HVAC & Plumbing Services in McMurray, PA
McMurray is not its own borough, it is the community that serves as Peters Township's civic center, gathered around Donaldson's Crossroads where Route 19 meets East and West McMurray Road. The houses out here run newer than the ones closer to the city, and that changes what tends to go wrong in them.
Heating services in McMurray, PA
Carbon monoxide is less a furnace problem than a combustion problem, and every fuel-burning thing in the house is a candidate. The furnace, the water heater, a gas range with a pot boiling on it, a fireplace, and the car warming up in an attached garage before the door goes up.
Newer, tighter houses change the math, and not in the direction people expect. A tight house does not make more carbon monoxide, it makes it harder for the house to replace the air that keeps getting pulled out of it.
Run a big kitchen hood, a couple of bath fans, and the dryer at the same time, and the house can go negative enough that the easiest path for makeup air is down a vent instead of up it. When that happens, combustion gases come along for the ride.
A real combustion test is not somebody waving a hardware store alarm around the basement. We put an analyzer probe in the flue and read the actual numbers, carbon monoxide in the flue gas, oxygen, stack temperature, and draft.
We check the vent connector for rust flakes and separated joints, and we sample the air in the living space, not just at the appliance. Then we run the house at its worst case, exhaust fans on and doors shut, to see whether the vent still pulls.
Those numbers either say the appliance is burning clean or they do not, and there is no arguing with them. A general home inspection is not a combustion test, and David Wahl, our CEO and a master plumber, has written about what an inspector actually verifies and what gets skipped.
That gap matters most in a house you bought rather than built. Our heating technicians test combustion, not just temperature rise.
- A carbon monoxide alarm is a backstop, not a diagnosis. Put one on every level and near the bedrooms, and check the date stamp on the back, because they expire.
- If an alarm ever sounds, get everybody out to fresh air before anyone starts hunting for the cause.
- Rust flakes at the base of the flue, soot around the burners, or windows fogging up whenever the furnace runs are all worth a combustion test before the cold sets in.
- Heating Repair & Service
- Heating Installation & Replacement
- Heating Maintenance & Tune-Up
- Furnace Repair & Service
- Furnace Installation & Replacement
- Furnace Maintenance & Tune-Up
Air conditioning services in McMurray, PA
The bonus room over the garage is the comfort complaint we hear most in the newer plans out here, and a finished attic is its cousin in the older houses. Same story either way, somebody finished the space and nobody told the cooling system.
That room is working harder than any other room in the house. It has roof above it instead of a conditioned floor, knee walls with open attic sitting behind them, and in the bonus room's case an unheated garage underneath.
It is usually the last stop on the longest duct branch, so whatever air gets up there has already given up part of its punch. Meanwhile the thermostat is downstairs in a hallway that feels perfectly fine.
So we measure that room on its own instead of the house as a whole. How much glass, which way it faces, what is actually in the knee walls, and whether the floor over the garage was ever insulated and sealed.
Then we find out what its duct can really deliver, and whether the air has any way to get back out. A room with a supply and no return path will not move much air no matter what you do at the register.
Sometimes the answer is a jump duct and some insulation work. Sometimes the branch was never big enough to begin with, and the honest fix is a ductless head that gives that room its own capacity without robbing the rooms that are already comfortable.
We are a Mitsubishi Diamond Elite dealer, and our air conditioning team will tell you which of those two your room actually is.
- If the space was finished after the house went up, assume nothing was added to the cooling system to serve it. That is the usual story.
- A bonus room with a sloped or cathedral ceiling has almost no attic buffer above it, so the roof load lands right on the room.
- Look at the floor over the garage. Where it was insulated at all, the batts are often sagging out of the joist bays, and that floor is the room's biggest summer gain.
- One supply register at the end of a long branch is a sizing problem, not a register problem.
- Tell us what the room is used for. A home office with a person and two monitors in it all day carries a load no plan drawing ever accounted for.
