Drain cleaning in Remington.

Remington’s old streets, Main, Church, Washington and Franklin, are lined with Victorian and Queen Anne houses and the plain I-plan and L-plan farmhouse shapes, 75 of them worth listing on the registers. A good number have been cut into two or three apartments. In a divided house, one cast iron stack often serves every kitchen and bath, so a clog in the upstairs unit shows up as a slow sink on the ground floor.

That’s why a Remington call starts with a short list of questions. Which fixtures are slow? Is anyone else in the building affected? Who handles the building? Over four in ten homes in this ZIP are rented, and the typical rented home dates from 1957, so many of these lines belong to a landlord. We’re glad to talk with the owner or manager, and we’ll write down where the cable stopped so the repair, if any, goes to the right person.

Small multi-family buildings are close to a third of Remington’s owner homes, and the town is full of narrow houses where a cable has to come in from a basement cleanout and travel up a stack. Those jobs go quicker when someone is home in each unit to run water and tell us which drains answer, so tell your upstairs and downstairs neighbors we’re coming.

Newer Remington looks different. Lee’s Glen to the north and The Meadows on Lucky Hill Road hold most of the recent houses, with plastic drains and larger kitchens, and their clogs are fat, wipes and hair. Downtown, the river is another matter: when the Rappahannock climbs toward 25 feet, streets near the tracks flood, and a basement drain there can back up for reasons a cable won’t touch.