With more than 175,000 single family homes and a similar number of multi-family units, Northern California’s largest city has more than a million utility connections. Sewer, water, gas and electric lines connect San Jose’s million residents to an underground infrastructure system that powers everyday amenities, from televisions and stoves to showers. Everything, including the kitchen sink.
Many of San Jose’s underground utility lines are reaching the end of their useful life. They are prone to leaks, backups, clogs, cracks and outages. Maintenance and replacement of decades-old systems requires expertise and, ideally, a video inspection by an experienced underground plumbing specialist like TrenchFree.
San José, one of California’s oldest cities, dates back to the Spanish Colonial Era begun in 1777. Construction began on its first sewer system in 1880, with sewer pipes made of glazed stoneware and redwood boxes. By 1923, the boxes rotted and the sewer pipes were replaced with concrete ones. The municipal sewer, which dumped into the San Francisco Bay, prompted Willow Glen, once an independent city, to merge into San José in 1936, as individual septic systems proved to be inefficient.
The sewer system experienced a large failure in 1958, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. The main brick line, located just three feet below the surface, ruptured, spewing thousands of gallons of sewage onto farmlands north of Trimble Road. City Manager A.P. Hamann, a supporter of renovating the sewage system, responded to the news, saying: “I told you so.”
Hamann used San Jose’s sewer system, particularly its treatment plant, as leverage to support the city’s aggressive annexation campaigns, which factored into the 1968 annexation of Alviso, just as it had with East San Jose, also an independent city, in 1911.
Old connections between homes and businesses to San Jose’s sewer system have a higher risk of failure because of shifting soil, legacy materials and deterioration. If you live in or operate a business in one of San Jose’s historic neighborhoods, like Naglee Park, Willow Glen, the Rose Garden or Shasta Hanchett, inspecting the underground plumbing connections from building to street is an important factor in ensuring continued performance.
(West Valley / Stevens Creek–Winchester)
West San Jose reads as a textbook post-WWII suburb, built on former orchards. With a few older streetcar-era fragments nearer to The Alameda, the area’s housing stock is overwhelmingly shaped by 1950s–60s ranch-house tracts laid out in curving subdivisions and school-centered neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods: West San Jose; Country Lane; Bucknall; Strawberry Park; Paynes; Westmont; Castlemont; Blackford; Bascom-Forest; Doerr-Steindorf; Cory; Calderwood-Dellwood; Garden Alameda; Santana Row; Loma Linda; Burbank.
The Almaden homes were built during the mid-century valley-floor tract building period (1950s–70s). The midcentury grids contain underground plumbing that requires inspection, and in many cases, repair or replacement.
Neighborhoods: Almaden Hills Estates; Country Club; Graystone; Glenview Serenity; Pierce Ranch; Shadow Brook; Montevideo; Almaden Meadows; Crossgate; Dartmouth; Sunrise Almaden; Guadalupe Oak Ranch; Almaden Lake; South Almaden Valley.
This broad middle-south band is where San Jose’s orchard edge became suburb all at once. While there are a few older prewar pockets, the dominant story is postwar annexation and 1960s–70s tract boom: long runs of ranch homes, then another wave of townhomes and condos in the 1980s–90s along the main corridors.
Cambrian is the earlier part of the wave (mostly 1950s–60s ranch tracts), while Blossom Valley and the South-Central pockets peak in the 1960s–70s as San Jose’s growth frontier marched south.
Neighborhoods: Cambrian; Rose-Sartorette; Fruitdale; Blossom Valley; Cahalan; Parkview; Miner; Comanche; Canoas; Shawnee; Hayes; Anderson East; Playa Del Rey; Hillview South; Edenvale; Del Robles; Hellyer; Oak Grove; Fairgrounds; McKuen; Makati; Branham-Kirk.
Berryessa and North Valley were orchards through mid-century, then turned almost overnight into suburb. During 1960s–70s tract development, orchards were subdivided into the neighborhoods that define the area.
Neighborhoods: North Valley; Ocala-Sundown; Piedmont Hills; Sierra Vista Hills; Cherrywood; Flickinger; Saint Victor; Ruskin; Morrill; Penitencia; Commodore; Brooktree; Cataldi; Vinci; Shady Oaks.
The Japantown, Northside and DTSJ neighborhoods were created during San Jose’s early city expansion. Northside, Ryland Park, also known as the Vendome, and Japantown grew as streetcar-era neighborhoods (roughly 1890s–1930s) with small lots, walkable grids and early bungalows and Victorians. Japantown’s cultural and commercial fabric solidified in the 1910s–30s.
Neighborhoods: Northside; Central San Jose; Naglee Park; Japantown; Downtown San Jose; Sun; Tamien; Spartan-Keyes; Hyde Park; Saint Leo’s; Luna Park.
Historic neighborhoods along San Jose’s east–west city corridors include pockets like Washington-Guadalupe and other downtown-edge neighborhoods constructed in the late-19th and early-20th century.
To the east, the land was orchards and truck farms into the early 20th century, and then Alum Rock and the Mayfair/Story Road belt exploded during the mid-century tract era. Alum Rock shifted from orchard town to suburb as developers created the ranch-house neighborhoods that still dominate today.
Mayfair began earlier (as a working-class district in the early 1900s), but its biggest housing surge and cultural consolidation came with post-war growth, when the East Side filled in rapidly.
By the 1960s–70s, the Story Road / Eastridge / Kelley Park area grew quickly.
Neighborhoods: Washington-Guadalupe; Brookwood Terrace; Buena Vista; Mayfair; Little Portugal; Alum Rock; Overfelt; Hillview North; Santee; Kennedy; Yerba Buena; Roosevelt Park; Checkers; Leyva; Meadows.
Homeowners in San Jose should consider sewer lateral and drain system evaluation when purchasing a home built before 1980, experiencing slow drains, backups or sewage odors, planning major renovations or if the home has never had a video inspection.
Many jurisdictions in Santa Clara County now require sewer lateral inspection and certification at time of sale. Proactive assessment can prevent emergency repairs and allow for planned replacement on the homeowner’s timeline.With more than 175,000 single family homes and a similar number of multi-family units, Northern California’s largest city has more than a million utility connections. Sewer, water, gas and electric lines connect San Jose’s million residents to an underground infrastructure system that powers everyday amenities, from televisions and stoves to showers. Everything, including the kitchen sink.
Many of San Jose’s underground utility lines are reaching the end of their useful life. They are prone to leaks, backups, clogs, cracks and outages. Maintenance and replacement of decades-old systems requires expertise and, ideally, a video inspection by an experienced underground plumbing specialist like TrenchFree.