Frequently asked questions

Emergency repairs, drain cleaning and hydro jetting, camera inspection, leak detection, repiping, water service line work, water pressure diagnosis, sewer line and waste stack repair, sump pumps and cellar drainage, backflow prevention, water filtration, water heaters, bathroom and kitchen plumbing, and commercial premises. Each has its own page setting out what the work actually involves.

West and central Manhattan. In detail: Chelsea, Flatiron, NoMad, Hudson Yards, the Garment District, Hell's Kitchen, the Meatpacking District, the West Village, Tribeca, SoHo, Union Square and Murray Hill. We are based on Seventh Avenue in Chelsea. If your address is outside that, call and ask rather than assume.

Yes. Restaurants and food service, retail, offices and mixed-use buildings, as well as apartments and houses. A good deal of our work is in buildings that contain both, where a problem in one affects the other.

It depends entirely on the job, and anyone who quotes a figure before seeing the problem is guessing. What we commit to is that you get the price before work starts, and that if the diagnosis changes the price you approve the new number first.

For straightforward repairs we quote once we have looked at the problem. For diagnostic work such as leak detection or a camera survey there is a charge, because it needs specialist equipment and real time. We tell you that charge before coming out.

Yes, including nights, weekends and holidays. A person answers. If a plumber needs to come out, one comes out. If the situation can safely wait until morning, we tell you that honestly rather than charge an after-hours rate you do not need to pay.

Anything actively releasing water you cannot stop, waste backing up into the building, a complete loss of water supply, or a leak reaching electrical equipment. Water reaching a neighboring apartment is also an emergency, because the cost grows by the hour.

Shut the water off. Try the valve under the fixture, then the valve where the branch leaves the riser, then the building main in the cellar. Call while you are looking and we will talk you through finding it. If water is near anything electrical, stay out of it and get clear of the space.

Contain what you can, move anything valuable, and get the managing agent or super involved early, because the source is in someone else's apartment and access has to be arranged. Be aware that the leak is often not directly above the stain: on an open loft floor the water can travel a long way before it comes through.

Because clearing makes an opening through the blockage rather than removing what caused it. If a line has blocked more than once in a year, something about that pipe is holding material, and the useful next step is a camera rather than a third clearing.

Water at high pressure, delivered through a nozzle that scours the pipe wall back to bare pipe. It is the right answer where a line has become lined with grease or scale along its length. It is the wrong answer where the pipe is cracked or badly corroded, which is why we look with a camera first.

Roughly: if only your fixtures are affected it is yours, and if fixtures in several apartments are affected it is the building's. The lowest apartment on a line often experiences the building's blockage first, which is unfair but is not the same as being responsible for it.

Yes, and it is a planned job rather than a scheduled one. The stack passes through every apartment on the line, so access has to be arranged apartment by apartment in advance and the building needs to agree a realistic shutdown window.

Depends where. The whole building at once is usually the roof tank or the booster pump, which is building equipment. Only the top floors is normal behavior taken slightly too far. One apartment is usually the branch or a seized valve. One fixture is usually the aerator or the cartridge, and costs nothing to check.

The clearest signal is pinhole leaks arriving in a cluster on one run. Alongside that: pressure that has fallen gradually over years, rust color on the first draw, and hot noticeably weaker than cold. Individually these have other explanations; together they point one way.

If a modest repair buys several more years of ordinary service, repair is the better financial decision. If the tank itself is leaking, replacement is the only answer. We give you real numbers for both and you choose.

Yes, where the electrical supply can carry it. In a Manhattan apartment the usual attraction is footprint rather than running cost, and it is an excellent answer where space is the binding constraint. Flow rate governs how many fixtures can run at once, which is worth understanding before choosing one.

For a repair, generally not. For anything that opens walls, moves fixtures or affects a riser or a stack, most Manhattan co-ops and condos require board approval and work to an alteration agreement covering hours, insurance, access and protection of common areas. It is worth checking before booking rather than after.

No. We do not carry out gas line installation, repair or appliance connection, and you will not find it offered anywhere on this site.

Leave the building immediately. Do not switch anything electrical on or off, and do not use the elevator. Once you are outside and safely away, call 911 and then your gas utility. This is not something to wait on or to investigate yourself.

The city maintains a service line inventory that can be searched by address, and that is the place to start. Where a line is lead, replacement rather than repair is the answer, and filtration at the tap addresses the water you drink rather than the pipe itself.