Fontana's housing history is unusual and it shows below grade. The city began as an agricultural colony in the 1910s, then expanded enormously during and after the Second World War around the steel mill that dominated the local economy from 1942 onward. That wartime and immediate postwar housing is the city's oldest substantial stock, which places a great many laterals in the mid-century vitrified clay era, with Orangeburg fibre conduit appearing in construction from the late 1940s through the 1960s.
Clay in this ground follows the Inland Empire pattern. The soils here are expansive, with a real shrink and swell capacity, and the inland climate works them hard: a long rainless summer that dries and contracts the clay away from the pipe, then winter storms that saturate it within days and swell it back. A jointed rigid pipe absorbs that at the bells, and after seventy or eighty years the bells are no longer tight. That is where roots enter.
The water here is hard, drawn from mineral-rich local groundwater and imported supply, so what cast iron exists in the older colony-era properties scales steadily and needs mechanical descaling rather than jetting.
Fontana now carries one of the heaviest commercial sewer loads in the region because of the warehouse and logistics development that has filled the city's industrial corridors. Those are large-diameter lines on big sites, frequently with private internal sewer networks nobody has an accurate drawing of, and mapping them with a camera and locator is often the most useful thing we do on a first commercial visit.
Around Fontana
We regularly work near:
- 📍Fontana Park
- 📍Martin Tudor Jurupa Hills Regional Park
- 📍Center Stage Theater
- 📍Jack Bulik Park
Main Sewer Line Cleaning in Fontana — Local Notes
- •Wartime and postwar expansion around the steel industry gives a large stock of mid-century clay laterals
- •Orangeburg fibre conduit appears in construction from the late 1940s through the 1960s
- •Expansive Inland Empire clay with a severe annual shrink-swell cycle works clay bell joints apart
- •Hard local groundwater and imported supply scale the older colony-era cast iron steadily
- •Extensive warehouse and logistics development means large private site sewer networks that are often unmapped