Greater Lansing
Leaks, flooding & water clean-up
If water is moving right now, stop reading and find the valve — under the fixture first, then the main where the supply enters the house. Everything else on this page keeps. What it costs to put right is decided almost entirely by how long the water ran.
What is actually wrong
Finding the leak is the job. Fixing it is frequently the quick part. Water travels along a joist and comes through a ceiling ten feet from where it started, which is why a visit begins with a dye test or a pressure check rather than with a hole in a wall.
This is the single most frequent thing this company is called out for. It includes the visits where the honest answer was that there is no plumbing leak at all — condensation, a failed seal, a downspout discharging against a foundation — and those are still written up and still invoiced as a diagnosis, because knowing what it is not has a value too.
Where this stops
When it is not a handyman job
This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor license is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.
- Mold: inspection and surface treatment only, with remediation referred to a licensed specialist. That wording is copied from this company’s own invoice and is not softened here.
- Water-heater replacement is referred to a licensed trade. Diagnosis, and lighting or checking one, is not.
- No re-piping and no work on the incoming service.
- Sewage backing up rather than clean water arriving is a licensed plumber’s job, and the clean-up afterwards is where this company comes in.
The work itself
What actually gets done
Dye testing and tracing to confirm or rule out a plumbing leak before anything is opened up.
Shut-off and stop-valve replacement, including the ones that are seized and are the reason nobody could stop the water.
P-trap, trap arm and supply-line repair.
Outdoor spigot and sillcock replacement, including the ones that split over winter and only show up in April.
Basement flooding clean-up, extraction, sanitizing and haul-away of what cannot be saved.
Reporting when no leak is found, with what was found instead.
This work sits inside Plumbing Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.
What it costs
There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.
The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.
Whether the source is known. A visible dripping joint is a repair; “water is appearing here and we do not know why” is a diagnosis followed by a repair, and they are priced as two things because they are two things.
How much has to be opened to reach it, and whether that opening then needs drywall, tile or trim putting back.
How long it has been running. An hour is a mop; three weeks is a subfloor.
Whether the clean-up is water only or water that has been sitting, which changes what has to be removed rather than dried.
Access to the shut-off, and whether one exists that works.
How to get a real number
Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labor, and labor carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.
If this is happening right now
What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.
Before anybody arrives
- Find your main shut-off before you need it, and if you already need it, that is the first thing to do. Everything after that is cheaper.
- If water is coming through a ceiling, get whatever is underneath it out of the way and stop using the fixture above it.
- Photograph the water while it is still there. By the time anybody arrives, the useful evidence has frequently dried.
- If water is near an outlet, a panel or a light fitting, turn that circuit off at the breaker and do not investigate it yourself.
Call the business line
(517) 505-7135Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.
On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.
- No trip charge
- No call-out fee or minimum
- No diagnostic fee
- No charge for a return visit
True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.
Or send the detailsWhen the right answer is not this company
- You can smell gas
- Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
- Water you cannot stop
- Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
- Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once
- A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
- Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel
- Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
- No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed
- A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.
Where this is being asked for
2 towns have enough behind them for a page of their own.
This work is done everywhere on the coverage list. These are the towns where the enquiry record and the job record both have something specific to say, so they get a page that says it. The rest do not, because a page with nothing true on it is worse than no page.
Leaks, flooding & water clean-up in Lansing
58 completed Lansing jobs are plumbing or leak work — more than every other town on this site put together.
Leaks, flooding & water clean-up in Haslett
Five of the fifteen completed jobs in Haslett are water — a third of everything this company has finished in its own town.
Questions people actually ask
You cannot see where the water is coming from. Is that still a job you take?
Yes, and it is the most common version of this call. It starts as a diagnosis — dye testing, a pressure check, and eliminating the things it is not — and turns into a repair once the source is known. Attendance and diagnosis of what you reported are included in the job price, so the finding-out part does not arrive as a separate line.
What if it turns out there is no leak?
Then that is the answer and you get it in writing along with what was found instead — condensation, a roof or gutter fault, a downspout discharging against the wall, or a seal rather than a pipe. Those visits happen, they are in the job records, and being told plainly that the plumbing is fine is worth more than a repair to something that was not broken.
Book a leak assessment
Tell us where the water is showing and where you think it is coming from, because on most jobs those are two different places and the gap between them is the diagnosis. Photograph the stain or the pooling, say whether it is constant or only when something runs, and say whether the water has been shut off. If a ceiling is bulging, do not poke it — tell us and stay out of the room. Coming out is free and there is no trip charge.