PLUMBER FOR THE GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB AREA, WHERE THE CITY'S FIRST MAINS RUN BESIDE ITS OLDEST HOUSES

Plumbing Around the Temple Terrace Golf & Country Club

This is where Temple Terrace began. The Tom Bendelow golf course opened in 1922 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, and the first city water mains were laid around it in 1922-25. About 1.1 miles from City Hall, 299 single-family homes surround the course, the oldest in the city by share.

Among them, 10.4 percent predate 1950, 70.2 percent were built 1950-1969, and the median is 1957. Houses average 2,203 square feet with 2.37 baths on about 0.33 acre, so these are larger than the ranch homes elsewhere in the city.

Old Mains Beside Old Houses

Because the oldest water mains in the city run next to the oldest houses, a complaint of brown water or low flow may start in the street rather than the house. A quick test helps: if neighbors and every tap in your house are affected, call the city; if only some taps are, the cause is inside, and that is ours.

Inside the house, pre-1950 homes are the likeliest in the city to still have galvanized or early-copper supply and cast-iron or clay drains. We do not assume that for any one house. Our older-homes guide explains how we tell, and what repair or repipe usually costs.

Careful Plumbing for the Oldest Blocks in the City

• Emergency Plumbing Repairs — In a house near the course, we first find whether the trouble is the main, a stop or a supply line, then close it and price the fix.
• Plumbing Repairs — Old tub valves, original shutoffs and weeping stops are the common repairs here, usually mended rather than replaced.
• Plumbing Installation — A new fixture in a 1950s house starts by finding what the old shutoff is made of and where the drain actually runs.
• Leak Detection — Pinpointing a leak before opening plaster or tile keeps access holes small in houses owners want to preserve.
• Water Heater Repair & Replacement — A heater in a tight older closet may need a different model or location, and we measure before the price is written.
• Repiping (PEX) — PEX is fished through existing wall cavities where possible, so the patching matches the size of the job.
• Drain Cleaning & Hydro Jetting — Pre-1950 homes are the likeliest in the city to have cast-iron or clay laterals, and a camera tells us what we are actually clearing.

Careful Work for Owners Who Care About the House

The only historic listing we found is the course itself, not a district covering the houses. Even so, owners near an NRHP-listed course may well prefer small access holes and tidy repair, so leak detection comes first, and PEX can be fished through existing cavities. See repiping for how that works.

Glen Ridge Avenue, Park Ridge Avenue and Mission Hills Avenue are among the streets in the area. The Woodmont Clubhouse, dated 1914 by a county marker, is the oldest building in the city. The core sits at 66.3 feet, but the river edge is a block-level flood question. Compare Temple Terrace Estates.

Homes by Street and Plat in the Golf & Country Club Area

The golf-course core holds the earliest Temple Terrace Estates sections, the Townsite plat and a handful of named streets.

• Temple Terrace Estates main plat — 149 homes in the core, built 1926-2016 and averaging 1958, the oldest-averaging group among the core's plats.
• Temple Terraces Townsite — 66 homes built 1926-2017, averaging 1966, set among the older Estates sections of the core.
• Estates Sections 22, 23, 26, 27, 28 and 19 — 42 homes in the core averaging 1961; Woodmont Ave is in Section 22.
• Temple Terrace Heights — 28 homes across the plat and its addition, built in 1954-55, a small mid-1950s pocket within the core.
• Temple Terrace Gardens No. 2 and No. 3 — 12 homes across two small plats built 1956-60, a few years after the Heights homes nearby.
• Glen Ridge Avenue — 30 single-family homes, the largest of the street clusters counted in the core.
• Park Ridge Avenue — 26 homes on a street counted inside the golf-course core, just behind Glen Ridge in size.
• Mission Hills, Bannockburn and Willowick Avenues — 23, 17 and 16 homes on three more streets inside the core.

Clubhouses, College and Parks in the Golf & Country Club Area

Two clubhouses, a college campus and a few small parks give this part of the city its history.

• Temple Terrace Golf & Country Club — Tom Bendelow's 18-hole, par-72 course was built in 1921 and opened in 1922, originally measuring 6,538 yards.
• Florida College — At 119 N Glen Arven Ave; the campus includes the 1922 Mediterranean-revival clubhouse designed by M. Leo Elliott.
• Woodmont Park and Clubhouse — A 1.86-acre park beside the clubhouse that a county marker dates to 1914 as a stable on Bertha Palmer's ranch.
• Billy Graham Garden — Named for Billy Graham, who according to the club's history decided on his career on the 18th green in 1939.
• Ridgedale Sports Complex — A sports complex at 204 Ridgedale Rd, listed among local parks by Patch.
• Inverness Avenue — The golf club's street, with 10 single-family parcels inside the core box.
• Hillsborough River — The river the planned golf-course city was laid out beside in the 1920s.

Golf & Country Club Area Housing Age, Mains and Listing Facts

The oldest part of the planned city has the oldest mains and a mix of house ages, and parcel records show the pattern.

• The core box holds 299 single-family homes with a median build year of 1957, and 89.3% were built before 1980. Seven in ten fall in the 1950-69 band, the era most likely to hold original galvanized or cast-iron lines.
• 31 of the 299 homes (10.4%) list a build year before 1950. Original 1920s-40s drains are most plausible here, though 29 parcels list 1926 exactly, which may be a default, so the actual pipe is confirmed on site.
• The average home in the core is 2,203 square feet with 2.37 baths on 0.33 acre. Bigger houses mean longer supply and drain runs and more fixtures behind each line, which raises the cost of a repipe.
• The core box overlaps 6 mapped FEMA polygons: 3 AE, 1 AE floodway and 2 Zone X, all along the river edge. Most of the core drains well on high ground, so river-edge flooding is a block-level question, not a neighborhood-wide one.
• The golf course was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 30, 2012, reference number 12000888. The listing covers the course, not the houses, and no residential historic district was found, though older homes still deserve careful, low-damage work.
• The whole core box, about 1.1 miles from City Hall, falls inside City of Temple Terrace water and wastewater service areas, with no Tampa or county area touching it. A backup or low-pressure call here goes to the City of Temple Terrace rather than to Tampa or the county.

Questions From Owners of Older Homes Near the Course

Streets and Plats Joined to the Golf-Course Core