Teele Square drain cleaning for Clarendon Hill homesTeele Square

Teele Square takes its name from Jonathan W. Teele and sits where Broadway, Holland Street and Curtis Street meet on Clarendon Hill ^[1]. Clarendon is one of the seven hills in Somerville's traditional list, all of them drumlins shaped by glaciers ^[2]. The square has a short row of shops and restaurants; the streets around it are almost entirely residential.

The typical house here is a two-family: two stacked flats, often with a front porch on each level, set on a narrow lot close to its neighbors. Single-family houses and some triple-deckers are mixed in, as they are across West Somerville. Like most of the city, the area filled in during the building booms that ran up to the 1940s ^[2].

A two-family is plumbed more simply than a triple-decker, but the principle is the same. The upstairs kitchen and bathroom drain down through the first floor, usually through a stack in an interior wall or a back corner, and the downstairs fixtures join that stack or the building drain in the basement. One drain then carries both households' wastewater out through the foundation.

Many of these houses are owner-occupied on one floor with a tenant on the other, which makes drain trouble a shared concern between neighbors who live one floor apart. Where the owner lives in the building, slow drains tend to be noticed and reported early, which is a real advantage.

Teele Square is close to the borders of Cambridge, Arlington and Medford ^[1]. Alewife Brook Parkway, Route 16, is about half a mile away ^[1]. A homeowner a few blocks from the square may live in Somerville, while a friend around the corner pays taxes to Arlington or Cambridge.

That matters for drain work in two ways. First, plumbing permits in Massachusetts are issued by the local inspector of the city or town where the property is ^[4]. A house with a Somerville address goes through Somerville Inspectional Services; one with an Arlington, Cambridge or Medford address goes through that municipality's own inspector. The work and the state code are the same, but the office is not.

Second, the public sewer serving your street belongs to the municipality you are in. If a contractor finds your line clear and suspects a problem in the street, the right place to report it depends on your address. In Somerville, the Water and Sewer Department handles city sewers and problems are reported through 311.

If you are not sure which city you are in, your property tax bill or water bill will tell you. It is worth knowing before a repair, not after.

In a two-family, the first question is always whose drain is it. If the upstairs kitchen sink is slow but the downstairs kitchen is fine, the trouble is almost certainly in the upstairs branch or trap. If the downstairs toilet bubbles when the upstairs tub drains, or the basement floor drain fills when either unit does laundry, the blockage is in the shared stack or building drain.

Clogs in a single fixture can often be cleared at the fixture, sometimes by removing the trap or using a small hand cable ^[3]. Shared-line clogs need a machine run from the basement cleanout, which reaches the length of the building drain and out toward the street. For details on the first case, see kitchen drain cleaning; for the second, clogged drain repair.

Communication between the two units helps more than anything. Agree on who calls, tell each other when a drain is slow, and keep the basement cleanout accessible. When the owner lives in one of the units, they are usually the person who arranges the visit.

Somerville has a permitted combined sewer overflow outfall to Alewife Brook, the stream near the city's northwest corner ^[6]. Most of the time the city's combined sewage flows on to the regional treatment plant, but in very heavy storms some can overflow, and the city's long-term plan aims to eliminate overflows in a typical year by 2050 ^[6].

For a Teele Square household this is mostly background. It explains why storms sometimes make basement drains slower or noisier, and why the city encourages residents to keep storm water out of sanitary pipes. If your basement drain misbehaves only in heavy rain, mention it on the call; it changes what the contractor will look for.

Broadway through Teele Square is a busy road with bus traffic and limited stopping space, while the side streets are narrow and mostly resident permit parking. If you have a driveway, keep it clear; otherwise tell the contractor on the call where a van could stop.

Two-family basements are often divided between the units, with separate storage and a shared laundry area. Make sure the person who has the key to the basement door will be home, clear access to the cleanout and laundry, and ask the other household to pause water use while the line is being worked on.

Many two-families in this part of Somerville have been converted into two condominiums, each with its own owner. That changes who is responsible for what. The units are separate, but the stack and the building drain that serve both are usually shared under the condo documents, so a backup in the basement is a matter for both owners or their association to sort out together.

Conversions and later renovations often add bathrooms. A second bath tucked under the eaves of the upper unit, or a full bath in a finished basement for the lower unit, means more water through a drain that was originally laid out for two kitchens and two bathrooms. A basement bathroom below the level of the building drain may need a pump, and that pump needs its own care.

If you are buying into a Teele Square two-family, it is worth asking whether the shared drain has ever been inspected and what the association does about it. A camera recording of the line is a simple thing to keep on file and can settle questions later about where a problem started.

For owners planning a renovation, think about access too. Adding a cleanout in a convenient spot in the basement while the work is underway makes every future clearing easier, and it is the kind of change a licensed plumber can make under a Somerville permit.

Most shared-line clogs in two-families come from the kitchen and the laundry. Wipe greasy pans with a paper towel before washing them, run hot water after the dishwasher, and fit a lint trap on the washer's discharge hose if it drains into a laundry sink. These habits are easy and keep the line clear longer. When a sink does start to slow, it is better to deal with it early; the page on preventative drain maintenance explains what scheduled cleaning involves for a small multi-family.