City of Toronto

Licensed plumbers in North York.

More of this district gets torn down and rebuilt than anywhere else we work, and a new house on an old lot brings its own list of problems. We pull the permits and meet the inspector.

Request a Quote (742) 688-3747

North York stayed farmland until the war, then filled in quickly. Bathurst Manor went up between 1954 and the early sixties. Don Mills was laid out from 1952 by Macklin Hancock for E.P. Taylor and became the plan a good part of the country copied afterward. Willowdale, Newtonbrook and Lansing grew out of older villages and kept some pre-war housing among the bungalows.

Then, from the nineties onward, a lot of it came back down. The oversized replacement houses built on Willowdale and Bayview Village lots are where Torontonians started using the term monster home, and that rebuilding is still the busiest thing in the district.

So there are two kinds of work here. New rough-ins on infill lots, permits and inspections included, and repairs to the postwar houses nobody has knocked down yet, which usually means copper, sometimes galvanized, and occasionally Kitec in anything renovated around the turn of the century.

What we run into on North York plumbing calls.

Teardowns, infill and the service you inherit

A rebuild on a sixty-year-old lot is not a blank sheet.

The water service running in from the street was sized for a bungalow with one bathroom, and the house going up has four bathrooms, two laundry rooms and a bar in the basement. The sewer lateral is the same age and often the same clay.

Both are worth dealing with while the lot is open and before the driveway and landscaping go back in. Same with the drain layout under the slab. Getting it wrong means breaking concrete twice, and the second time is always the expensive one.

Don Mills, and the honesty of a uniform vintage

Don Mills was built out between roughly 1952 and 1965, on a plan that was genuinely new in Canada.

Quadrants, greenbelts, and low-rise apartments and townhouses mixed in among the houses rather than pushed to the edge. From our side that means predictability. Usually copper supply, cast iron drainage, and in the low-rise buildings a lot of shared stacks that were never designed to carry the number of dishwashers and added bathrooms now hanging off them.

Renovating one of these houses is mostly a decision about how much of the original system stays. We will give you a straight answer on what is worth keeping.

Hogg's Hollow, the Don valley, and why the licence matters

On 17 March 1960, five young Italian immigrant workers were killed thirty-five feet underground in a tunnel being driven beneath the Don River at Hogg's Hollow for a water main.

The public reaction to the conditions they had been working in fed directly into Ontario's Industrial Safety Act of 1964. That is our trade's history and it happened here, which is why the licensing, insurance and WSIB coverage a contractor carries is not paperwork.

It was paid for. The valley itself is still the low point of the district, with the west branch of the Don running through it, so the water table and the drainage assumptions that go with it are worth checking before anyone finishes a basement down there.

The Yonge corridor and getting into a tower

North York Centre, roughly between Sheppard and Finch, is a wall of high-rise on both sides of Yonge, and Willowdale as a whole now holds more apartments than houses.

Work in those buildings runs on the building's terms. Management wants notice, a certificate of insurance on file, and a booked window before anyone isolates a riser. Part 3 residential buildings also sit inside the City's cross-connection control program, which means testable backflow devices and a test each year by a certified specialist.

Tell us the building when you call and we will sort the paperwork out ahead of the appointment.

Most requested

What North York customers call us about most.

Questions

Plumbing in North York.

We are rebuilding on a North York lot. When should the plumber be involved?

Earlier than most people call. Before the foundation is poured is ideal, because the under-slab drainage, the sump location and the point where the water service enters all get fixed at that stage. Once concrete is down, changing any of it means breaking it up. We are happy to look at drawings before you break ground.

Does a new build in North York need a larger water service?

Frequently, yes. The original service to a postwar bungalow was sized for one bathroom and a kitchen. A rebuilt house with several bathrooms, two laundry rooms and irrigation will run thin on that pipe. The time to upsize it is while the front yard is already open, not after the interlock is finished. We will size it against your actual fixture count.

What is Kitec, and should I be worried about it?

Kitec is a PEX-aluminum-PEX composite pipe with brass fittings, and it is no longer installed. The brass corrodes from the inside until a fitting lets go, often with no warning drip beforehand, which is why insurers and buyers both ask about it. In North York it turns up mostly in houses renovated during the years it was on the market. If we find it, we will tell you plainly what full replacement involves.

Do you work in North York condos and apartment buildings?

Yes, and it takes more planning than a house. Most buildings along the Yonge corridor want notice to management, our certificate of insurance on file, and a scheduled window for any riser isolation or water shut-down. Give us the building address when you enquire and we will find out what management needs from us before we show up.

Do you charge extra for North York, and what are your hours?

No trip fee. North York is inside our service area, from Hogg's Hollow up to Steeles and across to Humber Summit. We work Monday to Friday, nine to five, with Saturdays by appointment. Messages arriving outside those hours are answered the next business day, so if water is running, close the main shut-off before you write to us.

Get a quote

Working in North York?

Send the details through the quote form and we will come back to you with next steps. For anything urgent, call the office. A phone call always beats a web form.

Call the office(742) 688-3747 Request a Quote

Mon–Fri 9:00am–5:00pm · Saturday by appointment. We do not advertise 24-hour emergency service. Messages received outside regular business hours are returned as soon as possible on the next business day.