24 hours · 7 days · Cook County
Forty-eight years on the same streets. Same phone number. Same crew answering it at two in the morning.
01 — Services
Every job below is quoted before we open a toolbag. Diagnostic visit is $89 and gets credited against the work if you hire us the same day. No overtime surcharge, ever — 3 a.m. costs the same as 3 p.m.
Supply line, drain line, radiator, or the pinhole that's been weeping behind the drywall since the last cold snap. We shut it down, cut out the failed section, and repipe in copper or PEX-A depending on what the rest of the run is made of.
Bradford White, A.O. Smith, Rheem, Navien. We carry 40- and 50-gallon tanks on the truck, so a dead heater at 6 a.m. is usually hot water again by lunch. Tankless conversions include the gas line upsizing and venting, permitted and inspected.
Chicago's clay tile laterals and the honey locusts on the parkways are a bad combination. We rod the line, run a camera down it, and hand you the footage on a thumb drive so you can see exactly what's in there before anyone talks about excavation.
January work. Exterior wall runs in greystones and three-flats are the usual suspects. We thaw with controlled electric current rather than a torch, which means no scorched joists and no second call next week.
Running toilets, dripping Delta cartridges, garbage disposals that hum and quit, the vanity faucet you bought at the home center and can't get seated. We install customer-supplied fixtures and warranty our labor for two years.
Basement flooding in River North and the near North Side is a spring ritual. We size the pump to the pit, add battery backup, and install a backwater valve on the lateral so the city's combined sewer stays out of your finished basement.
Licensed for gas in the City of Chicago. New ranges, dryers, grills, and generators. Pressure test and permit pulled where the code requires it — we don't skip the paperwork to save a day.
Required for restaurants, laundries, and any building with an irrigation system. We test, tag, and file the report with the Illinois EPA on your behalf so the inspector's letter stops coming.
02 — Emergency
Then call. Someone picks up — there is no answering service and no phone tree between you and a plumber.
Main shutoff is usually in the basement near the front wall, or in a utility closet on newer buildings. Turn it clockwise until it stops. If it won't budge, don't force it — call and we'll talk you through it.
If water is anywhere near an outlet, a panel, or a water heater, flip that breaker. Standing water and a live circuit is the part of this that actually hurts people.
Towels, a shop vac, a bucket under the drip. Every gallon you catch is a gallon that isn't in the ceiling below you. Move anything cardboard or upholstered off the floor.
Tell us the address, what's leaking, and whether the water is still running. We'll give you an arrival window on the call, not a range that means nothing.
Average arrival time across the last 400 emergency calls: 71 minutes.
Call (224) 505-806903 — About
Emmett Rourke got his journeyman's card in 1974 and spent four years working commercial jobs downtown before he decided he'd rather be the person a neighbor called at midnight. He bought a used Ford Econoline in 1978, painted the phone number on both sides, and started taking calls out of a basement on West Grand.
The company has moved twice since then and grown to nine licensed plumbers, but the shape of it hasn't changed. The person who answers the phone is a plumber, not a dispatcher reading from a script. The price you're quoted on the call is the price on the invoice. And if a job is something we don't do — full building repipes, fire suppression, commercial kitchen hoods — we say so and give you the name of someone who does it well.
Emmett's son Danny runs the crew now. Emmett still comes in on Tuesdays to do the books and complain about the price of copper.
“A plumber's reputation is built between eleven at night and four in the morning, when nobody's watching and the customer has no choice but to trust you.”
Emmett Rourke, founder
04 — Recent work
05 — Service area
We work the city and the first ring of suburbs. If you're outside this list, call anyway — we'll tell you honestly whether we can get to you in a reasonable window or whether you're better off with someone closer.
06 — Visit & contact
The phone is the fastest way to reach a plumber. The office is staffed around the clock, and the shop address below is where the vans stage and where you can drop off parts.
Answered by a licensed plumber, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. No answering service, no call-back queue.
Between W Kinzie and W Wacker, a block off the river. Metered parking on LaSalle; the building lobby is open weekdays.
Open in Google Maps →| Monday | Open 24 hours |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Open 24 hours |
| Wednesday | Open 24 hours |
| Thursday | Open 24 hours |
| Friday | Open 24 hours |
| Saturday | Open 24 hours |
| Sunday | Open 24 hours |
Holidays included. Emergency calls are dispatched at the same rate as any other hour.
We take cash, check, and all major cards. Estimates are written before work begins and the invoice matches the estimate unless you approve a change in writing. We carry $2M in general liability and every plumber on the crew is licensed and background-checked. If you're a landlord or property manager with more than a few units, ask about the maintenance account — it waives the diagnostic fee on every call.