Plumbing
Plumbing in Vancouver
We are not a licensed plumbing contractor and we do not present ourselves as one. What we do is tell you honestly which side of the line your job sits on, and bring in a licensed subcontractor for the side we are not permitted to touch.
Deciding between repair and replacement
For taps and mixers the arithmetic is usually straightforward: cartridges and washers are cheap, and a decent tap is worth repairing more than once. For toilets it depends on the era — anything old enough to use thirteen litres a flush is costing you money every day it stays, and a modern replacement pays for part of itself.
Where we push towards replacement is a fixture that has already been repaired twice, or one where the shutoff valve serving it has seized. Once you are replacing the valve anyway, most of the labour of a full swap is already being spent, and doing half the job means paying that labour twice.
What to do before we arrive
Find your main shutoff now, before there is any reason to. In a house it is usually where the supply enters, often in a basement or crawlspace; in a condo it tends to be in a service cupboard or above a ceiling access panel. Individual fixtures have their own stops under the sink or behind the toilet.
Then turn it. Valves that have never been operated seize, and discovering that during an emergency turns a fifteen-minute job into isolating the whole building. Exercise them once a year. If yours will not move, tell us and we will replace it as scheduled work rather than you finding out under pressure.
Why water damage costs more than the plumbing
The plumbing repair is rarely the expensive part. What costs money is the flooring, the ceiling below, the cabinet carcass that swelled, and the mould that follows in a climate as damp as this one. A dripping trap that is ignored for six months does far more financial damage than the ten minutes it takes to fix.
This is why we treat a slow leak under a sink as worth attending to promptly even though nothing is dramatic. It is also why, if you find water somewhere unexplained, photographing it and getting it looked at beats waiting to see whether it gets worse. It generally does.
Plumbing pricing
$370–$2,600 for most callouts
Performed by a licensed subcontractor at $185/hr with a two-hour minimum. Fixture swaps sit at the bottom of the range; re-piping a vanity or relocating a supply sits at the top. Permit-gated work is quoted separately. All figures exclude GST. See the full rate card.
Common questions
Should I repair or replace an old fixture?
Taps are usually worth repairing — cartridges are cheap. Toilets old enough to use thirteen litres a flush are usually worth replacing on water cost alone. The tipping point is a fixture already repaired twice, or one whose shutoff valve has seized: once you are replacing the valve, most of the labour for a full swap is already being spent.
What should I do while I wait?
Close the shutoff — the fixture stop if the leak is local, the main if it is not — and put a container and towels under it. That single action limits the damage far more than how fast anyone arrives, and it turns an emergency callout into ordinary scheduled work at the ordinary rate.
Who actually does the plumbing work?
Maintenance and like-for-like fixture replacement we do ourselves. Anything altering the plumbing system goes to a licensed subcontractor at $185 an hour — we do not hold a plumbing licence and we say so rather than blurring it. You are told who is attending before the day.