Commercial plumbing in Pittsburgh
One contractor for the entire building. Heating, cooling and plumbing all run out of the same shop here, so the water heater, the rooftop unit and the kitchen drain line are one phone call and one company standing behind the work. Restaurants, offices, apartment buildings, small shops. If it carries water or waste, we work on it. Service and repair, commercial water heating, fixtures and toilets, water lines and drain lines, kitchen lines and hydro jetting. There are two things we do not do, backflow testing and grease traps, and both are named on this page so you know where our lane starts and stops. Everything else, call.
What we take on the commercial side
We are a family owned plumbing and heating company in Pittsburgh, and the commercial work we take is the work that plays to that. Service calls. Repairs. Replacements. The stuff that breaks on a Tuesday and has to be right by Wednesday.
Most of that work happens around a business that has to stay open, so the schedule matters nearly as much as the repair. Tell us the hours the building has to be running and we plan the work around them, including evenings and weekends when that is what the job takes.
- Commercial water heating, from repair and diagnostics through full replacement
- Fixtures, toilets, urinals, flushometer valves, sensor faucets, mop sinks
- Water lines inside the building, repairs, reroutes, isolation valves, repipes
- Drain lines and sewer lines, cabling and hydro jetting, camera inspection
- Kitchen lines and restaurant work
- General service work and after hours repairs, 24/7 emergency service
Two things we do not do
We do not do backflow testing or certification. Many commercial buildings have a backflow preventer on the water service, and that assembly typically has to be tested and certified by someone who holds that certification. We are not that, so we do not test assemblies and we do not sign the paperwork. That one goes to a certified backflow tester.
We do not service grease traps. Pumping a trap and hauling the grease out is a different business with different trucks. What we do handle is the piping on either side of it, the kitchen drain lines that clog, back up, and slow down. So if your trap needs pumped, that is a call to a grease hauler. If your three compartment sink is backing up into the floor drain, that is a call to us.
Naming these two costs us calls, and we name them anyway. It is easier to trust the rest of the list when you know where it stops.
Why kitchen lines clog the way they do
Grease goes down the drain warm and liquid. Further along a cold line it is not liquid anymore. It coats the pipe wall, then it catches food solids, then it catches more grease, and the line gets narrower until one busy Friday it closes. That is why a kitchen line rarely fails gradually in a way you notice. It fails all at once, in the middle of service.
There is a real difference between cabling a line and jetting it. A cable punches a hole through the blockage and gets you draining again, which is exactly what you want at 7pm on a Friday. Water at pressure scours the wall of the pipe back toward full diameter, which is what you want when the goal is not going through this again in six weeks. Both have their place. We will tell you which one you are buying and why.
When it makes sense, we put a camera down the line first. Grease, roots, a belly in the pipe, and a broken line can all look the same from the floor drain, and they are four different repairs. Jetting will not fix a cracked pipe, and no one should be paying to find that out twice.
Commercial water heating, where the sizing goes wrong
On the commercial side, storage is not the number that matters most. Recovery is. A restaurant with a three compartment sink and a dish machine does not draw hot water evenly through the day, it draws it in hard bursts at the same hours every day. A tank that is plenty big on paper will still run you cold at the end of a rush if it cannot make hot water fast enough to keep up.
The other thing that quietly kills commercial water heaters is scale. It builds on the tank bottom or through a tankless heat exchanger, insulates the burner from the water, and the unit works harder for less hot water until it stops. Flushing on a schedule is unglamorous and it is one of the cheapest things you will ever do for that equipment.
We are a Rheem Pro Partner, and we work on mixing valves, recirculation lines so the far fixtures are not running a long time before anyone gets warm water, venting, and combustion air in tight mechanical rooms. If the room the heater lives in is undersized or short on air, we will say so rather than drop new equipment into an old problem.
The repairs that eat a property manager's week
Most of the commercial calls we run are not dramatic. They are the same handful of things, over and over, in buildings that have people in them all day.
