Plumbers in Malden, MA

Pre-war two-families and small apartment houses

The census median year built for Malden is 1950, but that hides how much is older: 12,572 of 27,876 housing units, about 45%, predate 1940. Two-families hold roughly 21.5% of the city's units and three- or four-unit buildings another 12%, while single-family detached homes are only about 24%. At the other end of the scale, around 17% of units are in buildings with 50 or more apartments.

Some neighborhoods have deep roots. Maplewood started in 1847 as a residential development laid out by Joshua Webster, with wide streets and ornamental trees, and in Edgeworth, at the bottom of Pearl Street, the Converse Rubber factory once turned out the original All-Star sneaker.

Where two or three households hang off a single water service and a single sewer pipe to the street, a failure in either lands on everyone. A blockage in the common main drain tends to show up first at the basement floor drain or in the lowest apartment, and a dripping waste pipe upstairs announces itself as a stain on the ceiling below. Owners of a two-family or small condo should settle who pays before work on shared pipes begins, and tenants should go through the landlord.

Lead service lines: Malden's replacement push

Lead in drinking water is a live issue in Malden. A city drinking water notice dated October 7, 2025 reported a 90th-percentile lead level of 17.9 parts per billion, above the 15 ppb action level, and said three of the 20 higher-risk homes sampled had elevated lead. That followed a December 2024 update in which the city said more than 10% of its tap samples that year were over 15 ppb.

Replacement has been going on for years. In 2017 the Engineering Department committed to replacing 150 lead services a year; the October 2025 notice says Malden has averaged about 290 a year over the past five years and aims to remove all remaining lead lines within ten years. The service line inventory was completed in October 2024, but some lines were still of unknown material, and the city planned door-to-door inspections to classify them. In September 2024 EPA named Malden one of six Massachusetts cities in its Get the Lead Out technical-assistance partnership.

To check your address, use the city's online inventory map or book an inspection with the Engineering Department, 215 Pleasant Street, Room 320 (781-397-7040, [email protected]). If the line into your house turns out to be lead, the guide to lead pipes covers how private-side replacement typically goes.

Buried brooks and flooding on the east side

Several of Malden's streams were put underground so the city could build over them. Spot Pond Brook runs in a culvert beneath Coytmore Lea and much of Malden Center. The Linden Brook culvert runs from near Beach and Salem Streets across the Revere line, with much of the Linden neighborhood built on top of it. The Townline Brook culvert crosses the Malden, Revere and Everett borders, and the city has set aside ARPA stormwater money to clean it out. On the west side, the Malden River drains the city and forms its edge along Bellrock.

The city says residents, particularly in eastern Malden, have been seeing increasingly frequent flooding. If your basement gets wet in heavy rain, a plumber can work out whether the water is backing up through the floor drain from the sewer or seeping in from outside, and recommend a backwater valve or sump pump to suit. Check with the Department of Water Utilities before tying any pump discharge into a drain.