Terms

These terms cover the use of this website and what the introduction it arranges is and is not. They take two minutes to read and save an argument later.

What this site does

Plumbing Services Syracuse arranges introductions between property owners in Syracuse and the surrounding Onondaga County area and independent contractors who do plumbing work. We do not cut, solder, excavate, repipe or install anything ourselves. We hold no plant, we employ no crew, and we are not a party to the work. When you send a request we read it, work out which of the five jobs on this site it belongs to, and pass it to a licensed, insured contractor who covers your town. They look at the plumbing, they price it, they schedule it and they invoice you.

What this site does not cover

This site is about water arriving at and moving inside a building: the service line from the curb stop to the meter, the supply piping, the water heater, the fixtures and the valves. Waste water leaving a building is a separate trade problem with a separate pipe, a separate boundary and a separate answer, and nothing written here should be read as advice about it.

Licensing in Onondaga County, and what to ask for

New York does not run a single statewide plumbing license. Under General City Law section 44, which Onondaga County cites as the authority for its own board, examining boards of plumbers are constituted locally and issue certificates of competency to those who pass. In this county that means a Certificate of Competency from the Onondaga County Examining Board for Plumbers, followed by annual renewal of the license and registration with the Water Environment Protection Plumbing Control Division and compliance with the insurance requirements the board sets. Plumbers working in the county must carry their registration card on site as identification, and the county names the property owner as one of the people entitled to ask for it.

Where the City of Syracuse sits in that scheme is not settled, and this site does not state it as though it were. The county's current licensing page gives the scope of a Master license in parentheses as Onondaga County, except the City of Syracuse. The Examining Board's 2019 Requirements for Implementation instead say a Master license enables the holder to conduct the business of plumbing in any municipality within the county, and put the city exception only on the older Class B and Class C licenses, both of which have been closed to new applicants since the 1960s. Those two published documents describe the boundary differently. If your property is inside the city line, confirm the license class with Plumbing Control on 315-435-6614 before work starts rather than take anyone's word for it, including ours. Where this site says licensed and insured, it means the contractor who takes the job carries what their trade and their jurisdiction require, and it is theirs to evidence rather than ours.

Permits, and who is responsible for getting them

Permits are a matter between the contractor and the property owner. This site does not obtain them, does not apply for them and could not lawfully do either. Onondaga County Local Law No. 9 of 1988, as amended by Local Law No. 6 of 2004, provides that only holders of a Certificate of Competency as Master Plumbers or as Plumbing Contractors Class B or Class C, licensed as such by the county Department of Water Environment Protection, may obtain permits for installing plumbing in the county, and that obtaining a permit for any other individual, partnership or corporation is itself a violation. A violation is an offense carrying a penalty of up to 500 dollars or up to 100 days, or both, for each offense, with a civil penalty and the suspension or revocation of a permit also available. So a permit is taken out by the firm doing your work, in its own name, and if the name on the permit is not the name of the firm on your driveway, stop the job.

Three consequences worth knowing before you agree anything. A plumbing permit is required before a new water heater is installed, even as a straight replacement, and the county publishes a photo checklist that goes with the application. The only case the county names as needing no permit is a fixture such as a faucet or shower head replaced with one of the same flow rating, along with in kind repairs to a flush valve, supply tube, fixture stop or toilet fill valve. And in a genuine emergency work may proceed before the permit, with the permit obtained on the first business day following, but the work cannot be covered, backfilled or concealed before a Plumbing Control inspection. Any offer that implies a buried repair closed up on the same visit is describing something the county does not allow.

What a homeowner may and may not do

Onondaga County issues a homeowner plumbing permit for additions or alterations by an owner occupant to the plumbing inside their own single family home, and states plainly that homeowners are prohibited from doing any type of plumbing work outside the house, giving water services as an example, and that only the individual homeowner may install the permitted work. Nothing on this site should be read as encouragement to do otherwise. Where a page here describes a step you can take yourself, it is a flush, a dye test, a lookup, a photograph or a phone call, never an excavation.

Your contract is with the contractor, and New York says what has to be in it

Whatever is agreed for the work is agreed between you and the contractor. General Business Law section 771 requires every home improvement contract to be evidenced by a writing signed by all the parties, carrying the contractor's name, address and telephone number, the approximate start and substantial completion dates, a description of the work to be performed and the materials to be provided including make, model number or other identifying information, the agreed price, a mechanic's lien notice, a statement of how money paid before completion is held, and a notice that you may cancel until midnight of the third business day after signing. On a supply line job, ask that the description also names the depth of cover, the disinfection of the new pipe before use and what happens to the abandoned one, because the county requires all three. We are not a party to that contract and can neither alter it nor enforce it for you.

Quotes and prices

Every price comes from the contractor, not from us. Nothing on this site is a price, an offer to carry out work, or a prediction of what a job will cost, and no figure quoted anywhere here is our estimate of yours. Where a page names a cost it is a published figure attributed to whoever published it. Two quotes for the same service line can differ honestly, because depth, access, driveway and sidewalk reinstatement, the permit and the inspection all vary by property. If you are weighing the City of Syracuse lead replacement program against hiring a contractor yourself, read the city's own published comparison: it notes that the private route lets you negotiate and may be cheaper and faster, that the program route may cost more, and that the application fee is not refundable if you decline the contract.

The standards and the figures quoted on this site

Every factual claim on these pages carries its source beside it, and those sources are published documents from Onondaga County Water Environment Protection and its Examining Board for Plumbers, the Onondaga County Water Authority, the City of Syracuse Department of Water, the New York State Department of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, the US Census Bureau and the New York State Legislature. They are quoted so that you can check them. They describe what published regulation and guidance say; they are not a statement about your particular property. Codes, county requirements, municipal programs and federal rules change, and a document accurate on the day it was read can be superseded. Nothing here is engineering or plumbing design advice for your building, and anything touching a gas appliance, a backflow preventer, a water service crossing under a structure, or a system serving more than one dwelling is a question for a licensed professional on site.

Limits

This site is provided as it is. We take reasonable care that what is written here is accurate and current, and every sourced fact carries the date it was checked, but we are not liable for a decision taken on the strength of a page that has since been superseded. We are not liable for the work, the workmanship, the timekeeping, the pricing or the conduct of any contractor introduced through this site, and nothing here creates a warranty of any kind on their behalf. We are not liable for water damage, for a decision to shut a valve or to leave one open, or for the condition of a pipe nobody has yet looked at. Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, it is not excluded.

Using this site

Use the form to ask about plumbing work on a property. Do not submit somebody else's details as your own, do not use the form to send automated or commercial messages, and do not scrape, copy or republish the writing and the compiled source material on these pages. The wording, the layout and the assembled research here are ours.

Changes

These terms and the privacy policy are updated when what the site does changes, in the same edit as the thing that caused the change rather than at some later date. The version on the site is the current one.