Plumbing questions we are asked most

A diagnostic visit is $89 and is credited in full against any repair you approve on the same visit. Most drain clearings land between $185 and $420, and most repairs between $220 and $750. A standard water heater replacement starts at $1,850 installed, and a house sewer line camera inspection is $295. Everything is flat rate and quoted in writing before any work begins.

In most cases, yes. Calls that reach us before about noon on a weekday are usually seen the same day. Service-agreement holders are dispatched ahead of non-contract calls as a matter of policy, which matters most during a freeze and after the first heavy rain of the autumn, when everybody calls at once.

Yes, and the emergency line is answered by a person rather than a message service. Active flooding, a burst pipe, a sewer backing up into a home and total loss of water are prioritised, and households with young children, elderly residents or a medical need go first within that.

Almost always. Sinks, tubs, showers and toilets are usually cleared on the first visit, and a blocked main line is cleared the same day it is reported in the great majority of cases. If a line will not stay clear we put a camera down it rather than sell you the same snaking every six months.

Woodside is home, and most of our work is within a few miles of it — Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Astoria, Long Island City, Maspeth, Corona, East Elmhurst, Rego Park, Forest Hills, Middle Village, Ridgewood and Glendale. We also cover Flushing, Bayside, the rest of Queens, and parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan for commercial contract customers.

Yes. Work is performed under the supervision of a New York City licensed master plumber, the company is bonded and insured, and a certificate of insurance is issued to your building, board or managing agent the same day it is requested — for contract customers it is already on file before anyone asks.

$89 for a residential diagnostic, credited in full against any repair you approve on the same visit. After hours it is a flat $175 call-out. Service-agreement holders pay no diagnostic fee at all, and Total Care holders pay no after-hours call-out either.

No. Everything is flat rate, quoted in writing before any work begins, so you approve a number rather than watching a clock. If we find something that changes the scope — a second blockage further down the line, a section of pipe that has failed behind the one we came for — you get a new number before we continue rather than a surprise on the invoice.

If a line has needed clearing more than twice in two years, yes, probably. A cable cuts a hole through a blockage; it does not clean the pipe wall or tell you why it happened. Jetting scours the line properly and a camera tells you whether you are dealing with grease, roots, a belly in the pipe or a broken section. That is a couple of hundred dollars that regularly saves several thousand.

Very often it can be repaired. Cameras find a single crushed or root-invaded section far more often than they find a line that has failed end to end. We locate and depth-mark the defect from the surface, show you the footage, and price the spot repair and the full replacement side by side so the choice is yours and not ours.

Eight to twelve years for a standard tank in this water, and longer if the anode rod has been changed and the tank flushed annually. Past about ten years, a leak from the tank body rather than a fitting is the end — that is a corroded shell, not a repair. Rust-coloured staining down the outside of the tank or on the floor beneath it is the warning.

If you own the property, usually yes, and mostly for reasons other than the inspection. You skip the queue on the two weeks a year when everybody calls, you stop paying diagnostic fees, and somebody looks at the water heater, the sump pump and the shutoffs once a year — which is how most of the expensive failures get caught while they are still cheap.

Shut the water off. The main shutoff is usually near where the service enters the basement, often beside the meter; individual fixtures have their own stops under the sink or behind the toilet. If it is a water heater, shut its cold inlet valve. If water is anywhere near electrical equipment, do not stand in it — turn the power off at the panel if you can reach it safely, otherwise leave and call the utility.

Yes, where the work requires them — new or relocated fixtures, drain and vent alterations, water service and house sewer work, and gas piping. A permitted job gets inspected and closed out properly. We will tell you honestly when a repair does not require a permit rather than adding one for the look of it.