Plumber in Hazel Park, MI

Hazel Park plumbing trouble often starts behind the house. In parts of the city the sanitary sewer runs in the rear area of the homes, not under the street, and in 2023 the city began a pilot program to inspect those pipes for damage. The houses themselves are older than most of their Oakland County neighbors to the north. The median home was built in 1955, one in five predates 1940, and nearly nine in ten are detached single-family houses, mostly postwar Cape Cods, bungalows and ranches between 8 Mile and 10 Mile. Water comes from the Great Lakes Water Authority. Sewage goes into the George W. Kuhn system, where many of the pipes carry rain and sewage together.

Rear-yard sewers under 1940s Cape Cods and bungalows

Hazel Park grew up fast around jobs at Ford in Highland Park and became a city in 1941. Census figures show about two-thirds of today’s homes went up before 1960: 20 percent before 1940, 14 percent in the 1940s and 31 percent in the 1950s. That stock is mostly Cape Cod bungalows, Michigan bungalows and ranch houses, and two-thirds of them are owner-occupied.

What that means inside, as a matter of trade experience rather than city records: cast iron stacks with packed lead joints, clay tile laterals, and galvanized supply pipe in the oldest houses, often patched with copper over the years. Where the city sewer runs behind the house, the lateral leaves through the back wall, so the cleanout, the tree roots and any broken clay joint are in the backyard rather than the front lawn. The city’s 2023 pilot started with about 150 homes west of I-75 between Woodward Heights and 10 Mile, and crews were looking for deficiencies and damaged pipes. That is the public side. The lateral from your foundation to that pipe is a separate question, and our post on cast iron drain pipe problems covers what the inside half usually looks like.

From 9 Mile and Dequindre to a Hazel Park basement

Hazel Park’s east edge is Dequindre Road, the line between Oakland and Macomb, so the city starts right where Warren ends. From our office we take Hoover down to 9 Mile and head west across Dequindre, or use I-696 for addresses near the north end. We schedule Hazel Park calls with our other west-side Warren work and tell you on the phone where your visit falls.

On a sewer call, the first question is which way your drain leaves the house. We find the cleanout, front or back, run a cable and then a camera to see the clay joints and whether roots are getting in. If the main behind your house is part of a city inspection section, we tell you what we see on your side and leave the public pipe to the Water Department. On a water heater or water pressure call, we look at the supply pipe first, because a 1940s house with galvanized lines will have weak flow at the fixtures no matter how good the new heater is.

That interchange is the reason the August 2014 storm is still remembered here. On the night of August 11, at least seven vehicles went under on I-75 in Hazel Park, with close to 15 feet of water at one point, and basements across southeast Oakland filled with sewage-laced water. A storm like that overwhelms any sewer. What a homeowner controls is the house end: a clean lateral, a working backwater valve where the pipe can take one, and nothing stored on the floor near the drain.

See every city we serve around Warren · More Oakland County cities · What to do after sewage backs up into your basement · Cast iron drain pipes and the signs they're failing

Last updated October 25, 2026