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Zammit Plumbing Lic. Master Plumber · Detroit
Someone picks up(313) 555-0142

About the shop

Zammit Plumbing is a two-truck shop on West Vernor, working Southwest Detroit and Downriver. Marco Zammit is the Michigan master plumber it runs under and the person who answers the phone most afternoons.

Why the prices are on the website

Because the alternative is what this trade normally does, and what it normally does is not defensible. A number quoted at the door, in a house with water on the floor, by someone who knows you cannot call anybody else tonight, is not a price. It is leverage.

Publishing the book costs us the jobs where we would have been the expensive one. It wins us the ones where somebody read it on a Tuesday evening, decided we were not going to invent a number, and called on Saturday.

What we are licensed to do

  • Michigan master plumberThe license number is on the truck, on every estimate and on every invoice. Michigan keeps a public register; check it against ours before you let anyone in, ours included.
  • Liability insured and bondedCertificate on request, before the work, not after something goes wrong.
  • PermitsPulled through the City of Detroit BSEED, and through the local authority Downriver. Water heaters, gas lines, backwater valves and repipes all need one.
  • One year on laborIn writing on the invoice. Manufacturer terms on parts, stated at the time — we do not repeat somebody else’s marketing warranty as though it were ours.
A two-story brick house with a covered porch on a Southwest Detroit street in winter.
The housing stock we work inBrick, a porch, a full basement, and supply pipe that in a lot of these was galvanized steel put in before 1930. That one fact explains most of what we get called out for.

Hours, and what after hours costs

When we work

  • Monday to Friday7:00 am to 4:00 pm, in two windows — 7 to 11, and 12 to 4.
  • PhonesAnswered until 8:00 pm by a person at the shop. Not a call center, and not a chat widget.
  • SaturdayEmergency calls only.
  • SundayClosed, except for a genuine emergency.

What the surcharge is

  • After hours$145 added to the flat price, for anything outside a weekday 7 to 4.
  • Public holidays$225 added to the flat price.
  • On the work orderWritten down and shown to you before you agree to anything, the same as the flat price it is added to. There is no version of this you find out about on the invoice.
The area Zammit Plumbing covers A drawn plan of the wedge of Wayne County the company works: Southwest Detroit and Corktown at the top, the Detroit River running from the upper right to the lower left, and the Downriver communities along it as far as Trenton. DETROIT RIVER Springwells — the shop Delray Corktown Midtown River Rouge Melvindale Lincoln Park Southgate Wyandotte Trenton N ↑ drawn, not to scale
The area is a wedge rather than a radius, because it follows the river and the roads beside it.

Where we go, and on which day

The truck runs a route. Booking a day the truck is already in your stretch is the difference between a window we can hold and a window we have to move.

Check a ZIP code

The route, and the ZIP codes in each stretch. Outside these we will say so rather than drive out and charge you a trip.
StretchTruck runsZIP codes
Southwest DetroitEvery day48209, 48210, 48216, 48217
Corktown, Woodbridge and Core CityEvery day48216, 48208, 48201
Midtown, New Center and Boston-EdisonTuesday and Thursday48201, 48202, 48206
DearbornMonday, Wednesday and Friday48120, 48124, 48126, 48128
Melvindale, River Rouge and EcorseMonday, Wednesday and Friday48122, 48218, 48229
Lincoln Park, Allen Park and SouthgateTuesday and Thursday48146, 48101, 48195
Wyandotte, Riverview and TrentonTuesday and Thursday48192, 48173, 48183
A block of nineteenth-century storefronts in Corktown, Detroit.
CorktownNineteenth-century commercial buildings, which means cast-iron stacks and lead-and-oakum joints, and a different set of problems from the houses two miles west.

Two things we will tell you not to pay us for

A lead service line

Detroit is replacing lead service lines through the water department at no charge to the homeowner. If yours is lead, call DWSD before you pay anybody, including us. We will happily come and tell you what material your line is, and if it is lead we will tell you to hang up and call them.

You can check it yourself in a minute: find where the line comes through the basement wall, scratch it with a coin, and hold a magnet to it. Bright orange and not magnetic is copper. Dull gray and magnetic is galvanized steel. Soft silver, easily scratched, not magnetic — that is lead.

A whole-house repipe for one pinhole

One leak in one accessible copper run is a $220 to $365 repair, not an $8,000 project. Copper that is failing everywhere shows it everywhere, and we will show you where before we suggest it.

Photograph credits

Every photograph on this site is a real photograph of a real object or a real place, used under a license that permits commercial use. Images have been cropped and resized, and nothing else has been done to them — the colors are the photographers’.

  • Propane torch soldering copper pipe — neffk. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • Cast fe and cu dwv piping — Achim Hering. CC BY 3.0. Source · license
  • Fitting1537 — Borsi112. CC BY-SA 3.0. Source · license
  • Rheem home gas water heater tank - newly installed — Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · license
  • A newly-installed sump pump in the basement of a house — Famartin. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source · license
  • plumbing roughed in — crimfants. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · license
  • Sink repair by female plumber — TWP Inc.. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • Keith the plumber — Keith Williamson. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • Frozen Pipe — Skakerman. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • Ceiling water damage — Atomicdragon136. CC BY 4.0. Source · license
  • Water Main — HomeSpot HQ. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • DC WASA lead water main — IntangibleArts. CC BY 2.0. Source · license
  • Boulevard House, Southwest Detroit, Michigan — Aperal. CC BY-SA 3.0. Source · license
  • Michigan Avenue, Corktown, Detroit, Michigan — Ken Lund. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · license
  • Corktown, Detroit, Michigan — Ken Lund. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · license
  • Lead Gooseneck — US EPA, Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water. Public domain. Source
  • flush valve, flapper, flush to tank seal and plastic nut — wbaiv. CC BY-SA 2.0. Source · license
  • PEX installation tools and fittings — Tomwsulcer. CC BY-SA 4.0. Source · license
  • Do It Yourself Plumbing Project — orcmid. CC BY 2.0. Source · license

Images under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license are shared here under that same license. The drawings, diagrams and the service-area plan are ours. There are no photographs of people who are named on this site, and none of children.

This site is a demonstration

Zammit Plumbing does not exist. The company, its owner, the address on West Vernor, the license and the phone number are all invented; (313) 555-0142 sits in the range reserved for fiction, so it cannot ring a real household. Nothing typed into the booking form is sent anywhere.

The things around the fiction are real and were not invented to fill a layout: the neighborhoods and their ZIP codes, Detroit’s combined sewer and the basement backups it causes, the DWSD lead service line replacement program, ASME A13.1 and its green water marker, and the way a ball valve and a gate valve each close. Prices are illustrative but internally consistent, and the booking logic — the routing days, the date rules, the price bands — is the real logic, not a mock-up of one.

Built by Iron Digital MI.