A year of work orders at a business park, an apartment building and three associations, from our side
A property manager needs a plumber who can be handed a unit number and a tenant’s name and come back with the problem fixed, a photo of the work and an invoice the owner can read. That is the work we do for managers, landlords and associations across Snohomish County, and here is a year of it.
1. The same failure in five units, one call each
A multi-tenant business park on the Highway 99 corridor, just south of the Everett city limits, is run by a property-management company we have worked with since the summer of 2025. Its units get hot water from small six-gallon electric tanks, one per restroom or loft sink, installed at about the same time and now failing at about the same time. Between August 2025 and August 2026 five were replaced in five different units, each on a single visit by whichever crew was nearest: Logan and Justin, Connor and Logan, Willie and Logan twice in the spring, and Chase in August for the one in an upstairs loft. The manager’s unit number was the whole work order.
The point for a manager is the pattern, not the heater. A park full of the same small tank from the same year keeps producing the same call, and it helps when the plumber already knows which building has the loft and keeps the unit on the truck.
2. When the shutoff is in the tenant next door
The hose bibs on the park’s buildings are plumbed so that the bib on one unit’s wall shuts off inside the unit next door. In October 2025 Connor and Logan arrived for a leaking bib, found no shutoff on their side and nobody home on the other, and were planning a return for a morning the neighbor could open up. The neighbor arrived as they were packing up, had the valve, and with the manager’s go-ahead the bib was replaced on the spot.
In March 2026 Willie and Logan did two more in one morning. On the first, the neighboring tenant needed water back quickly for their own work, so the crew added a ball valve, re-energized the neighbor and finished the bib from the other unit. The second was done from the neighbor’s side because the tenant was out. Every visit adds a line to our map of that park’s shutoffs.
3. Toilets in back-to-back units
Back-to-back restrooms share a fixture cross, and they misbehave together. In September 2025 one toilet at the park would only fill when the toilet on the other side of the wall was flushed, so Logan and Justin rebuilt it and flushed both toilets repeatedly until neither affected the other. A month later Connor and Logan found a canister flush valve with its stop tabs sheared off, ordered the part and came back to rebuild the tank.
In May 2026 a toilet would not flush at all, and it was back-to-back with a unit nobody could get into. Willie and Logan pulled it and ran the cable with the camera watching so it would not jump across the cross into the neighbor’s line. Wipes and shop rags came back on the auger, and they ran the stop and the sink together to prove the line was taking everything before the toilet went back on.
4. The building-wide shutdown, planned
In July 2026 a tenant at the park asked about moving a hose connection, and Chase found a galvanized tee off the toilet stub feeding a failed gate valve, a saddle valve and a boiler drain, with no shutoff anywhere in the ceiling or the unit. Four weeks later Willie and Chase shut the whole building down at an agreed time, drained it, replaced the failed valves with a new ball valve and boiler drain, strapped the assembly to the wall and brought the building back up with every joint checked. The difference between a planned shutdown and an unplanned one is a phone call from us the week before.
5. Fourteen units out of service in Everett
Late one August afternoon in 2026 a property-management company called about an older apartment building a few blocks south of downtown Everett: all four first-floor bathrooms were backing up through the toilets and tubs. Logan, Willie and Chase took it the next morning. A small cleanout in a hallway wall showed the problem was not local, and there were no main cleanouts anywhere, so they found the main by dropping the camera down the three-inch roof vent, opened the wall where it ran and found a four-inch cast-iron cleanout already there behind the drywall. They drilled out its plug and worked from it.
The camera was under water the whole way to the end of the hall and the half-inch cable bound up about eighty feet out, so the trailer jetter went in and broke the clog, and the water that had been sitting in the building came up through the lawn beside the driveway. With the line draining they ran the camera again and marked the ground: a separation inside near the front door, a break just past where the cast iron changes to concrete outside, another under a shrub at the corner, and a probable fourth near the sidewalk. They told the manager that every first-floor toilet needed a pull and reset, and left the sewer repair as the owner’s decision, because a jetter clears a line and does not mend one.
That company’s smaller building in south Everett had a quieter visit the autumn before, when Logan and Justin shut it down and installed a new 1.25-inch pressure-reducing valve on the main where it leaves the garage slab, set to 65 psi.
6. Associations and landlords
Managers are not the only ones running buildings. In August 2026 the management company for a townhome community south of Everett called about water pouring into the meter box. Willie, Chase and Logan found the threads split on the fitting into the meter, cut out about a foot of the two-inch PVC behind it and rebuilt the connection with a swing joint to take up the difference in height between the meter and the pipe. Once the glue had set they re-pressurized and walked the complex opening hose bibs until every one ran solid.
In June 2026 the owner of a retail center in Lynnwood sent Chase to a tenant’s restroom where a flushometer could not be rebuilt. He replaced it with a Sloan Regal, and when the stop behind it began leaking at its packing nut he shut the building down, replaced the one-inch stop and flushed fifteen times. And in December 2025 a condominium association in Harbour Pointe, Mukilteo, had Logan rebuild a shower supply where plastic pipe met brass threads, the cold side first and then the hot when it failed at the same fitting.
7. What we need from you, and what you get back
- Someone who can say yes. We ask for the person who can authorize work when the call comes in, and we do not start without that authorization, even on an emergency.
- Access. The unit number, who holds the key, which neighbor has the shutoff and whether the tenant needs to be there.
- Photos before the wall closes, with notes written for an owner who was not there.
- One account, one invoice per work order, each unit or building on its own line, with the same crews coming back.
- The coverage for any building. Insured above the state minimum and set up for prevailing-wage work.
Questions Property Managers Ask
Do you need the tenant home, or can you work from the neighboring unit?
Either, as long as someone with authority lets us in. On the business park’s paired hose bibs we have done the work from the neighboring unit when the tenant was out, and added a valve so the neighbor got water back while we finished. Tell us who can open which door and we plan around it.
Can you bill each unit or building separately on one account?
Yes. Every work order is its own job and its own invoice, with the unit or building on it, under one account for the whole portfolio. The business park above has had its heaters, hose bibs, toilets and a building-wide valve replacement invoiced that way for a year, so the owner can see what each building has cost.
What do you do when a building has no cleanouts?
We find the line another way and make a cleanout where it should have been. At the apartment building in Everett we located the main by sending the camera down a roof vent, opened the wall where it ran and found a cast-iron cleanout hidden behind the drywall. Now the building has a known access point for the next backup.
Our Recommendation
Put the portfolio on one account before the emergency, not during it. Let us map the shutoffs and cleanouts building by building on the routine calls, so that when four bathrooms back up at once nobody is hunting for a valve. And when a sewer has breaks in it, fix the sewer: a jetter buys time, not a pipe.
One Plumber for the Whole Portfolio
If you manage buildings anywhere in Snohomish County, call the office and tell us how many doors you have and who authorizes work. We will set up the account and come out to the first one.
Call 425-374-3909 · Request a Quote
Related: commercial plumbing · commercial plumbing in Everett · commercial plumbing in Lynnwood · commercial plumbing in Mukilteo · water heaters · hydro jetting · water pressure and PRVs
Stollwerck Plumbing & Sewer · Mukilteo, WA · WA License #STOLLPL780CJ · Insured above state mandates · One-year guarantee