Plumbing Help for Every Corner of Scarborough

What we pull out of Scarborough drains

South of the 401, the late-1940s to 1960s bungalows and side-splits still run on their first cast iron soil stacks and vitrified clay laterals. Inside those pipes we find rust tubercles that snag hair, kitchen grease set hard like candle wax, and fine root hairs that slip through clay joints and grow into a mat. North of Sheppard, in Malvern, Milliken and L'Amoreaux, the 1970s and 1980s houses moved to ABS drains and copper supply, so the trouble shifts to loose cleanout plugs, sagging horizontal runs under the basement slab, and water heaters, sump pumps and stop valves that are past their service life.

How a service call runs, step by step

1. You phone and describe it. Tell us the fixture, whether it drips, sprays or backs up, and if the floor drain is rising.
2. We make it safe on the phone. Main valve closed, water heater set to pilot or breaker off, washer stopped.
3. The plumber opens it up. Trap off, cleanout plug out, access panel cut, or a camera pushed down the line.
4. We fix the actual fault. Cable through the clog, new fitting soldered or pressed, valve or tank swapped.
5. We test before we pack up. Fixtures run at full flow, joints checked dry, the floor drain flooded with a hose.

Jobs on the van every week

• Kitchen sink and bathroom drain clogs cleared with hand and drum augers
• Main sewer lines cabled from the front-wall cleanout, then camera-checked
• Tank water heaters drained, disconnected and replaced; relief valves and anodes changed
• Sump pumps, check valves and float switches swapped and tested with a bucket
• Burst copper cut out and repaired; galvanized branches replaced with PEX or copper
• Toilets pulled, wax rings and flanges replaced, fill and flush valves rebuilt
• Shower valve cartridges replaced; tub and shower drains snaked and re-sealed

The tools that come in the door

A drum machine with cables sized for 1-1/2 inch traps and 4 inch mains, a sewer camera with a locating sonde, propane torch and lead-free solder, press and crimp tools for copper and PEX, a wet vac, drop cloths and a bucket of the fittings that Scarborough houses use most. Having the right part on board is what lets a burst pipe or a failed heater get finished on the first visit.

Why we keep a workbook

Plenty of plumbing failures are cheaper to catch early. The workbook covers the checks you can do with a flashlight and a bucket: testing a sump pump before spring melt, draining sediment from a water heater, turning off and draining an outdoor tap before frost, and reading the water meter for a hidden leak. Where a job needs a permit, a cut into a gas line or a licensed gas technician, the guide says so.