- Air Conditioning Repair & Service
- Air Conditioning Installation & Replacement
- Air Conditioning Maintenance & Tune-Up
Plumbing services in McMurray, PA
The small plumbing job we get asked for most around here is pulling the wall-hung sink out of a hall or powder bath and putting in a vanity. Everybody wants the storage, and it sounds like a swap, but it almost never is.
That sink hangs on a steel bracket lagged into blocking inside the wall, and its drain and supplies come out at a height chosen for the sink, not for a cabinet. Set a vanity in front of them and the stub-outs land in the middle of the cabinet back or above the countertop.
So the rough-in comes down and usually over a few inches, which means opening the wall and keeping the trap arm within the distance the vent allows. Then it gets closed back up so the vent still does its job when nobody is looking.
Then there is what the sink was hiding. Tile that stops where the apron was, a patch around the old bracket, and chrome-plated stops from decades ago that will not turn, or no stops at all, just supply nipples coming out of the wall.
Nothing on that list is a crisis. It is the difference between an afternoon and a real job, and you should hear about it before the work starts rather than halfway through.
The newer houses out this way have their own version of the same conversation. Builder-grade lav faucets with cartridges nobody stocks anymore, plastic pop-up assemblies that crack right at the pivot, and flexible supply lines with plastic nuts under every sink in the house.
Hardness minerals work on those cartridges and seals over time, and David has written up what is worth treating for in Pittsburgh water and what is hype.
Our plumbers handle fixture work, vanities, and full bath remodels, and there is a master plumber on staff.
- Before you buy the vanity, measure the door swing and how far the cabinet sticks out past the toilet. Expect the drain and supplies to move, because the old rough-in height was set for a sink, not a cabinet.
- If the powder room floor is tiled, the tile usually stops where the old sink apron was. Plan on a patch or a threshold rather than a perfect match.
- Drain Cleaning
- Leak Detection & Repair
- Faucet & Fixture Repair and Installation
- Gas Line Services
- Toilet Repair & Installation
- Sewer Line Repair & Replacement
- Water Line Services
Water heater services in McMurray, PA
When a house grows, the hot water usually does not. An addition off the back, a bath added to a bonus room suite, a wet bar in the finished basement, or laundry moved upstairs, and the heater stays right where it always was.
Now there is a long run of pipe between it and the newest fixture in the house. Every time you open that far tap, you first push out whatever cooled off in the line since the last draw.
On a short run that is a few seconds. On a long one it is long enough that people quietly stop using the sink for anything but cold water, and it is real water down the drain every time.
One answer is to make hot water closer to where you need it. A point-of-use heater is a small electric tank that lives inside the vanity or the bar cabinet and feeds one or two fixtures.
It needs its own outlet on a circuit that can carry it, and that is the part that decides whether this is simple or not. So we look at the panel before anybody promises anything.
A booster is the same idea with a different job. The main heater is doing fine, the water just arrives cooler than it left, and the booster brings it back up right at the fixture.
Where the small stuff runs out is a shower. A hand sink is a modest ask and a shower is not, so if the far end of the house has a full bath, you are looking at real capacity out there instead of a little tank in a cabinet.
Our water heater team works on tank and tankless units, and the sizing conversation starts with how that part of the house actually gets used.
- A point-of-use tank at a bar sink or a powder room is a small job with a daily payoff. At a kitchen sink where somebody fills a stockpot, it usually is not enough.
- Electric tankless at the point of use is a different animal from a small tank. It pulls serious amperage, and your panel decides whether it is even on the table.
- If the far fixture runs cold and the near one is fine, the heater is probably not your problem. Distance is.
- Adding a second heater to serve one wing sometimes beats upsizing the main one, especially when the two ends of the house run on different schedules.
- Water Heater Repair & Service
- Water Heater Installation & Replacement
- Tankless Water Heater Installation & Replacement
- Tankless Water Heater Repair & Service
Why McMurray homeowners choose Wahl
The name on this community traces back to the farmers who worked the ground here, Levi McMurray among them. People out this way understand the difference between a name on a truck and a family behind it.
