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Press and Data

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DrainDispatch is a referral service, not a plumbing contractor. We connect homeowners with independent, licensed plumbing contractors through our partner network. We do not perform plumbing work, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call. Calls are routed on partner coverage and bids, not on a quality ranking.

This page is for journalists and editors. It has the finding, the method, the limitations, the licence, and a straight answer about who publishes this site.

The dataset

The DrainDispatch Drain Risk Index scores 37 US states 0–100 on environmental pressure against residential drain and sewer lines. It combines three published, independently sourced figures that all vary enormously by state: frost-line depth, which drives the seasonal joint movement that lets tree roots into a lateral; municipal water hardness, which drives the scale that narrows a pipe over decades; and US Census median year structure built, which is the best available proxy for what the buried pipe is actually made of.

The third factor is what makes it interesting. Iowa ranks second on the oldest housing stock in the dataset — a median build year of 1950 — despite unremarkable water. Arizona and Texas fall despite genuinely hard water, because most of their housing is new enough to sit on plastic pipe that does not care. Hard water attacking a PVC lateral laid in 1998 is a much smaller problem than soft water around jointed clay laid in 1935.

Highest environmental pressure

  1. Minnesota — composite 67 (frost 80″, hardness 150-300 ppm, median year built 1988)
  2. Iowa — composite 66 (frost 58″, hardness 80-180 ppm, median year built 1950)
  3. Indiana — composite 64 (frost 36″, hardness 150-350 ppm, median year built 1966)
  4. New York — composite 49 (frost 50″, hardness 30-120 ppm, median year built 1963)
  5. Utah — composite 48 (frost 30″, hardness 200-350+ ppm, median year built 1996)

Lowest

Method, in four sentences

  1. Frost depth is the published state frost-line figure in inches, normalised linearly from 0″ (score 0) to 80″ (score 100).
  2. Water hardness is the midpoint of the published state hardness range in ppm, normalised linearly from 20 ppm to 275 ppm.
  3. Housing age is the median across the towns we cover of the US Census median year structure built (ACS 5-year 2023, table B25035), normalised so 1940 scores 100 and 2000 scores 0.
  4. The composite is an unweighted mean of the three sub-scores — equal weighting because we have no defensible basis for preferring one, and we would rather say so than invent a weighting that looks more scientific than it is.
  5. States missing any of the three are excluded rather than estimated.
Limitations, stated plainly, because you will be asked. It does not include tree canopy or storm intensity, both of which matter. The housing-age component is a median of medians — the Census median year built for each town we cover, then the median across the state — and a handful of states have fewer than twenty towns with that data, which the index marks. It is built from state-level figures, so it describes environments rather than streets, and it predicts nothing about any individual property. If you need a caveat line for your piece, use that one.

Licence — you may republish this

The index is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may republish, chart, adapt and build on it, including commercially, with attribution. The licence requires attribution, not a link, though a link to https://draindispatch.com/drain-risk-index/ is appreciated.

Download: drain-risk-index-v1.csv — rank, state, composite, frost depth, water hardness, median year built and all three sub-scores. Every state also has its own page showing the numbers behind its ranking, which makes single-state stories straightforward.

Who publishes this, in plain terms

DrainDispatch is a referral service, not a plumbing contractor. We publish drain and sewer information and route homeowner phone calls to independent licensed contractors. Contractors pay to receive calls; homeowners are never charged. We own no trucks, employ no plumbers and hold no plumbing licence.

The index contains no commercial data. It uses published frost-depth, water-hardness and US Census housing figures only. No call volumes, no customer data, nothing that would let us tilt the result toward anywhere we happen to have coverage. We are telling you what we are up front because you would find out in thirty seconds and we would rather you heard it from us.

This site deliberately carries no contractor scores, no quoted customer praise, and no claim that we have screened, checked or approved anyone. Our reasoning is on the methodology page.

Contact

Data questions, a state-specific cut, a correction, or an interview: hello@draindispatch.com. We answer press email the same day where we can. If you find an error in the index we will correct it and say so.

Terms we would rather you used

Please describe us as “DrainDispatch, a homeowner referral service” rather than as a plumbing company. Please describe the index as measuring environmental pressure on drain lines rather than as predicting failures.

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