What we fix, and how we go about it
Emergency leaks and burst pipes
A pipe that lets go at 2am in a pre-war building is not a small problem — it is water moving sideways through a floor assembly toward the apartment below. The first thing we do on arrival is find the shutoff, not the leak. Then we open the wall or ceiling as little as we can get away with, cut out the failed section, and repipe in copper or PEX depending on what the rest of the run is made of. We photograph everything before we close it up, so you have a record of what is behind the plaster.
Drain cleaning and sewer lines
Slow drains in these buildings are usually grease and hair in the branch line, but they are sometimes roots in the house trap out at the curb. We run a camera down first so you are not paying to snake something that needs to be cut out. Kitchen stacks, bathroom groups, laundry lines, and the main line out to the city sewer — we clear all of it, and we tell you honestly when the line is too far gone to keep patching.
Water heaters and boilers
No hot water is the call we get most in January. Sometimes it is a failed heating element, sometimes a thermocouple, sometimes a tank that has quietly rusted through from the inside. We carry common parts on the truck and can usually restore hot water the same visit. For building boilers we handle annual service, circulator pumps, zone valves, and expansion tanks, and we will walk a super through what to check before calling us out.
Bathroom and kitchen fixtures
Faucets, shower valves, toilets that run all night, garbage disposals, dishwasher and washing machine hookups. Small jobs are still jobs — we do not treat a dripping shower cartridge as beneath us, because a drip that runs for a month costs more in water than the repair does. We bring the cartridge, not an excuse to come back next week.
Gas lines and appliance connections
Gas ranges, dryers, and water heaters connected and leak-tested. If you smell gas, leave and call the utility first — then call us to make the repair. We do not cut corners on gas, and we do not sign off on work we did not do.
Renovation rough-in
Adding a half bath, moving a kitchen sink, or gutting a bathroom down to the studs. We rough in the supply and waste lines, coordinate with your tile and cabinet people on where the valves need to land, and come back to set the fixtures at the end. Permits and inspections handled as part of the job.
Building-wide service
We work with owners and supers on walk-ups and small co-ops across Harlem and Morningside Heights — riser repairs, water main work, backflow testing, and standing maintenance agreements so a small leak gets caught before it becomes a ceiling in someone's living room.
What we will tell you on the phone
If it sounds like something you can shut off and live with until morning, we will say so and save you the after-hours rate. If it sounds like it cannot wait, we will tell you that too, and we will give you a realistic window rather than an optimistic one. That is most of what a good plumber does: an honest read of how bad it actually is.
