Bellingham
The pre war neighbourhoods through Columbia, York and Sehome sit on original clay and cast iron laterals, running downhill under bigleaf maples that have been there longer than the pipe. Different work again out at Barkley and Cordata.
One county
One county, four kinds of ground
Whatcom County is small enough to drive across in an hour and varied enough that the same blocked drain has four different explanations depending on where you are standing.
In older Bellingham you are usually dealing with a long lateral running downhill under mature street trees, and the pipe it runs through was laid before anyone had heard of PVC. Out on the Lynden and Ferndale acreage the ground is flat, the runs are long, and there is almost no fall to help the line clear itself. Along the shoreline at Birch Bay and Blaine the lines were laid shallow and the water table sits high. Up at Sumas and Everson the ground has been under water inside living memory, and some lines are still carrying what the flood put in them.
None of that changes the tools. It changes what we expect to find, and how much we trust a clear line to stay clear.
Eight places
Cities and communities we cover
Ferndale
City sewer through the older core off Main and Vista, and septic on the acreage beyond it. The Nooksack floodplain edges keep the groundwater high, which finds any joint that has opened.
Lynden
A compact city core, then dairy and berry ground in every direction. Long rural runs, buried cleanouts, and ground so flat that a partial blockage shows up as a slow drain months before it stops.
Blaine
Downtown on city sewer, Semiahmoo and Birch Point on septic, and a lot of second homes whose lines sit unused for months and then take a full house at once.
Birch Bay
Older cabins and manufactured homes along Birch Bay Drive and through Cottonwood, newer builds in Birch Bay Village. Shallow lines and a water table that sits close to the surface all winter.
Everson
Everson and Nooksack, on a mix of city sewer and rural septic, on ground the river has been over. Silt that entered a line in 2021 is often still sitting in it.
Sumas
Flat ground on the border with one of the highest water tables in the county, shallow bury depth, and constant groundwater pressure on every joint in the system.
Point Roberts
An exclave with no municipal sewer and no road in except through two border crossings. Every property is on septic, and getting a machine onto the point has to be planned rather than squeezed in.
Everywhere else
Not on the list?
Deming, Maple Falls, Custer, Acme, Van Zandt and the rest of the county are all inside what we cover. So is the Mount Baker Highway corridor. Call and say where you are, and we will tell you straight away whether we can get there and when.
Tell us the symptoms