York Region

Licensed plumbers in Richmond Hill.

Most of Richmond Hill went up between 1981 and 2000, which narrows down what is likely behind the wall before we have even seen the house.

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Richmond Hill is a young city in plumbing terms. Only about fifteen per cent of its housing stock predates 1981. Roughly forty per cent of it went up in the twenty years after that, while the population climbed from under forty thousand to over a hundred and thirty thousand. That is a narrow window, and it lines up with the tail of the poly-B years running into the Kitec years.

So the calls here are rarely about galvanized steel or cast iron. They are about fittings that behaved for twenty years and have stopped behaving, about finishing a basement in a part of the city where the water table sits close to grade, and about buildings on Yonge Street that did not exist fifteen years ago.

We work across Richmond Hill for homeowners, landlords, property managers, contractors and builders, from a single repair through to a full building rough-in. The city runs its own water distribution system and its own plumbing inspections, which changes a few things about how work gets permitted and signed off here.

What we run into on Richmond Hill plumbing calls.

The city buys the water and runs the pipes itself

Richmond Hill is unusual for the GTA.

York Region buys treated Lake Ontario water from Toronto and Peel and sells it on, but the City of Richmond Hill owns and operates the distribution system inside its own boundary, bills for it, and employs the plumbing inspectors who sign the work off.

Most GTA municipalities leave more of that to the upper tier. The consequences land on paperwork rather than pipe. Backflow survey and test reports go to Richmond Hill's own water and wastewater section rather than to York Region, and there is no separate plumbing permit here at all: drain and plumbing work rides inside the building permit.

Poly-B, Kitec and the 1981 to 2000 boom

The census puts about forty per cent of Richmond Hill's homes in the 1981 to 2000 window, against only about fifteen per cent before 1981.

That is the poly-B years running into the Kitec years, and it is why so much of the work in this city is on supply lines rather than drains. Kitec is the one insurers and buyers ask about, an aluminum-cored composite pipe with brass fittings that corrode from the inside, usually identifiable by orange and blue pipe and branded fittings.

Poly-B is grey polybutylene, often on plastic or copper crimp fittings. Neither fails on a schedule anyone can predict. If we open a wall and find either, you hear about it before anything else gets decided.

The moraine is in the north, the shallow water table is in the south

The northern half of the city sits on the Oak Ridges Moraine, and the intuitive assumption is that the moraine is where groundwater causes trouble.

It runs the other way. Groundwater work done for the moraine program found the water table can be twenty to thirty metres below grade beneath the moraine itself, while across much of southern Richmond Hill it sits generally within five metres of the surface.

Along the moraine's south slope there is a band with artesian and sometimes flowing conditions. If you are finishing a basement, cutting in a below-grade bathroom, or setting a sump pit in the south end, that is the thing that decides how the job goes.

The backwater valve subsidy, in the order the City wants it

Richmond Hill runs a Backwater Valve Subsidy Program for existing single-family, duplex and triplex homes.

The amount depends on available funding and the terms get revised, so confirm the current version with the City before planning around it. The sequence is what people get wrong. Building permit first, then installation by a licensed plumber or drain contractor, then a City plumbing inspection before anything gets covered up, then the claim inside the window the City sets.

Downspouts have to be disconnected from the sewer, the main cleanout has to sit downstream of the valve, and storm weeping tile tied into the sanitary side has to come out and go to a sump pump. Not into the sanitary sewer, either. The sewer use by-law forbids that outright.

Most requested

What Richmond Hill customers call us about most.

Questions

Plumbing in Richmond Hill.

Do I need a permit for plumbing work in Richmond Hill?

There is no separate plumbing permit here. Richmond Hill folds drain and plumbing work into the building permit, issued through the City's Building Services Division, and a City plumbing inspector inspects it. New work, relocated fixtures, water services and sanitary or storm drains all need one. Like-for-like repairs generally do not. We are a licensed plumbing contractor with Red Seal certification and a Master Plumber licence, and we take the permit out through Richmond Hill.

My house is from the 1990s. Should I be worried about Kitec?

Worth checking, given when most of this city was built. Kitec is orange and blue composite pipe with brass fittings, and the failure is corrosion inside the fittings rather than the pipe itself splitting. Insurers and buyers both ask about it, which is usually how owners find out they have it. We can identify it in a few minutes at the manifold or a fixture shut-off and tell you whether it needs doing now or watching.

Where do backflow test reports go in Richmond Hill?

To the City, not to York Region, which catches out testers used to working elsewhere in the GTA. Richmond Hill's backflow by-law calls for a cross-connection survey every five years and annual testing of each device, with the report filed to Public Works within a short window after the test. The by-law also sets out what the tester must hold, an OWWA certificate and current equipment calibration among it. We are certified cross-connection control testers.

Is the water in Richmond Hill hard?

Yes, by York Region's own classification. The Region publishes total hardness for the Richmond Hill supply at around 127 mg/L as calcium carbonate, roughly 7.4 grains per gallon, and its own bands put anything above 120 in the hard category. It is all Lake Ontario water, so the number does not swing by neighbourhood. In practice that means scale in tankless heat exchangers, sediment in tank heaters and seized cartridges in older mixing valves.

Do you charge a trip fee to come to Richmond Hill?

No. Travel inside our service area is built into our pricing, so there is no separate trip fee for Richmond Hill, Oak Ridges or anywhere between. If the job is in a condo or a managed building along the Yonge Street corridor, say so when you book, because building access and parking need arranging in advance. We work Monday to Friday, nine to five, with Saturdays by appointment.

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Working in Richmond Hill?

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.