This company started in 1980, and the next generation of that family runs it now. We have been coming out here a long time, and our own customer records account for more than 150 homes in the McMurray area.
Some of those were a single midnight furnace call, and some were every appliance in the house over the years.
We know this community, from the township building and the public library on East McMurray Road to the Arrowhead Trail, the stretch of the Montour that Peters Township owns and maintains on an old railroad right-of-way running from Route 19 out to Brush Run Road.
What we will not do is decide for you. You get the diagnosis in plain language, the options laid next to each other with the trade-offs said out loud, and no push toward the expensive one.
If you want a night to think it over, take it.
- Family owned since 1980 and run by the next generation, with 55 team members and more than 40 trucks working out of an 87,000 square foot facility on six acres in Oakdale.
- Licensed and insured, with a master plumber on staff. PA HIC #PA022302.
- A+ with the BBB, plus 1,522 five-star Google reviews and a 4.8 rating.
- Flat-rate upfront pricing. You get the price in writing before the work starts.
- Rheem Pro Partner, Mitsubishi Diamond Elite dealer, and Bosch cold-climate heat pump dealer.
- 24/7 emergency service, because equipment picks its own timing.
- PRAXIS S-10 member company, which is how we keep our training and our standards honest.
- Wahl Club members get seasonal tune-ups, priority service, and member pricing.
- Call (412) 276-9245 and we will get you on the schedule.
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
Our mailing address says 15317, but we are not in Canonsburg. Do you cover us?
We do. McMurray is not its own borough, it is the community that serves as Peters Township's civic center, and ZIP code 15317 covers Canonsburg as well, which is why the mail confuses people. Give us the street when you call and we will sort out exactly where you are. We work throughout Peters Township, including Venetia and Thompsonville. Call (412) 276-9245.
The bonus room over our garage runs much warmer than the rest of the house every summer. Do we have to replace the whole system?
Usually not. That room has roof above it, knee walls with open attic behind them, an unheated garage underneath, and it is normally the last stop on the longest duct run, so it is fighting a bigger load with less air than any other room in the house. We measure the room by itself, find out what its duct can actually deliver, and check the insulation and air sealing in the knee walls and the floor over the garage. Then we talk about whether the fix is duct and envelope work or a ductless head that gives the room its own capacity. Replacing equipment that is serving the rest of the house well is rarely the right answer.
We want to swap the wall-hung sink in our hall bath for a vanity. Is that a straight change out?
Almost never, and it is worth knowing why before you buy the cabinet. The old sink hangs on a bracket bolted to blocking in the wall, and its drain and supply lines come out at sink height, which puts them right where the cabinet back or the countertop wants to be. So the rough-in has to move, the trap arm has to stay within reach of the vent, and the wall gets opened and closed back up. Add the tile line and the wall patch the sink was hiding, and it is a real job rather than an afternoon. We will show you what is behind there before anything gets committed to.
Is a small water heater under the sink worth it for our addition, or should we just get a bigger tank?
It depends on what is out there. For a hand sink, a bar sink, or a powder room, a point-of-use tank in the cabinet is usually the better answer, because a bigger main heater does nothing about the length of pipe between it and that fixture. You would still push the same cooled slug of water out of the line first. If the addition has a full bath with a shower in it, that is real demand and a small under-sink unit will not carry it, so the conversation turns to serving that end of the house properly. The first thing we look at is the electrical panel, since that often decides what is possible.
Our house is one of the newer ones out here and it is pretty tight. Does that change anything about carbon monoxide?
It does, though not the way most people assume. A tight house does not produce more carbon monoxide, it just makes it harder for the house to replace the air being pulled out of it. Run a large kitchen hood, bath fans, and the dryer at once and the house can go negative enough to pull flue gases back down a vent instead of sending them up it. That is why we test combustion with the house in its worst case, exhaust fans running and doors shut, rather than on a calm basement with the door propped open. Alarms are worth having on every level, but they are the backstop, not the test.
Ready when you are
Call us and get a straight answer. You get the price in writing before the work starts.
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