Sewer line repair and water lines in Falls Church.

A Falls Church address can sit in the City or in Fairfax County, and a line replacement starts with which one. Inside the City, the permit list on the City’s site has a plumbing permit, a permit to work in the City right-of-way and a separate sanitary sewer service application, and it doesn’t say which a lateral needs, so Public Works gets the first call. On the county side the rule is Fairfax County’s: the owner owns the lateral to the main, under the street too, and the county plumbing permit is joined by a VDOT permit where a state road is in the way.

The water is the part that surprises people. Fairfax Water took over the City’s water system in January 2014, and it also bills the City’s sewer, so one bill tells the story of both lines. Its rules put the service pipe on your side, repair and replacement both, on you. They also have a leak adjustment for an unknown underground leak on that line. A bill that jumped with nothing dripping inside is worth keeping before we dig.

Inside the City the median owner house went up in 1964, only about a third are detached and nearly half the homes are in apartment or condo buildings, so a lot of what’s left is small lots with a house close to the street. A short run is less pipe, but there’s little room to stack dirt or pull the walk up, and the sewer and water lines may sit close together. We find both before a shovel goes in.

Across the line it changes. Most of the county-side places were built before 1980, and Lake Barcroft’s houses sit on grades that fall toward the water, which can put a lateral well down by the time it reaches the street. In the townhouse rows and condos near Bailey’s Crossroads and Seven Corners, the first question is whose pipe it is, since the association may own the stretch before the street.