Brantham, Corben County, since 1971

We know which Brantham streets still have lead.

Reuben Tinbrook bought a van and a roll of wrenches in 1971. His son and his granddaughter still work the same six neighbourhoods, and we will tell you what is probably under your floor before we put the van in gear.

Call (555) 014-1971 Find your neighbourhood

Drain unblocked $180. Tap or valve $140. After hours it is $240 to come out, and we say so before you agree to anything.

Hands joining a copper pipe with a torch

Since 1971Same family, same town, same number
Four plumbersGordon, Enid, Royce and Tobin, who is in year three
40 minutes across townThe average of six neighbourhoods, not the best one
Master Lic. #000000 (sample)$2m liability, workers comp, permits pulled

Six things fill the diary.

Everything else we do is a version of one of these. If your problem is not here, ring and describe it, and we will tell you whether it is ours or an appliance engineer’s.

Blocked drains and sewers
Cabled from the cleanout, jetted when roots are in it, and a camera down the line if it comes back a second time.
From $180, camera $240 and we take that off the repair
Leaks, bursts and repipes
Pinholes in eighties copper, slab leaks under a hallway, galvanized that has closed up to nothing.
One joint $290, a whole house from $6,400
Water heaters
Swapped with an expansion tank and a pan, permit pulled, old one taken away the same trip.
From $1,850, tankless flushed and descaled $220
Bathrooms rebuilt
Valves, pans, vanities, and the whole room when it is time. We do the plumbing and bring the tiler we have used since 2011.
Quoted in writing after we look, typically $4,000 to $9,000
Toilets, taps and valves
The small jobs nobody wants to drive out for. We carry the common cartridges and fill valves on every van.
$140 a tap or valve, $260 to rebuild a toilet
Wells, pumps and sumps
For the houses past the bypass. Pressure tanks, pump switches, softeners sized for the iron out there.
Sump pump $640 fitted, pressure tank from $1,260

The ten calls we get, with the price next to them.

These are flat prices in shop hours, parts and the visit included, not a starting point that grows once the van is on your drive. Gordon has posted them since 1994, and the only time they change mid-job is when we find something worse and stop to tell you.

A pipe elbow on the bench at the Mill Row shop

Drain unblocked, one fixture$180
Tap or shut-off valve replaced$140
Burst pipe repaired, one joint$290
Toilet rebuilt: fill valve, flapper, seal$260
Toilet replaced, old one taken away$410
Shower or bath valve replaced$520
Pressure regulator replaced$480
Sump pump replaced, with check valve$640
Water heater swapped, 50 gallonFrom $1,850
Whole house repipeFrom $6,400

A camera survey is $240, and it comes off the bill if we do the repair it finds.

If the first fix does not hold, the second visit for the same fault is free. That is the whole policy.

Sample prices, shown to illustrate how a real price list reads on a website.

What we will get out of bed for.

Three things, and everything else can wait for morning. We would rather say that on the phone than take $240 off you to tell you in person.

Water you cannot stop
A burst line, a shut-off that will not turn, water coming through a ceiling. Call us, do not type at us.
Sewage inside the house
Up the bath or the basement floor drain. Stop using every fixture in the house, including the ones upstairs, then call.
No water, or no heat in a freeze
In January a dead heater is an emergency, because the pipes in the crawlspace are next.

$240

to come out between 6pm and 7am, and at weekends and holidays. Then the job itself at the price on the list. There is no second surcharge sitting on top of the first one.

Call (555) 014-1971

Three things to do while we drive

1.Shut the main. It is at the street stop on the old streets and on the basement wall in anything built after 1975.
2.Open the lowest tap in the house so the line drains away from the leak instead of through your ceiling.
3.Kill the power or the gas to the water heater if the water heater is the thing that is leaking.

A dripping tap, a slow drain that still drains, a running toilet or a heater still making some hot water: all of that is a morning job, and we will book it for morning.

Your street, our history.

Fifty-four years of job cards means we do not have to guess. Rosemont was built with thin copper. Denner Street still has lead. Every water heater on Penmark Hill went in during the same two years. Pick where you live and read what we have learned about it, including how long we actually take to get there.

