Plumbers for buildings that were built for something else
Most of west-side Manhattan is warehouses, garment lofts and tenements carrying plumbing that was added long after the building went up. We work on those every day, and we know where they fail.
At a glance
- Hours24 hours, every day
- Based153 7th Ave, Chelsea
- CoversWest & central Manhattan
- PropertyResidential & commercial
- Phone(315) 228-9299
Sixteen services, written out properly
Every one of these has its own page explaining what the work involves, what it costs you in disruption, and when it is not the answer.
24-Hour Emergency Plumbing
A real person answers at any hour, and the first thing they do is help you stop the water.
Read moreDrain Cleaning
Clearing the blockage is the easy part. Knowing why that drain blocks is the part that stops it repeating.
Read moreLeak Detection
Finding the source before anyone opens a wall, in buildings where the water travels a long way from where it starts.
Read moreWater Heaters
Repair and replacement for apartment units and building plant, and the access problem that decides half of it.
Read moreRepiping
Replacing supply piping that has reached the end of its working life, in buildings where access is the hard part.
Read moreCommercial Plumbing
Storefronts, restaurants, offices and mixed-use buildings, where a plumbing fault is a trading problem.
Read moreA blocked drain and a failed stack look identical from your kitchen. The difference is a camera and twenty minutes, and it is the difference between a repair and a renovation.
A loft is not a large apartment
It is a warehouse floor with plumbing added to it, and that single fact explains most of what goes wrong.
The runs are long
A kitchen at the perimeter of a loft floor can be eighty feet from the stack, on a shallow pitch. Grease and solids settle along the way rather than at the trap, so the line lines itself rather than plugging, and it gets slower for a year before it blocks.
The water travels
On an open floor plate a leak runs along the underside of the deck until it finds a way through. Where the stain appears and where the pipe failed can be two rooms apart, which is why opening up under the stain so often finds nothing.
The systems are layered
Work from the 1920s, the 1970s and last year, all in the same wall, much of it abandoned in place. Establishing what is actually live is a real part of the job here and not a formality.
The stacks are shared
One waste line serves every apartment above and below you. That is why your bathroom can flood because of something a neighbor did, and why a stack repair is a building decision rather than yours alone.
Pressure is manufactured
City pressure reaches about six stories. Above that a roof tank or a booster pump is doing the work, and when pressure fails across a whole building it is usually that equipment rather than your apartment.
Access decides the price
Narrow stairs, booked freight elevators, tiled walls with no panel, and alteration agreements that set the hours. On a lot of jobs here the route to the pipe costs more than the pipe.
No mystery about the process
Four steps, and you are told the price before anyone starts.
- 01
You call and we help you stop the water
If something is actively leaking, the first conversation is about finding your shut-off. That is the part of the night that is still within anyone's control.
- 02
We find the actual cause
Not the symptom. That can mean a camera, a meter test or acoustic equipment, and it is what stops you paying to open the wrong wall.
- 03
You get the price before work starts
If the diagnosis changes the price, you approve the new number first. No invoice should ever be a surprise.
- 04
We tell you what can wait
Some things need doing tonight and some things need doing this year. You are told which is which, including when the answer is that nothing needs doing at all.
Twelve neighborhoods, and what is under them
Each area page is about the actual building stock there, because a tenement in Hell's Kitchen and a cast-iron loft in SoHo have nothing in common below the plaster.
Chelsea
Our own neighborhood, and about as mixed a set of buildings as Manhattan offers on one grid.
10011 · 10001Flatiron
Some of the largest and most intact loft floor plates in Manhattan, doing jobs nobody designed them for.
10010 · 10011NoMad
Former wholesale buildings turned into hotels, offices and apartments, with the hotel plumbing that implies.
10001 · 10016Hudson Yards
New high-rise construction, where the problems are about height and pressure rather than age.
10001Garment District
Buildings that never converted, still doing light manufacturing, showrooms and wholesale.
10018 · 10001Hell's Kitchen
Tenement walk-ups with bathrooms fitted into rooms that were never meant to have them.
10036 · 10019Something leaking right now?
We are open at any hour. If you are not sure where your shut-off is, call and we will talk you to it.