Walt and Carol put the first van on the road in 1999. Their son plans the week now, Walt is still out on the tools, and there is nobody in the office who is not related to somebody in a van.
26yrs
On the South Shore since 1999
11,200+
Houses we have worked inside
4.8
Across 512 verified reviews
75min
Typical emergency arrival
Walt learned the trade in an Amityville shop at the back end of the eighties. The morning he decided to go it alone, he had just watched a homeowner sign for a full line renewal when the fault, plainly, was one cracked joint eight feet from the house.
So the shop opened in 1999 on three rules that have not moved since: name the real fault, price the smallest repair that ends it, and treat a free inspection as information rather than a sales lead.
Brian came over from the construction side in 2009 and took the diary, the estimates and the permit work. Hector arrived in 2012 and carries the night calls. Carol has never handed the phone to a machine, which is why your call is answered by somebody who knows where the vans are.
Almost every fault has a fix. What keeps people awake is simpler than that: is the stranger in my cellar levelling with me, and will the bill at the end resemble the number at the beginning.
Which is why the diagnosis comes first and the figure goes in writing on the doorstep. Open a wall, find something worse, and the tools go down while we re-price it in front of you rather than tucking it onto the invoice.
Each visit closes with a free look over the valves, the pressure, the heater and the visible pipework. You are told what turned up even on the days when there is nothing in it for the shop.
A small crew on purpose. You get a text with the name and the face of whoever is driving to you.
Founder, master plumber
Walt served his time in an Amityville shop, spent a decade on somebody else's payroll, then bought a van and a phone line. He is still out on calls most of the week and has met more bad pipe than anybody on this shore.
Scheduling & estimates
Walt's son, and the reason the van shows up when we said it would. Brian prices the renovation work, plans the week and deals with anything the town wants on paper first.
Senior service tech
Hector covers most of the out-of-hours work and turns up leaks that have already beaten two other outfits. He would rather walk you to the fault with a torch than describe it in the driveway.
Runs the office
First ring, every time, and she is the one who ranks the day. Nine calls out of ten she knows from your opening sentence whether a van goes out tonight or Thursday morning.
The part homeowners dread is not the plumbing itself, it is not knowing what the job will cost or who is going to turn up. So here is the whole sequence, in order.
Carol or Brian answers. Tell us what you are seeing, hearing or smelling and you get a straight view on whether a van goes out today.
A camera, a gauge, a torch, whatever the job needs. Nothing gets priced until we can say out loud what has failed and why it failed.
One figure, handed over at the door before a tool leaves the van. Find something hidden in a wall and we halt, show you, and re-quote there.
Dust sheets first, and whatever we take out goes away in the van. Permit jobs are filed by us, and one of us stands with the inspector.
Valves, pressure, the heater, any pipework we can see. You get told exactly what we found, and none of it turns into a sales call later.
Before the van pulls away somebody goes round the valves, checks the pressure, looks over the heater and whatever pipework is on show, then tells you what they saw. Good news or bad, with nothing attached.
Our children sat in the same classrooms as yours and we queue behind our customers at the deli counter on Saturdays. It is a useful constraint on a trade business: corners are much harder to cut when you will be standing behind the owner at the ball field on Sunday.
The shop backs a little league side, keeps the food pantry plumbing running at no charge, and spends a fortnight each October shutting down outside taps for older neighbours who ring and ask.
“Tank quit on a Sunday afternoon with a full house. Hector had a heater on the van and was here in two hours, and the figure he wrote at the door is the figure I paid.”
“Two outfits told me the whole sewer run had to come out. Walt put a camera down, showed me the screen, and it was one bad joint. Targeted dig, a third of the money.”
“Two floods in three years before we rang them. New pit, proper pump, backup battery, and they re-graded the bed outside that two other firms walked straight past. Bone dry since.”
“Brian took the plumbing end of a kitchen rebuild and hit every date he gave our builder. He also caught an old galvanised run behind the plaster before it became our problem.”
“Our kitchen line closed up twice a year and everybody just cabled it. These people jetted it, dropped a camera down, found a sagging section and told us what to do about it.”
“Split pipe at eleven on a February night. Carol answered on the second ring, talked me through shutting the water off, and a van was outside inside the hour.”
“They moved us off oil and onto gas and dealt with every bit of the town paperwork. The cellar was tidier when they left than when they arrived, which I did not expect.”
Call the shop and you get one of us, not a call centre. Average arrival across western Suffolk runs about seventy-five minutes.
Northridge Supply
Fixtures and parts counter
Vantage Heating
Certified tank and tankless
Ironclad Tools
What rides on every van
South Shore Trade Bureau
Rated member since 2006
Sentinel Mutual
Bonded and fully insured
GasCheck Registered
Gas fitting and testing
Harborline Fittings
Copper, brass and PEX
Every message gets an answer from a plumber inside one working day. Some jobs have to be looked at before anybody can price them, and we would rather tell you that than invent a figure.
On the way out somebody checks the valves, the pressure, the heater and the pipework on show, then tells you where it all stands. None of it becomes a sales call. Half the emergencies we attend were obvious and cheap a season earlier.
See the process