Tap a neighbourhood. Response times are the average of our own call logs over the last year, not a promise we made up for a website.

Rosemont

One builder, one estate, 1983 to 1989

40 minaverage to your door

Out past the school. Add ten minutes between 3pm and 4pm.

What is under your floor

All of it thin wall type M copper on a slab. Brantham water runs soft and slightly aggressive, and after forty years that combination makes pinholes. The last phase, Rosemont Circle numbers 2 to 24, went in with grey polybutylene instead.

520 homes on our books in this part of town.

What goes wrong here

Pinholes in type M copper
One pinhole means the rest are coming. We have patched 60 houses on this estate and repiped 34 of them. If you have had two leaks, the third one is cheaper to prevent.
Repair $290 a joint, full repipe overhead in PEX from $6,400
Slab leaks under the hallway
A warm patch on the floor, a water bill up by a third, and nothing visible anywhere. We locate it before anyone opens concrete.
Located and rerouted through the attic, typically $2,400 to $3,200
Polybutylene on the Circle
Twelve houses at the end of the estate. Grey poly is not repairable in any way that lasts, only replaced.
Whole house replacement in PEX, from $7,900

Two we did nearby

Rosemont Circle
March, this year
Full repipe overhead in PEX, three bedrooms, two baths. Five days, drywall patched and painted.
$8,900
Bellwood Drive
August, this year
Slab leak located under the hall and rerouted through the attic rather than breaking the floor.
$2,750

Sample jobs, with the customers’ house numbers left off.

Outside these six: we cover the rest of Corben County as far as Stanbury and the villages on the north road, with $60 added to the call-out for the drive. Further than that and we will give you the name of someone closer, because a plumber an hour away is no use to you at 2am.

Gordon Tinbrook in the Mill Row shop — Gordon, who has been telling customers the price before he starts since 1988.

A Tinbrook van on a Rosemont street — Not the 1971 van. That one is a photograph on the shop wall behind the counter, and Gordon will tell you the whole story if you ask him. This is the one Royce drives.

The sign says Sons. Enid kept it anyway.

Reuben put his name on a van in 1971 because he could not afford a sign. His granddaughter holds the master licence now, runs the shop, and has been asked about the wording on the door more times than she can count. It stays.

1971
One van, one roll of wrenches
Reuben Tinbrook took the Mill Row cottages nobody else wanted, because the streets were too narrow to park on and the pipes were awful. Half our work is still those streets.
1988
Gordon starts writing it down
Every house got a card: what the pipes were, what had failed, what he did about it. Fifty-four boxes of cards, then a database, and it is the reason the map on this page exists.
2009
Enid sits the master exam
Third generation, and the first Tinbrook to pass it on the first attempt, which Gordon brings up less often than she does.
Today
Four of us, three vans
Enid runs the shop and the schedule. Gordon still takes the Saturday calls. Royce has the Ledgeworth and Wrenholt route, and Tobin is in year three and owns the sump pumps.

Three from last month, with what they cost.

The before photographs are on the wall at the shop. On your job they go to your phone as we work, so you can see behind the wall we opened without standing in the dust.

Cobbett Street, Mill Row
Galvanized supply out, copper in. Two bathrooms and a kitchen, four days, plaster patched behind us.
$7,150
Halcott Avenue, Penmark Hill
Shower valve, pan and vanity lines renewed after a slab leak, tiled and back in use on the fifth day.
$4,260
Rosemont Circle
Full repipe overhead in PEX before the third pinhole arrived. Five days, drywall patched and painted.
$8,900

What people say once the water stops.

Sample reviews for illustration.

“Two pinholes in a year, then the third one soaked the hall. Enid took one look and said it was the copper the whole estate got in 1986. She gave me the repipe price on the doorstep and it came in at the number she said.”
D. Marsden
Rosemont
“Sewage up the basement drain at ten on a Sunday night. Gordon answered the phone himself, told me to stop using the upstairs bathroom, and was here in half an hour with the camera. Roots in the lane line, exactly as he said on the phone.”
J. and P. Halliwell
The Flats
“We are out past the bypass and everyone else wanted a fee just to come and look at the pump. Royce priced the tank over the phone and that is what the invoice said. He also sorted the softener two other firms would not touch.”
S. Vanterpool
Wrenholt Farms

Three things happen every time you call us.