Flushometer valves are the big one. A commercial flush valve that runs constantly, or will not flush at all, is often a worn diaphragm or piston kit rather than a dead valve, and rebuilding it can be the right call. Sensor faucets and sensor flush valves fail differently, often at the battery, the solenoid, or a sensor that has been aimed at a shiny wall since the day it went in.
The sneaky one is the sewer smell nobody can find. Floor drains have traps, traps hold water, and a floor drain that never gets used can dry out and let sewer gas into the room. Some buildings have trap primers that are supposed to keep that water topped off, and when the primer fails the smell shows up later with no obvious cause. Before anyone tears anything open, that is worth checking.
- Flushometer valves, rebuilds and replacements
- Sensor faucets and flush valves, batteries, solenoids, sensor aim
- Tank toilets in older buildings, and fixture replacement throughout
- Floor drains, trap primers, and chasing down sewer odor at the source
- Mop sinks, utility sinks, hose bibbs, and shutoff valves that no longer shut off
How to shut down less of your building on the next repair
In older commercial buildings we run into the same thing constantly. There are no working isolation valves. One leaking line under one restroom means killing water to the whole property, which means a restaurant closes, or a floor of offices closes, for a repair that takes a fraction of that time.
So when we open a wall for a repair, we look at what it would take to add a valve while we are already in there. It is a small addition on a job you are already paying for, and the next time something fails on that branch, the rest of the building keeps running. Ask us about it while we are on site, not after we have closed everything back up.
The same thinking applies to how we run pipe. Runs kept straight and properly supported, valves where a person can actually reach them, and lines labeled so the next person in that mechanical room knows what they are looking at.
What it is like to hire us
Flat rate pricing. You get the price in writing before the work starts. If we find something once we are in the wall that changes the job, you hear about it and approve it before we keep going.
Wahl has been family owned since 1980. We have 55 team members, more than 40 trucks, and an 87,000 square foot facility on six acres in Oakdale, which mostly matters to you as depth of crews and parts behind whoever shows up at your door. We are licensed and insured with a master plumber on staff, PA HIC #PA022302. We hold an A+ rating with the BBB and 1,522 five-star Google reviews at a 4.8 rating.
Call us at (412) 276-9245. Tell us what the building is, what is failing, and what hours you can be down. If the work turns out to belong to a backflow tester or a grease hauler, we will say so on the phone.
Let us reach out to you
Fill out the quick form and we will call you back. For an emergency, call any time at (412) 276-9245.
Questions, answered
Do you do backflow testing or certification?
No. We do not test backflow assemblies and we do not sign the certification paperwork. That work belongs to a certified backflow tester, and we will point you toward one.
Can you pump or service our grease trap?
No. Pumping a trap and hauling the grease away is a separate business with vacuum trucks, and that is not us. The kitchen drain lines running to and from it are absolutely us, so if the line is slow, backing up, or coated with grease, call and we will take care of that side.
Do you work on restaurants and commercial kitchens?
Yes. Kitchen lines, hydro jetting, fixtures, sinks, water heating, and general service work. Restaurant kitchens are hard on drain lines and hard on hot water, and both are work we do regularly.
How is commercial work priced?
Flat rate, priced by the job rather than by the hour. You see and approve the number before anyone picks up a tool, and the same goes for anything we find along the way that changes it.
We cannot be down during business hours. Can you work around that?
Bring it up when you call. Tell us the hours the building has to be running and we will factor it into how we schedule and stage the work. We also run 24/7 emergency service for the things that will not wait until morning.
Someone smells gas in the building. Should we call you?
No, not first. Get everyone out, then call 911 and after that the gas utility, Peoples Natural Gas at 1-800-400-4271 or Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania at 1-888-460-4332. Our emergency service page walks through what to do and what not to do on the way out, and once the fire department or the utility says the building is safe, call us for the repair on your own piping and appliances, which is everything downstream of the meter.
Do you only work on big commercial buildings?
No. We are strongest on commercial service, repair, and replacement work: restaurants, offices, small shops, apartment buildings, the kind of work that needs a licensed plumber out there fixing something. Tell us what you have and we will tell you whether it is our lane.
Ready when you are
Call us and get a straight answer. You get the price in writing before the work starts.
Call (412) 276-9245Schedule online