compulsory. An annual flush costs nothing.
Permits, And Why The Listed Fee Is Never The Final Number
The fee schedule took effect July 1, 2026, and every permit also carries a 2% USBC Code Academy levy plus a 10% automation surcharge. Whatever figure you read on the schedule is not what you pay.
Water service, new, replace or repair. $174 each, plus a $139 plumbing base permit fee. The minimum plumbing permit fee is $149 for one and two family dwellings and townhouses up to three storeys. The schedule does not say how those combine, so we will not invent a total.
A new connection is the expensive part. Connection charges sit outside the permit, and a 1-inch service with a 3/4-inch meter is $5,295, effective July 1, 2025.
Sewer work. Building sewer and tap $174, repair or relocate and lower $174, cap-off $130, sewage ejector or sump pump $174, before base fee and surcharges.
Water heaters, carefully. No water heater line item exists in either fee table, so a fixed figure for one is somebody guessing. Replacing non-gas equipment of the same type, size and location is exempt; replacing elements on gas-fuelled equipment needs a permit and inspections.
Inspections. Through the Permit Arlington portal, and whoever is onsite must contact the assigned inspector that morning or it is cancelled. Re-inspection after a disapproval is $217, and no turnaround is published.
Heating And Air In Housing That Predates Ductwork
Mechanical work here runs on the same clock as the pipe. In the pre-1970 half of the county the original system is long gone, and what replaced it was often threaded into a house never designed to move air. That is where the back bedroom that will not hold temperature comes from, and it is usually a duct and return problem wearing an equipment problem's clothes. A bigger condenser on undersized ducts buys you noise. Plenty of these houses still heat through radiators or baseboard, a genuinely different trade. Up in the buildings, equipment sits on roofs and in shared mechanical rooms, so getting the old unit out can be the longest line on the quote. We plan that access before the day, which is why our Arlington commercial work repeats with the same property managers.
Common Questions
How old is the housing in Arlington?
About 45% of the roughly 121,970 housing units in Arlington County were built before 1970 and 27% since 2000, with the 2000s the most common single decade. That is Census table B25034 for Arlington County, and the unit count includes condominiums and apartments as well as houses. No decade accounts for more than 14%, which is why we ask the age of the building before assuming anything about what is in the walls.
Do I have a lead water service line in Arlington?
Almost certainly not. The county's initial service line inventory, carried out between February and September 2024, found no lead service lines in the system, county rules have prohibited lead pipe since 1938, and the county publishes a clean age rule: a home built on or after 1 August 1978 does not have a lead water service line. Two honest qualifications. Owners may still have lead on the private side, and a 2014 county plan documents short lead goosenecks on some galvanized services. In older Arlington housing the realistic problem is corroded galvanized supply pipe, which is a pressure and water-quality issue rather than a lead one.
My drain is backing up. Who do I call first?
The county, on 703-228-6555, before you call a plumber. Arlington asks for that so it can verify the public main is clear first. If the main is clear, the problem is on your side, and in Arlington the private lateral and its connection to the public main are both the property owner's responsibility. The county maintains the gravity sewers downstream of that connection and says it has no jurisdiction over private laterals.
I own a condo and the leak is coming through my ceiling. Is that mine to fix?
Often not, and that is worth settling before anyone starts cutting. Water travels down, so the failure is usually a floor or two above the damage, and whether the pipe belongs to a unit owner or to the association depends on your building's governing documents. Read them now rather than during the emergency. Isolating a shared stack also takes the building's cooperation and notice to residents, so we would rather get the association involved early than watch one owner try to solve a stack problem alone.
How hard is Arlington's water, and do I need a softener?
The 2025 water quality report puts total hardness at 142 mg/L, which is 8 grains per gallon. That is hard enough to scale a water heater and shorten its life, and not hard enough that we would call treatment compulsory. We treat a softener as a comfort and equipment-life decision. If you skip it, flush the water heater annually and keep the aerators clean.
What does a water heater permit cost in Arlington?
We will not quote a figure, because there is no water heater line item in either the plumbing or the gas fee table. If somebody has given you a single number for it, ask where it comes from. What the county does publish is the rule: a plumbing or gas permit is required for adding, removing or relocating fixtures, appliances or piping, replacing non-gas equipment of the same type, size and location is exempt, and replacing elements on gas-fuelled equipment needs a permit and inspections. Every permit also carries a 2% USBC levy and a 10% automation surcharge on top of the listed fee.
Why is the water pressure in my building so inconsistent?
Two different causes get blamed on each other. Inside older housing it is usually the supply piping closing up with corrosion, which worsens over years and cannot be fixed with new fixtures. On the supply side, the county operates nine pressure zones and 14 pressure reducing valves, and its goal of 40 to 100 psi comes from a May 2014 master plan still labelled draft that says the goal cannot be met everywhere given Arlington's topography. In a taller building the pressure at your tap is set by the building's own equipment anyway. We gauge it before we diagnose it.
We run a restaurant in Arlington. What do we need for backflow and cross connection?
The county inspects restaurants and commercial buildings annually for cross connection compliance, and the device should be tested by a Virginia-licensed backflow device professional before you schedule that inspection. Residential irrigation systems are inspected by the county after installation, and after that the owner may use third-party inspectors. We handle backflow installation and testing, and we would rather get a kitchen's paperwork and its grease line on a schedule than meet you on a Friday night.
