Phoenix, Arizona — a new city built on an ancient one’s canals
Phoenix is the capital of Arizona and, with about 1.6 million residents, the fifth-largest city in the United States — and the most populous state capital in the country. It sits at about 1,086 feet in the Salt River Valley, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert, and it is famously hot. But the most remarkable thing about Phoenix is what lies underneath it: the modern city was quite literally built on the canal system of the Hohokam, who farmed this valley for centuries before they disappeared. This page is our guide to the city itself — how it started, what it's like to live here, and what Phoenix's heat, water, and housing eras do to the plumbing inside its homes. City Plumbing and Rooter AZ LLC serves Phoenix from our San Tan Valley service area, 24/7.
A short history of Phoenix
Long before Phoenix had a name, the Hohokam built one of the most extensive irrigation networks in the ancient Americas here. Over centuries they dug roughly 135 miles of canals around what is now Phoenix, watering farms across the valley floor — and parts of today's SRP canal system still follow the routes the Hohokam dug. By about 1450 the Hohokam were gone; drought and severe floods are the usual suspects.
In 1867, Jack Swilling — a former Confederate soldier prospecting out of Wickenburg — rode through the valley, saw the eroded mounds of the old canal system, and saw opportunity. He organized the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company, led a crew of miners back that December to clear and extend the canals, and by the following spring the new settlement was harvesting crops. The town was officially recognized on May 4, 1868. As the story is usually told, settler Darrell Duppa suggested the name "Phoenix" — a new city rising from the ruins of an older one. Phoenix incorporated on February 25, 1881, with about 2,500 residents, became the territorial capital in 1889, and kept the title when Arizona became a state in 1912. The copper-domed Capitol building downtown was dedicated in 1901, back when Arizona was still a territory.
The modern boom came after World War II, when air conditioning made desert summers survivable and the Valley filled in around the old core: John F. Long's Maryvale, on the west side, put up more than 31,000 homes between 1954 and 1979 as the Valley's first master-planned community. The growth never really stopped. In the 2020 Census, Phoenix counted 1,608,139 people — passing Philadelphia to become the fifth-largest city in America.
Living in Phoenix today
Phoenix is the hottest major city in the United States. July afternoons average about 106.5 degrees, and in 2023 the city strung together 31 straight days at or above 110 degrees. Annual rainfall totals only about 7.2 inches, much of it arriving in summer monsoon bursts. The mountains frame daily life anyway: Camelback Mountain's 2,704-foot summit rising between Phoenix and Paradise Valley, the 16,000-plus acres of desert trails in South Mountain Park at the city's south edge — one of the largest municipal parks in the country — and Papago Park's red sandstone buttes, where the Hohokam marked the solstices through the opening in the Hole-in-the-Rock. The Desert Botanical Garden (founded 1939) and the Heard Museum (founded 1929) anchor the cultural side, the Diamondbacks play under a retractable roof at Chase Field, and Arizona State University's Downtown Phoenix campus has been pulling students into the core since 2006.
Neighborhoods here carry their eras openly. Encanto-Palmcroft and Willo, near downtown, are 1920s and '30s revival-style and bungalow districts. Arcadia, on the city's east side, was citrus groves until the 1950s and is now known for its ranch homes on large, irrigated lots. Maryvale anchors the west side with its 1950s master plan, Ahwatukee grew up from the 1970s in the foothills behind South Mountain, and Roosevelt Row turned a once-quiet downtown stretch into the city's arts district. Every one of those eras left its own plumbing behind.
What Phoenix does to your plumbing
The heat is a year-round stress test. Phoenix plumbing lives in the hottest big-city environment in America. Water heaters sit in garages that stay brutally hot for months, attic runs bake all summer, and exposed outdoor lines take sun that never really quits. Heat doesn't cause every failure — but it shortens the working life of everything it touches, and a marginal pipe or fitting usually gives up in the summer, not the mild winter.
The water is hard — and it changes by neighborhood. The City of Phoenix's own water quality report lists total hardness anywhere from 172 to 302 parts per million, depending on which water source serves your home: about 60 percent of the city's supply comes from the Salt and Verde Rivers through SRP, about 40 percent is Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project, and a small share is groundwater. Where your home sits in that blend decides how fast scale builds up inside your water heater and fixtures — but everywhere in Phoenix, it builds.
Every era left its pipes. Homes from the 1940s and early 1950s were commonly plumbed with galvanized steel supply lines and cast-iron drains, and both corrode from the inside as they age — fading pressure, discolored water, slow drains, pinhole leaks. Some Valley homes built from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s were plumbed with polybutylene, a plastic supply pipe with a well-earned reputation for leaks and sudden failures that is no longer installed. In Phoenix, knowing what your house is plumbed with is step one.
Mature trees and monsoon storms finish the list. In the older neighborhoods with big shade trees — Arcadia, the historic districts — roots find their way into aging sewer joints and cause repeat backups that a simple clearing won't fix. And when a monsoon storm drops a month's worth of rain in an afternoon, every weak drain on the property gets tested at once. A camera inspection settles the argument about what's actually happening underground before anyone digs.
Plumbing services in Phoenix
City Plumbing and Rooter AZ LLC serves Phoenix from our San Tan Valley service area, and we're in town every day. The services Phoenix homeowners call us for most:
- Drain cleaning and hydro jetting for slow and repeating clogs
- Leak detection and slab leak detection when water shows up where it shouldn't
- Water heaters — repair, replacement, tankless, and the flushing Phoenix's water makes necessary
- Sewer camera inspection and sewer line repair and replacement
- Water line repair and replacement
- Emergency plumbing, 24/7
For service options, pricing conversations, and booking, see our main Phoenix plumbing page — and our San Tan Valley page covers the service area we run out of.
Call your local Phoenix plumber
1920s bungalow or brand-new build, downtown or Ahwatukee — if it's leaking, clogged, or running cold, we'll explain what we find and what your options are before any work starts. City Plumbing and Rooter AZ LLC, AZ ROC #362148, open 24/7. Call 928-361-9755.