Water where it
should not be?We can be there.
Tri-County Plumbing is Ron, who does the work, and Cassie, who answers the phone. We cover Tracy, Mountain House, Manteca, Lathrop and out across the three counties. The rate is $175 an hour with a one hour minimum, and it is written on this page because you should not have to ask three times to find out what something costs.
- $175
- an hour, one hour minimum, quoted before we start
- 30 min
- free consultation and estimate, no charge at all
- 7 days
- emergency cover, including Sunday when nobody else picks up
Working, and answering the phone
Ron is out on jobs between 7 and 5.
It is leaking right now
Shut the water off first, then call. We will tell you what to do while Ron is on his way, and we do not charge extra just because it is late.
What to do firstThere is no hot water
Nine times out of ten in this valley it is the thermocouple, the gas control or a tank that has finally scaled up. We price the job on the size of the tank, and you can work the number out yourself.
Water heater helpIt can wait until Tuesday
Then book it like you would book anything else. Pick the day, pick the time, and it goes straight into Ron's schedule. No phone tag, no waiting for a callback.
Pick a timeTHE RATE
Here is the price.
You did not have to call to get it.
Most plumbing companies will not put a number on a page. You call, you describe the problem, somebody says a technician will assess it on site. Then a person you have never met sits at your kitchen table with a tablet and shows you three options.
We do not work like that. Ron charges by the hour, the hour costs $175, and the first hour is the minimum. If the job takes forty minutes you pay for one hour. If it takes two and a half you pay for two and a half. That is the whole pricing model.
- Consultation and estimate
- Free30 minutes
- Ron comes out, looks at the job properly and tells you what it needs. No charge, and no obligation to book the work.
- Standard labor
- $175per hour
- One hour minimum. Billed in half hours after that, not rounded up to the next full hour.
- Water heater replacement
- By sizeabout 4 hours
- The tank sets the price. Work out your own range on the water heater page before you speak to anyone.
- Saturday appointment
- $175same rate
- Four Saturday jobs, booked in advance. No weekend surcharge on a booked appointment.
- Payment
- Afterjob complete
- You pay when the work is done, not before. You agree the rate when you book, and that is the rate.
WHAT RON TAKES ON
Residential plumbing,
done by the person who quoted it.
There is no dispatcher deciding which of eleven technicians is nearest. There is one van. When you book, you know who is turning up, and he already knows what the job is.
Water heaters
Repairs, straight swaps, upsizing and tankless conversions. Priced on the size of the tank and the state of the space it lives in, with California strapping and permit included rather than added at the end.
Estimate it yourself
Drains and sewers
Kitchen lines packed with grease, tubs that empty in ten minutes, and main lines that back up into the lowest fixture in the house. Cabled, jetted, and camera checked when it keeps coming back.
From one hour
Leaks and repiping
Slab leaks under a valley concrete pad, pinholes in old copper, and the pressure drop nobody can explain. Found first, then fixed, so you are not paying for exploratory demolition.
Located before we cut
Fixtures and remodels
Faucets, toilets, disposals, angle stops and the supply work behind a kitchen or bathroom remodel. The unglamorous half of a renovation that decides whether the pretty half lasts.
Book by the hour
Gas lines
New runs for a range, a dryer, a pool heater or a fire pit. Repairs, leak testing and pressure tests, and the resize a tankless heater almost always turns out to need.
Tested and documented
Everything else
Angle stops that will not turn, hose bibbs that split over winter, pressure regulators, water softener hookups, sump work and the odd job that does not have a name yet.
See the full listWHAT WE SEE OUT HERE
Valley houses break in valley ways.
A national chain sells the same service list in Tracy that it sells in Minnesota, which is why their local pages offer to insulate your pipes against a freeze and clear your basement drains. Almost nothing out here has a basement. Here is what actually goes wrong.
