Plumbing Service Areas Around Bandera, TX

Our service area at a glance

Drive times are rough estimates from Bandera before gates, gravel and crossings, not arrival promises.

Bandera itself: city lines inside the limits, wells and septic outside

The City of Bandera supplies water and sewer only inside the city limits and part of its extraterritorial jurisdiction. If your house is in town, the plumber deals with a meter, a curb stop and a city sewer tap. Step outside that line and the picture changes: most homes in the county pull water from a private well in the Trinity Aquifer and send waste to a septic system on the lot. That matters on the phone. A no-water call in town is a different job from a no-water call on a well, and a slow drain on septic gets cleared differently from one on city sewer. Our page on septic and well plumbing around Bandera explains where the plumber's work ends and the septic provider's or pump installer's begins.

Who supplies your water, and who to call

Bandera County has no single water utility, and that decides who you call when something leaks:

• City of Bandera: water and sewer inside the city limits and part of its ETJ. A leak at the meter or in the street is the city's; anything on the house side of the meter is a plumbing job.
• Medina Water Supply Corporation: a member-owned system serving the town of Medina. Same split: the meter and mains are theirs, the house side is the plumber's.
• Bandera County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1: supplies part of Lakehills. Again, meter-side problems go to the district.
• A private well: everyone else, which is most of the county. Every well is registered with the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District, and everything from the wellhead to the faucets is the owner's. The plumber handles the tank, switch and lines; a TDLR-licensed installer handles the pump down the well.

Outside the City of Bandera there is no public sewer, so nearly every home in the county has a septic system, many of them aerobic units with spray heads.

Bandera Falls, Tarpley, Lake Medina Shores and the ranch roads

Some communities are too small to carry a page of their own, but we cover them all the same.

• Bandera Falls sits on the Medina River just above Medina Lake, about 5 miles southwest of Pipe Creek, and is handled from the Pipe Creek page.
• Tarpley lies about 12 miles west and southwest of Bandera where FM 462 meets FM 470. Ranch homes there run on wells and septic.
• Lake Medina Shores is its own community on Medina Lake, with zip code 78003 and part of it in Medina County. It is covered from the Lakehills page.

Between them run the ranch roads: SH 16 through Bandera from Pipe Creek to Medina, SH 173 toward Hondo and Kerrville, FM 3240 north of town, FM 470 out to Tarpley, RM 337 west from Medina, and Park Road 37 through Lakehills. If you live off any of them, you are in our area. Freeze breaks on these properties tend to hit well houses and lines under raised floors first, and that is where most burst and frozen pipe repair calls start in a hard winter.

What to tell the dispatcher on a rural call

A plumber can only fix what they can find. Before you hang up, make sure the dispatcher has:

• Your road and a landmark. Rural addresses are hard to find, and GPS often drops the pin in a pasture. "Second cattle guard past the church" helps.
• Gate codes and gate type. A locked ranch gate at midnight can cost more time than the drive.
• Low-water crossings. Tell us if your route crosses a creek or the river, and whether it is running.
• Well or city water, septic or sewer. It decides what the plumber checks first and what parts come on the truck.
• Where the shutoff is. On a well, that is usually the pump breaker. Shut it off if water is running.

The edges of our area

Our pages cover the Bandera County communities a plumber based in Bandera reaches without crossing half the Hill Country. Farther out, toward Mico, Vanderpool, Utopia, Kerrville, Boerne or Hondo, call (858) 363-8298 and ask before you count on us. We will tell you plainly whether we can get a plumber to you and roughly how long it would take, rather than take the call and leave you waiting.

If the trouble is a backup rather than a leak, read about septic-safe drain cleaning before you pour anything down the line. Every plumber we send is licensed and insured in Texas, and you get a price before work starts.