Know who owns the pipe under your property before it becomes your problem.

Which authority governs the sewer lateral and the water service line at one U.S. address, what they require when a property is sold, and who is responsible for which length of pipe — each answer quoted from the document it came from.

No account required · Official-source links · Coverage shown plainly · Not a physical inspection

What BelowGrid checks

Sewer lateral records
132 authorities answered · no per-address records yet
Local sale requirements
Compliance certificates
What each authority requires, not whether one exists for a property
Repairs and permits
111 permit rules · no per-address records yet
Assistance programmes
23 reviewed
Water service lines
88 authorities answered
Septic systems
Planned, not yet available
Heating-oil tanks
Planned, not yet available

How it works

1
Enter one address
No account, no sign-up. If more than one address matches, you choose which one.
2
BelowGrid resolves the authorities
Which city, county and sewer provider actually govern the property, matched by boundary rather than by postal city.
3
You see the evidence and the gaps
Every finding links to the official source it came from, and anything that could not be determined is stated plainly.

Answers no single authority publishes

Each authority describes only itself. These compare them, which is the part a homeowner cannot do from any single official page.

Who owns the pipe under the road
“Your sewer lateral is your responsibility” is the usual answer and it is wrong in some of these cities. Two authorities maintain the run to the sewer main — the expensive half.
Who helps pay for the repair
Grants, loans and rebates side by side — including which ones refuse anybody who is selling, which is the event most likely to have brought you here.
How neighbouring cities differ
A certificate issued under one city’s scheme is not the document the next city asks for, and the deadlines are not the same either.
Why your two pipes disagree
The sewer lateral and the water service line leave the same building and answer to different authorities — who usually contradict each other about the run beneath the road.
Which water systems know what is buried
Federal rules made every system inventory its service lines. Most of California’s cannot say what a given pipe is made of, and almost none of them dug to find out.

Places with an answer today

Each of these names the authority that governs the pipe, quotes what it requires, and says who is responsible for which length.

Sewer lateral responsibility in California

Why coverage matters more than a score

BelowGrid does not rate properties safe or unsafe. It reports what official sources record, and how much of the picture those sources actually cover.

An address with little published data is not a property with no problems. It is a property nobody has published data about. Those are different things, and conflating them is the mistake this product exists to avoid.

Where the information comes from

Cities, counties, sanitary districts and utilities publish permits, inspections and compliance records. BelowGrid normalizes them so one address returns one answer, and links every finding back to the authority that issued it.

A source is used only once its licensing has been reviewed and confirmed reusable. Sources that are not are linked, never copied.