Sixty-four years of continuous Greenwich practice.

My grandfather started Ashcroft & Vail in 1962 because he was tired of working for a firm that would send a journeyman to do a master plumber's job. We still don't do that. — Daniel Vail, Owner

Howard Ashcroft, 1962

Howard Ashcroft was a Naval Reserve plumber stationed in New London through the back half of the Korean conflict. He came home to Greenwich in 1958 and apprenticed under a Cos Cob master plumber named Albert Vail, who would, in 1964, become his father-in-law. By the time he hung his own shingle in the spring of 1962 he had logged five thousand hours under three master plumbers and could read a floor plan the way other men read a newspaper.

The first truck was a powder-blue 1962 Chevrolet C10 with two-line lettering on the door: Ashcroft & Vail · Plumbing · Greenwich CT. There was no second truck for thirty-one months. Howard worked alone, then with one journeyman, then with one apprentice, and built the firm slowly and on a single principle that has never been retired: a master plumber on every rough-in, no exceptions.

By 1972 he had four trucks. By 1985 he had nine. The firm did residential work and only residential work, and refused, repeatedly and in writing, to bid on commercial projects that came across the desk. He believed that a plumbing firm needed to specialize the way an architect specialized, and that the specialization for him was the homes of Greenwich and Cos Cob and Old Greenwich. He was right.

Howard kept his master plumber's license active until the year he died, 2007. The license number was retired with him. A new license — Daniel Vail's, #B-7842 — was issued the same year.

Robert Vail, 1989

Robert Vail, Albert's nephew and Howard's son-in-law, joined the firm in 1978 fresh out of his apprenticeship. He took over as Managing Partner in 1989 when Howard stepped back from day-to-day operations and onto the family's small horse farm in Bedford NY. Robert kept the name Ashcroft & Vail because it kept the family name in the firm — his uncle Albert had taught Howard the trade, and Howard had married Albert's niece Susan in 1964, and the two names belonged together.

Robert added the Westport location in 1994. He added the White Plains NY location in 2002. By 2008 the firm ran eighteen trucks across three locations, all of them servicing the same Fairfield County and Westchester County footprint. The principle did not change. A master plumber on every rough-in.

Robert retired in 2009 to spend more time on the farm. He is alive and well at seventy-eight and stops in at the Greenwich office most Thursdays to read the dispatch board and have lunch with whichever master plumber is in the shop.

Daniel Vail, 2009

Daniel Vail, Robert's son and Howard's grandson, earned his Master Plumber license in 2005, license #B-7842, after a six-year apprenticeship under three of his father's senior master plumbers. He took over from Robert in 2009 at the age of thirty-four. He has run the firm since.

Under Daniel the firm has grown from twelve trucks to thirty-two trucks. The W-2 master and journeyman plumber roster has grown from sixteen to twenty-eight. The apprentice program — Howard's program — still runs in its original form: six apprentices on five-year tracks, each paired with a named master plumber who is responsible for their training.

Daniel personally inspects every residential rough-in over eight thousand square feet. He signs off on every whole-home repipe. He has lost work — and is willing to keep losing work — to firms that will send an apprentice to do a master plumber's job. He has never lost a builder relationship for that reason.

Daniel sits on the board of the Greenwich Historical Society and lives in Cos Cob with his wife Pamela and their daughter Susanna.

Helena Park, 2021

Helena Park joined Ashcroft & Vail in 2011 as VP of Operations. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern and came up through residential-services operations at a major Westchester plumbing-and-HVAC firm where she had run a four-location, sixty-truck operation for eight years. Daniel hired her specifically to professionalize the business side of the firm — dispatch, AR/AP, HR, estimating, the Procore integration that was then in early planning — without compromising the master-plumber-led culture his grandfather had built.

Helena was named President in October 2021. She is the first non-family executive in the firm's sixty-four-year history. Greenwich Time covered the appointment under the headline Old Greenwich firm names first non-family president in fifty-nine-year history. The Greenwich Time profile noted that Helena's appointment was unusual for a fourth-generation family firm and that Daniel had announced it at the firm's annual all-hands without ceremony.

Helena runs the day-to-day business of three locations, thirty-two trucks, twenty-eight master and journeyman plumbers, six apprentices, four estimators, three dispatchers, and a five-person AR/AP and HR team. Daniel runs the technical side: inspections, sign-offs, and the firm's relationships with the regular builders and architects.

The two of them — Daniel and Helena — meet for forty minutes every Monday morning at seven and again every Friday afternoon at four. The firm has not deviated from that schedule in fifteen years.

What we do not do

We do not do commercial plumbing. We refer commercial inquiries to two specific Stamford firms — Long Wharf Commercial Plumbing and Stamford Trade Mechanical — with whom we have a long-standing reciprocal-referral relationship. They do not do residential, and we do not do commercial, and the arrangement has served both firms well since 2003.

We do not do new pool or spa rough-in. Pool plumbing has its own engineering, its own permitting, its own subcontractor ecosystem. We refer pool work to two specialists in Stamford and one in Westport. We will, of course, service the supply-line side of an existing pool installation as part of an existing residential service relationship.

We do not do septic system work. Septic is a wholly different trade with different licensure. We refer septic to two specialists, one each in Greenwich and Westport.

We have lost work by refusing to send an apprentice to do a master plumber's job. We have never lost a builder relationship for the same reason.

Susanna Vail, Daniel's daughter, is a freshman at Penn in the engineering program. She has expressed an interest in returning to the firm.