Plumber in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI

Plumbing work in Grosse Pointe Woods starts with the sewer under the street. The Woods runs a combined system, so rain and household sewage share one pipe on the way to the Milk River retention basins built underground in the city. When that pipe fills during a big storm, the lowest drain in your basement becomes the overflow. The median home here dates to 1953, more than six in ten went up in the 1940s and 1950s, nine in ten are owner-occupied, and nearly all are single-family houses, many with basements finished long after the builder left. We come over from our Warren office on Stephens Rd for backups, water heaters and the older pipe behind them.

What June 2021 taught Woods basements about the combined sewer

On June 25, 2021, about 5.3 inches of rain fell in three hours. At a town hall that July, the city engineer told residents that, as in 2014, systems can get overwhelmed, and a city official agreed the system wasn't designed for a storm that size. So many basement water heaters were ruined that the council talked about waiving permit fees for replacements. The city later reported that the Torrey Road pump station and the Milk River basin both ran without trouble. In other words, the regional plant held, and basements flooded anyway.

The city engineer's own advice was that footing drains add measurable flow when it rains and downspouts must be disconnected. Beyond that, the main tool is a backwater valve on the building drain, which closes when the street sewer pushes back. Our post on what causes basement backups in storms walks through the other ways water gets in.

Service lines of unknown material in 1940s and 1950s houses

The Great Lakes Water Authority treats the city's water, drawn from the Detroit River. The city's 2023 report counted 6,870 service lines: 42 lead, 30 galvanized lines once connected to lead, 57 confirmed non-lead and 6,741 of unknown material. Michigan rules call for lead and galvanized lines to be replaced by the end of 2041. For health questions, start with the city's water department and the state's lead resources.

On a visit we can look at the pipe where it enters the basement and tell you whether it looks like copper, galvanized steel or lead. Many colonials here have been partly repiped, so the answer can change room to room.

Reaching the Woods from Stephens Road and Hoover

The Woods sits at the southeast edge of the area we cover from Stephens Rd, so we plan visits there in batches and tell you on the call where yours falls. On a backup call, the first things we check are the floor drain, the main cleanout and whether the water heater and furnace took on water. On a no-hot-water call we start at the tank, its chimney vent and the gas shutoff. If the work needs a permit, we tell you before we start, and the city Building Department handles it.

The Woods is the only Grosse Pointe without shoreline, so its lake park sits up the shore in St. Clair Shores. Basement water here comes from the sewer and the sky, not from rising lake levels, and the fixes are valves, sound laterals and disconnected downspouts. The basins themselves date to 1958, and Macomb County Public Works announced $45 million in upgrades in February 2023, aimed at fewer overflows to Lake St. Clair and roughly halving discharge concentrations.

See every city we serve around Warren · More Wayne County cities · What causes basement backups during big storms · Floor drain plug or backwater valve for sewer backups

Last updated October 25, 2026