Hard water eats water heaters
Valley water leaves a layer of scale on the bottom of a tank. It insulates the burner from the water, the burner runs longer, the steel runs hotter, and the tank fails years earlier than the sticker claims. If yours is rumbling or popping, that is scale, not ghosts.
Slab on grade hides the leak
Most homes here sit on a concrete pad with the supply lines running through it. A leak under that slab does not drip into a basement where you would see it. It shows up as a warm spot on the floor, a water bill that jumped, or a meter that keeps ticking with every faucet shut.
Older Tracy tracts are on galvanized
Plenty of the pre 1970s housing around the old downtown still has galvanized steel supply pipe. It rusts closed from the inside. The first sign is pressure that drops when someone else turns on a tap, and brown water first thing in the morning.
New builds have their own problems
Mountain House, Lathrop and the newer edges of Manteca went up fast. We see manifold systems with mislabelled runs, angle stops that were never fully seated, and builder grade fixtures that start weeping right after the warranty runs out.
Summer is hard on hose bibbs
A hundred degree afternoon and a hose left pressurised on the sunny side of the house splits more outdoor spigots than any freeze ever does here. It usually shows as a wet patch along the foundation that everyone blames on the sprinklers.
Pressure runs high in places
Parts of the newer developments come in well above what fixtures are rated for. High pressure kills fill valves, splits supply hoses and shortens the life of everything it touches. A regulator is a cheap fix for an expensive pattern of failures.
HOW A JOB GOES
Five steps, and you
know the price at step three.
Nothing here is unusual. It only looks unusual because so much of this trade has drifted toward quoting you at the table after the van is already in your driveway.
What you will never be asked to do
- Pay a deposit before anybody arrives
- Leave a card on file to hold a slot
- Sign a contract at your kitchen table
- Choose between good, better and best
You tell us what is wrong
Book online or call. If it is an emergency you skip all of this and just ring the number, day or night.
Ron looks at it, free
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. He looks at the actual job rather than guessing from a description over the phone.
You get the number before the work
The hourly rate, the expected hours and any parts. If it is a water heater you get the tank price too. In writing, before anyone picks up a tool.
You agree the rate, then he starts
You tick the agreement when you book, confirming you understand the rate and that payment is due when the job is finished. That is the whole contract.
You pay when it is done
Not a deposit, not a card on file, not a payment plan presented at your kitchen table. The work finishes, then you pay for it.
WHY THE SMALL SHOP WINS
A one van operation cannot afford to do bad work.
A franchise with fourteen trucks can absorb a bad job. The customer leaves a review, the review gets buried under two hundred others, and the technician who did the work is at a different branch by spring.
Ron does not have that cushion. Every job in Tracy is done by the person whose name is on the van, in a town where people talk to their neighbors. That is not a marketing angle, it is just the arithmetic of a small business, and it is the best guarantee you will get from anyone.
- The person who quotes the job is the person who does it
- No commission, so nothing gets sold to you that you did not need
- No dispatch fee, no trip charge, no fuel surcharge
- Cassie answers the phone, not a call center in another state
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
Neighbors, mostly.
Called at nine at night with water coming up through the laundry drain. He talked me through shutting it off, said he would be there by seven, and he was there at ten to. Cleared the main line and showed me the camera footage of the root that did it.
I got three quotes for a fifty gallon heater. Two of them would not give me a number without coming out. Ron's number was on the website before I even rang, and the final bill was inside the range he gave me.
Booked a Saturday slot on the website on Thursday evening. Got a confirmation, he turned up in the window, replaced two angle stops and the kitchen faucet in just over an hour. Paid after. No drama at all.
WHERE WE WORK
Three counties, from a base in Tracy.
San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Alameda. Tracy sits in the middle of the triangle made by the 205, the 5 and the 580, which is why we can be in Mountain House in ten minutes and over the Altamont into Livermore not much after that.
Every town we cover
Questions people ask before they call
Water does not wait for office hours.
Book a time that suits you, or ring (209) 278-4781 and Cassie will find you one.