1.You call and a Tinbrook answers
No dispatcher, no call centre, no script. Whoever picks up is a plumber, and they can price anything on the list before they hang up.
2.You hear the price before we start
From the list if it is on the list, in writing if it is not. If we open a wall and find worse, we stop and tell you what changed and what it now costs.
3.It goes on your card
What we found, what we fitted, what to watch next. Whoever comes out to your address after that starts with the history instead of the guesswork.

The paperwork, in full.

Every number below goes on the invoice too, so you are not taking a website’s word for it.

Master plumber licence: Lic. #000000 (sample), held by Gordon Tinbrook. Journeyman licences for Enid and Royce, sample numbers on the invoice.
Insurance: $2,000,000 general liability and workers compensation. The certificate goes to you or your agent before we start anything over $3,000.
Backflow testing: Cert. #000000 (sample). Annual tests for the estates with irrigation systems, booked in one week each April.
Warranty: Two years on our labour, ten years on a repipe, manufacturer terms on parts and we make the claim, not you. A callback on the same fault is free, with no argument about what counts.
Permits: Pulled on every water heater and every repipe, inspection included in the price. A plumber who offers to skip it is telling you something.

Asked on the phone every week.

If yours is not here, ring the shop and ask Enid. She would rather spend four minutes on the phone than have you book the wrong thing.

Do you charge just to come out?

Not in shop hours. For the ten jobs on the price list the visit is in the price. For a repipe or a bathroom we come and look for nothing and leave you a written number. After 6pm, weekends and holidays there is a $240 call-out, and we tell you that on the phone before you agree to anything.

How fast will you actually be here?

Forty minutes is our average across the whole town, and averages are easy to hide behind. The number next to your neighbourhood on the map is the one that applies to you, from 25 minutes in Mill Row to an hour out in Ledgeworth. If we are on another emergency we say so rather than letting you wait.

Will you give a price over the phone?

For everything on the list, yes, and it is the price on the invoice. For a repipe, a bathroom or a drain we have not seen, no. Anyone who quotes a repipe down the phone is either guessing or planning to change the number later.

My house still has lead. What do you actually do about it?

We take a first-draw sample from your kitchen tap and give you the number in writing, at no charge and with nothing attached to it. The town owns its half of the service line and replaced the odd side of Cobbett Street in 2016. Your half runs $2,100 to $3,400 depending on what is over it.

Can I pay over time on a big job?

Card, check or transfer for anything under $3,000. Over that we split it three ways: a third to book the materials, a third at the halfway point, and the last third when you have used it for a week and are happy.

Do you do new bathrooms, or only repairs?

Both. We do the plumbing and the heater, and we bring the tiler we have used since 2011 and an electrician for the fan and the lights. One number, one schedule, and one person to ring if it slips.

Pick a slot, not a call-back window.

For work that can wait a few days. Tell us what it is and where you are, choose one of the open slots, and we confirm by text within the hour during shop hours. You get a name and a van, not a four hour window and a shrug.

Water on the floor right now?

Do not use this form. Shut the main, then call us. Somebody picks up at every hour of the week.

Call (555) 014-1971

We know which Brantham streets still have lead.

Six things fill the diary.

Blocked drains and sewers

Leaks, bursts and repipes

Water heaters

Bathrooms rebuilt

Toilets, taps and valves

Wells, pumps and sumps

The ten calls we get, with the price next to them.

What we will get out of bed for.

Water you cannot stop

Sewage inside the house

No water, or no heat in a freeze

Three things to do while we drive

Your street, our history.

What is under your floor

What goes wrong here

Two we did nearby

The sign says Sons. Enid kept it anyway.

One van, one roll of wrenches

Gordon starts writing it down

Enid sits the master exam

Four of us, three vans

Three from last month, with what they cost.

Cobbett Street, Mill Row

Halcott Avenue, Penmark Hill

Rosemont Circle

What people say once the water stops.

Three things happen every time you call us.

1.You call and a Tinbrook answers

2.You hear the price before we start

3.It goes on your card

The paperwork, in full.

Asked on the phone every week.

Pick a slot, not a call-back window.