Plumber in Los Lunas, NM

Where village water comes from, and what it leaves in your water heater

The Village of Los Lunas runs its own water and sewer utility. The water is groundwater. Four wells inside the village pull it from the aquifer under the Albuquerque Basin. The utility serves over 6,000 residential and commercial customers.

On the waste side the village runs two treatment plants and 23 lift stations. One is the original activated sludge plant. The other is a newer membrane bioreactor plant. The treated water goes to the Rio Grande.

Groundwater carries dissolved minerals, and minerals settle in the bottom of a water heater. Sediment makes a tank pop and rumble and shortens its life. A yearly flush is the simplest thing you can do for a tank heater. A descale does the same for a tankless one, and both are routine water heater repair work.

What if there is no sewer main in your street?

Village water and sewer stop at the edge of the service area. Meadow Lake, El Cerro Mission, Los Chaves and Tome sit outside it. Where there is no sewer main in the street, the house treats its waste on the lot.

The New Mexico Environment Department issues that permit. Valencia County has no onsite wastewater ordinance of its own, so the file goes to NMED. The department reviews the application, looks at the site, and inspects the system before it gets covered.

A conventional system needs a lot of at least three quarters of an acre. A disposal field has to sit 100 feet back from a private drinking water well. NMED also wants 4 feet between the bottom of the field and the seasonal high water table. A test hole shows what is down there, and this close to the river that matters.

The houses in Los Lunas and what they end up needing

Los Lunas has grown fast. The Census counted 14,835 people here in 2010 and 17,242 in 2020. Housing units went from 5,916 to 6,705 over those ten years. The median home in the village was built in 1997.

About 3,000 of the village's 7,100 homes went up in 2000 or later. Another 1,666 date to the 1990s. A tank water heater does not last that long, so those houses are on their second or third one. Shower valves, angle stops and toilet parts come due around the same time.

About 8 in 10 homes here heat with piped natural gas, by Census figures. That puts gas ranges, gas water heaters, gas dryers and gas fireplaces all over the village. New lines, extensions, leak repairs and pressure tests are all gas line work we take on. If you smell gas, leave the building and call the gas utility first, then call us for the repair.

Altitude matters with any gas appliance. Main Street sits about 4,850 feet above sea level. The west side of the village climbs toward 5,400 feet near I-25. Gas input ratings are written for sea level up to 2,000 feet. Above that the unit is set up to the manufacturer's high altitude instructions.

Manufactured homes, rentals and small commercial buildings

Manufactured housing is a big piece of this market. Census figures count about 1,350 mobile homes among roughly 1,600 housing units in Meadow Lake. El Cerro Mission counts about 900 and Los Chaves about 880. The village itself has about 835.

A manufactured home plumbs differently from a stick built house. Supply lines and drains run under the floor inside the skirting, where they freeze first. Crossover lines between the sections split in a hard freeze. We work on manufactured and mobile homes, and we know where to look.

The village also has about 1,750 renter occupied homes. We work with the landlords and property managers who hold them. We also work with the offices, shops and restaurants in the village and its business parks. For those accounts we set up preventative maintenance plans. Drains and water heaters get looked at before a tenant calls at midnight.