What we do

Five practices, deeply held.

The firm has been residential since 1962 and stays residential. Howard Ashcroft declined commercial work in his second year and his grandson Daniel has not changed the position. The work below is what we do. Everything else we refer out to specialists with whom we have long-standing relationships.

The five practices below are listed in order of how often they cross our dispatch board, not in order of revenue contribution. The largest piece of our annual revenue is custom-home new-construction rough-in, which is a category that runs through the residential service-repair and whole-home repipe practices but is documented separately on the builders and architects and custom projects pages.

Each practice is led by a senior master plumber. Two practices — service-repair and whole-home repipe — operate under separate dispatch schedules; the other three are scheduled as part of either a service ticket or a project scope.

Practice No. 01

Residential Service & Repair

The Tuesday-afternoon service call. The Sunday-morning pinhole leak. The Thursday water-heater that has reached its end. Same-day dispatch for service-tier work, with an average response time inside Greenwich and Westchester of twenty-two minutes from the dispatch call.

Diagnostic is $145. Residential labor rate is $245 per hour with a one-hour minimum. Parts at cost plus twenty-five percent. After-hours dispatch is documented on the emergency service page, where the rates differ and the dispatcher is named.

Master plumbers and journeymen are dispatched against ticket scope, not interchangeably. Apprentices do not run service calls alone.

Practice No. 02

Whole-Home Repipe

When the original copper has reached the end of its working life — pinhole failures within a twelve-month window, discolored water, an insurance carrier requirement after a claim — the firm repipes the home. Type-L copper or Uponor PEX-A, selected for the age and access of the home. A 4,500 sqft home is typically repiped in seven to eleven days.

We re-route through ceilings and chases to minimize wall demolition, coordinate directly with your painter and finish carpenter for the patch-back, and pull the inspection through the Greenwich Building Department's pre-clearance program for our regular clients.

Average whole-home repipe budget: $14,200 to $38,400 depending on home size and access. We provide fixed quotes after a walk-through.

Water Treatment & Filtration

Aquarion-supplied municipal water in Greenwich has a specific hardness profile — moderately hard, slightly elevated chloramine, occasional sediment intrusion after heavy rain. We size whole-home softening, filtration, and reverse-osmosis systems to that profile rather than to a brochure recommendation.

We install Kinetico (mid-range), Pentair Pelican (upper-mid), and EcoWater (premium) for whole-home systems. Aquasana for under-sink. UV sterilization for well-water installations in Bedford and Greenwich back-country.

Whole-home softener and filtration installation: $4,400–$11,800 installed, including by-pass valving and a five-year service contract.

Practice No. 04

Fixture & Appointment

High-end fixture installation requires master plumbers who understand the warranty exposure on the brand. Waterworks, THG Paris, Lefroy Brooks, Watermark, and Boffi each have their own installation specifications, none of them interchangeable, and an apprentice install will, in most cases, void the manufacturer's coverage. We carry the manufacturer-certification documentation for each.

This practice is most often a renovation-coordination engagement — installed alongside a finish-carpentry, tile, and millwork sequence that we schedule with the homeowner's GC.

Read more about fixture & appointment →

Practice No. 05

Water Heaters & Recirculation Loops

Tank, tankless, and recirculation pumps with smart controls. The sizing question is the only question — most replacement water heaters in Greenwich are sized to square footage when they should be sized to actual fixture-count and peak-hour demand. We re-size before we recommend.

Recirculation loops, properly tuned, eliminate the eleven-second-wait-for-hot-water that defines a large home's plumbing experience. We install them as part of new construction and as a retrofit on the upper master-bath suite of older homes.

Read more about water heaters & recirc →