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Fully licensed · Fully insured · WSIB covered

Drip Doctor Plumbing Solutions Ltd

Halton Region

Licensed plumbers in Oakville.

Half the work here is in houses older than the town's water system. The other half is north of Dundas, in subdivisions that were farmland fifteen years ago.

Request a Quote(742) 688-3747

Oakville has two housing markets that barely speak to each other. Down by the lake, the Old Oakville heritage district was designated in 1981, and about fifty-three per cent of the properties in it date from between 1830 and 1900. Those houses went up before the town had municipal water and sewage, which arrived somewhere between 1900 and 1930. Everything plumbing-related in them is a retrofit sitting on an earlier retrofit.

North of Dundas is the opposite problem. The secondary plans there set out fourteen new neighbourhoods and roughly fifty-five thousand people over about twenty years, and the Town's own figure is five to seven years to finish building out a single subdivision. A street can be new and still be five years apart end to end.

We work across both for homeowners, landlords, property managers, contractors and builders. The Town issues the building permit that covers plumbing. Halton Region owns the water and sanitary system and issues its own permit for anything at the street.

What we run into on Oakville plumbing calls.

A town that got plumbed well after it got built

Oakville was founded in 1827 and incorporated as a town in 1857.

Municipal water and sewage systems did not arrive until somewhere between 1900 and 1930, and that gap is the whole story for the older south end. In the Old Oakville heritage district, designated in 1981, roughly fifty-three per cent of properties date from 1830 to 1900.

The original plumbing was added to a finished house by whoever was available at the time, then added to again. There are four heritage conservation districts in the town: Old Oakville, First and Second Street, Trafalgar Road and Downtown Oakville.

Designation governs the outside and the character. What is under the floor is still whatever four generations left behind.

What the July 2024 storms actually showed

After the storms of July 15 and 16, 2024, Halton Region reported to council on why the wastewater system surcharged.

It was not the mains. Region mains and maintenance holes were found to be generally in good to very good condition, and the treatment plants and pumping stations were not a cause. The problem was stormwater getting into the sanitary system from private property, through weeping tile, downspouts and exterior storm drain connections.

Flow monitoring recorded stormwater arriving at rates up to nineteen times the provincial design guideline. Homes built between 1958 and 1978 were often plumbed that way deliberately, and roughly fifteen thousand homes across the priority areas studied come from that window.

Two permits, and one that depends on your address

Oakville has no standalone plumbing permit.

Plumbing rides inside the Town's building permit, and the trigger list is specific: installing, replacing or repairing plumbing drainage, adding, removing or relocating a fixture, a backflow preventer or backwater valve, site servicing, underpinning, a below-grade entrance. Swapping a toilet or sink in the same spot needs nothing.

Sump pump and weeping tile work is the odd one out, because it needs a permit only where the property sits inside the Town's Foundation Drainage Collection area, and that boundary is not something you can look up casually. Ask the Town about your specific address rather than assuming either way.

Work at the street needs a separate Halton Region permit on top of the Town's.

North of Dundas is a twenty-year build, not a moment

Livable Oakville was adopted in 2009 and deliberately left out the lands north of Dundas Street.

Those have their own secondary plans, running up to Highway 407 between Ninth Line and Tremaine Road. Those were approved in September 2018 and lay out fourteen neighbourhoods, roughly fifty-five thousand people and thirty-five thousand jobs, over about twenty years.

The Town notes that completely building out one subdivision takes five to seven years. So Glenorchy, Sixteen Hollow and Joshua's Meadows are not one vintage of house. They are rolling build years with different builders and different trades, and the defects surface on different timelines street to street.

Most requested

What Oakville customers call us about most.

Questions

Plumbing in Oakville.

Do I need a permit for plumbing work in Oakville?

Usually, unless you are swapping a fixture for another in the same spot. Oakville handles plumbing through the building permit rather than a separate plumbing permit. Drainage work, relocating fixtures, backflow preventers and backwater valves all need one. Sump pump and weeping tile permits depend on whether the property sits in the Town's Foundation Drainage Collection area, so ask. We are a licensed plumbing contractor with Red Seal certification and a Master Plumber licence, and we take permits out through Oakville.

Halton wants a drainage assessment before it pays the subsidy. Do you do those?

Yes. The Region will accept its own Household Drainage Survey where a home qualifies, generally one built between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, with a reported history of flooding from a wastewater surcharge, in an area the Region has flagged. Where it does not qualify, the Region requires an assessment by a licensed plumber or drainage contractor, and reimburses that cost through the program when eligible work follows. Confirm the current terms with Halton first.

My house is over a hundred years old. Could the water service be lead?

Possibly, on the private side. Halton Region replaced all known public lead service lines by 2007 during its cast iron watermain replacement program, but that work stopped at the curb stop. The section running from there into the house belongs to the owner and was never part of it. The Region advises anyone in a home built before 1975 to check. We can identify the material where the service enters the house in a couple of minutes.

Why does my basement back up in heavy rain?

Two different things get confused here. Sewage pushing back at you through a floor drain is backflow, and a backwater valve is what stops it. Stormwater your own property is feeding into the sanitary line through weeping tile, downspouts or an exterior storm drain is inflow, and a valve does nothing about that. Halton's review after July 2024 found private-side inflow was the dominant cause. Doing the valve first and the disconnection never is a common and costly order.

Do you charge a trip fee to come out to Oakville?

No. Travel inside our service area is built into our pricing, so there is no separate trip fee for Oakville, Bronte or anywhere between. Oakville sits toward the western end of what we normally cover, so a job further out than the town gets confirmed case by case rather than assumed. We work Monday to Friday, nine to five, with Saturdays by appointment, and messages left outside those hours are returned the next business day.

Get a quote

Working in Oakville?

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) 688-3747Request 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.