In the spring of 1848, Aaron Farr and William Walker built the first houses near what’s now the corner of Kentucky Avenue and Holladay Boulevard, drawn by a spring-fed stream the earliest settlers called Spring Creek. Holladay is one of the oldest settled communities in the Salt Lake Valley, and that history is still visible in the housing stock today — the median Holladay home was built around 1969, and the neighborhoods around the old Cottonwood area and the Holladay Village Plaza/Highland Drive corridor include homes considerably older than that citywide average.
Age is a badge of pride for a lot of Holladay homeowners. It’s also, plumbing-wise, the reason we get called out here more than in newer parts of the valley.
The Local Problem
Homes built before 1970 in Holladay were typically plumbed with cast iron drain lines and clay sewer laterals — both standard materials for the era, and both well past the point where problems start to compound. Cast iron corrodes from the inside out, and by the 50-to-70-year mark, a pipe that once had a clean 4-inch bore can be down to a fraction of that from decades of rust buildup. Clay pipe, meanwhile, is jointed rather than continuous, and those joints separate slightly as the ground settles over the decades — exactly the kind of gap a tree root looks for. Holladay’s older residential blocks, many shaded by mature trees planted generations ago, see more root-related sewer backups than newer subdivisions simply because there’s been more time for roots to find their way in.
Layer the Wasatch Front’s hard water on top of aging pipe and you get a slow, cumulative effect: mineral scale builds up along the inside of the pipe wall year after year, narrowing the channel further and giving grease and debris somewhere to catch. For a lot of Holladay homeowners, that shows up first as a kitchen sink or tub that drains a little slower every month, until one day it doesn’t drain at all.
How Action Plumbing Handles Older Holladay Homes
We don’t treat a 1955 cast iron line the same way we’d treat a line installed last decade. For an isolated clog, cabling clears it quickly and without unnecessary disruption. For the recurring backups and root intrusion that show up more often in Holladay’s oldest neighborhoods, we use hydro-jetting to clean the full interior of the pipe rather than just clearing a path through it — and on any older line where the history is unclear, we run a camera inspection first so you know exactly what you’re dealing with before committing to a repair versus a cleaning.
Why Holladay Homeowners Choose Us
Action Plumbing is licensed and insured, on call 24/7 for the backups that never seem to happen during business hours, and we’ve earned 6,054 Google reviews from Salt Lake Valley homeowners — a lot of them living in the same kind of pre-1970 housing you’ll find around Cottonwood and the Holladay Village area. We understand that an older home’s plumbing history is part of its story, and our goal is to keep it running, not to push you into replacing more than you need.
If your drains have been running slow, a quick inspection now is a lot easier to schedule than an emergency call later.
FAQ
Q: My house near Cottonwood is one of the older ones in Holladay — how do I know if it’s cast iron or clay?
A: If it was built before the early 1970s, cast iron drain lines and clay sewer laterals are the most likely materials. We can confirm with a camera inspection, which also shows us exactly where any corrosion, scale, or root intrusion is occurring.
Q: Are backups more common in Holladay than in newer parts of the valley?
A: We do see more root intrusion and pipe-scale issues in Holladay’s older sections, mainly because of the combination of mature trees and clay/cast iron pipe that’s been in the ground for 50+ years. It’s a function of age, not anything unusual about the area.
Q: Can a clog always be cleared, or does an old clay sewer line eventually need to be replaced?
A: Cleaning solves most clogs, even in older pipe. Replacement becomes the better option when a camera inspection shows structural damage — cracked pipe, collapsed sections, or joints that have separated too far to just clean around. We’ll always show you what the camera sees before recommending which path makes sense.
Q: Do you service the area around Holladay Village Plaza and Highland Drive?
A: Yes, our SLC-based teams cover all of Holladay, from the Highland Drive corridor to the Cottonwood-area neighborhoods.