Plumbing Services in Ottawa

Plumbing Services Across Ottawa

Every job on the Ottawa calendar belongs to one licensed Ontario plumber. Francois Hetherington, Frank on the phone, has been in the trade 30 years and works out of 2946 Diamond Way in Navan-Vars. The calls are the ordinary ones a house throws at you: a kitchen tap that will not stop dripping, a toilet running all night, a water heater that stopped lighting, a laundry standpipe pushing water onto the floor.

Booked work, quotes and general questions go to (613) 424-6737, Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm. A separate line runs 24/7 for the calls that cannot wait until morning. The full list of plumbing services sets out what that covers.

Drain Cleaning and Sewer Service

Drain work fills a large share of the Ottawa calendar. A kitchen line usually closes up a few metres in from the trap, where warm waste water has cooled enough to leave a film on the pipe wall that thickens season by season. A main line is a longer story: tree roots find the joints in old vitrified clay tile, and they come back on their own schedule, usually every couple of years.

Frank runs a cable to cut the blockage open, then tests the line under a full load rather than a trickling tap, because a partly open drain will pass a running faucet and still flood a laundry cycle. If a main plugs again soon after it was cleared, that points at a cracked section or a low spot holding water, and the answer there is excavation or a liner rather than more cable. Drain cleaning covers the tools involved.

Leak Detection and Pipe Repair

Leaks announce themselves late and rarely in the right room. Water follows a joist or the top of a duct and shows up as a rust ring on a ceiling tile several feet from where it escaped, or as a damp basement beam under a bathroom nobody uses much. Frank narrows the source down before anything gets cut open, working from where the water lands back to where it started.

Plumbing repair in Ottawa homes runs from swapping a split hose bibb or a weeping toilet flange to cutting a pinhole out of a copper run and soldering in a fresh piece. Old supply stops that seep at the stem get replaced rather than snugged up, because a packing nut that needed tightening once will need it again by spring.

Water Heaters and Fixture Installation

A tank that rumbles on ignition has sediment cooking on the bottom. A tank leaving a ring of water at its base is done, and no amount of draining brings it back. Frank replaces water heaters and sets the venting, drain pan, expansion control and shut-off the way the install calls for, instead of reusing whatever the last one had.

Fixture work stays steady year round: toilets, vanities, kitchen sinks, laundry tubs, dishwasher hookups, outdoor bibbs, and the valves feeding all of them. Basement bathrooms come up constantly in older Ottawa houses where nothing was roughed in, which means cutting the slab for a new drain and tying a vent back into the stack. Frank sets those lines so the finished fixtures land where the tile layout puts them, not a hand’s width off.

Where Frank Works

The service area covers the City of Ottawa plus the townships east of it. Pick the page for your end of town.

• Orléans — the east end, the closest ground to the shop in Navan-Vars.
• Kanata — the far west end, including the newer subdivisions off the 417.
• Nepean — central and west, a mix of postwar houses and recent infill.
• Barrhaven — south past the Greenbelt, mostly newer builds.
• Gloucester — southeast, heavy on older bungalows and semis.
• Rockland — east along Highway 174, in Clarence-Rockland.

If your address falls between two of those, call (613) 424-6737 and describe the cross streets.

Frequently Asked Questions

What areas of Ottawa do you cover?

Frank covers the City of Ottawa and the townships immediately east of it. That takes in Orléans, Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Gloucester and Rockland, along with the rural roads between them. The shop sits in Navan-Vars on the east side, but the west and south suburbs are a normal part of any week’s schedule.

Are you a licensed plumber?

Yes. Francois Hetherington holds an Ontario plumbing licence and has worked in the trade for 30 years. Orleans Plumbing is a one-man business, so every job on the calendar is Frank’s own from the first look to the cleanup. The business is 4.9-star rated on Google if you want to read through the feedback.

Do you do both residential and commercial work?

Both, within the scale one plumber can properly handle. Houses, townhomes and condo units make up most of the work. Small commercial spaces fit fine too: offices, shops, salons, a restaurant washroom or kitchen line. Large multi-unit builds and new-construction contracts fall outside what one set of hands should take on, so describe the job on the phone first.

How does the 24/7 emergency line work?

The emergency line is a separate number from the office line and it stays open around the clock, weekends and holidays included. That is how you reach an emergency plumber in Ottawa outside business hours, for water you cannot stop, a main backing up into a basement, or no hot water in February. Regular bookings still go through the office number.

Do you handle both plumbing and drain work, or just one?

Both, and on most calls they turn out to be the same call. A drain that keeps backing up often traces to a vent, a slope problem or a fixture upstream, so clearing it is only half the job. Frank does drain cleaning, repair and replacement alongside the supply-side plumbing, which keeps the diagnosis and the fix inside one visit.