Home services in Drexel Hill
One number for plumbing, electrical, heating & cooling, roofing, handyman work and more in Drexel Hill.
Part of our Delaware County service area · median home here was built around 1949
What breaks in Drexel Hill
The age of the housing decides the work.
Drexel Hill sits on a Piedmont hillside over the mica schist that underlies this end of Delaware County, and the ground decides more here than the build year does. Groundwater moves downhill through soil until it reaches rock, then it stops at whatever wall is in the way. Add roof water off a stone twin and the house partway down a grade takes it while the one above stays dry. Above ground, just over half of Drexel Hill was built before 1950, so the pipe and the panel are usually as old as the wall they run through.
Half of it was up before 1950
Drexel Hill's median build year is 1949 and about 52 percent of the houses predate 1950. The earlier wave is the stone and brick twins that went up along the trolley, with deep porches and steep roof pitches. The rest filled in right after the war. That split is not cosmetic. It decides whether you have plaster or drywall, a service with spare capacity or none, and a private water line that is copper or one that is galvanized steel.
The new main stops at the curb
The pipe between the curb and your front wall is yours, and on this housing stock it is the piece nobody budgets for. Aqua has been renewing mains across Delaware County for years. Good work, and it does nothing for the pressure in a pre-1950 house, because the restriction is on the private side. If your street was dug up last summer and the shower upstairs is unchanged, that is why, and the answer is a new service line rather than another fixture.
Water arrives at the uphill wall
On a slope, the wall that gets wet is the one facing the high ground. Water in a Drexel Hill basement is almost never a creek. It is roof discharge and downhill groundwater. That matters because it puts the fixes in a cheap order. Downspout extensions first, then the grade at the foundation, and only after those two fail does anyone need to talk to you about drain tile and a sump. Skipping to the expensive one is common and usually wrong.
Panels built for a house that has been added to since
A Drexel Hill twin from the 1930s or 1940s was wired before central air, before a second bathroom and before a kitchen ran a range, a microwave and a dishwasher at once. What we find is rarely one bad circuit. It is a panel with no spare spaces, a finished basement that buried the junction boxes, and a third floor running off an extension of a first floor circuit that was never meant to carry it.
What we run in Drexel Hill
What actually gets called in the most here
Plumbing
Just over half of Drexel Hill predates 1950, which puts galvanized private service lines and cast iron waste stacks under most of these basements, and Aqua's main replacement work keeps exposing the difference between a renewed public main at the curb and the original pipe running from that curb into the house.
See plumbing →Electrical
Half of Drexel Hill was wired before 1950 and then finished, subdivided and added to for seventy years, so the calls here are panel capacity and junction boxes buried behind a finished basement ceiling rather than one dead outlet with an obvious cause.
See electrical →Basement Waterproofing
A hillside over schist with a full basement under nearly every house produces a specific kind of wet basement: roof discharge and downhill groundwater stopping at the uphill wall, which is correctable from the outside far more often than owners are told, and in an order that starts with a downspout rather than an excavator.
See basement waterproofing →On the ground in Drexel Hill
Drexel Hill holds about 29,000 people in roughly three square miles, which is close to a third of Upper Darby Township packed into its western end. It grew along the trolley. SEPTA's Route 101 still runs through it and still splits at Drexel Hill Junction, and the blocks nearest those stops carry the oldest and most detailed houses. Darby Creek forms the southwestern and southern edge, and Haverford Township is the northern border.
Drexel Hill is a place name, not a government. Permits, the use and occupancy certificate and the sewer lateral certification all belong to Upper Darby Township, and we keep that side of it on the Upper Darby page rather than repeating it here. This page is about the house and the ground under it, because that is what actually differs between one end of Drexel Hill and the other.
Drexel Hill questions
Straight answers for Drexel Hill.
Why does my basement take water when my neighbor's stays dry?
Usually because of where you sit on the slope. Drexel Hill is Piedmont hillside over schist bedrock, and groundwater moves downhill through the soil above that rock until something interrupts it. A house partway down a grade catches the flow on its uphill wall while the house above it stays dry. Roof water decides the rest. Two downspouts discharging at a stone foundation will fill a basement that grading alone would have handled.
Aqua replaced the water main on my street. Why is my pressure still bad?
Because the new main stops at the curb. Aqua Pennsylvania has been replacing aging cast iron mains across Delaware County, and that work renews the public side only. The service line from the curb into your house is yours, and in a house built before 1950 it is often galvanized steel that has rusted closed from the inside. The risers in the walls are the same pipe, so nothing upstairs changes.
Half of Drexel Hill was built before 1950. How do I tell which half my house is in?
Start with the roof pitch and the porch. The pre-1950 wave along the trolley lines is stone and brick twins with steep pitches, deep porches and plaster walls. The postwar fill-in is lower, plainer and usually drywall. Then check the basement, because threaded gray steel pipe and a cast iron waste stack point to the earlier group. Your deed and the county property record will confirm the year if the house has been altered enough to disguise it.
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