Faucets, toilets, sinks, shut-off valves, tub and shower work, and the rough-in behind a Tilton renovation — the everyday plumbing that makes a house work properly.
Tilton and Northfield share the river, a village center, and a water and sewer arrangement that’s unusual for this region: much of the built-up area on both sides has public water, and the sewage goes into the state-run Winnipesaukee River Basin Program system. For plumbing that means a lot of Tilton homes have municipal pressure, a curb stop at the street, and a main shut-off in the basement rather than a well and pressure tank — a different set of problems and a different set of solutions.
The village housing is old. Tilton grew as a mill village along the Winnipesaukee River and much of the stock dates to the 1800s, with the mixed-material plumbing that implies: cast-iron waste stacks, galvanized supply, copper patches, and the occasional length of something no one makes anymore. Water pressure complaints in old Tilton houses are usually the supply line, not the street.
The commercial corridor along Route 3 and Exit 20 is its own market — restaurants, retail, and lodging that need backflow devices, grease-line drain work, and repairs that can’t wait until Monday because a closed business is losing money by the hour.
Head away from the village — up Sanborn Road, out toward the Sanbornton line, or along the Silver Lake area — and you’re back on wells and septic, with the usual New Hampshire complement of pressure tanks, shallow lines, and unheated crawlspaces.
If you’re on Tilton town water, find your main shut-off and turn it fully closed and back open once a year. Old gate valves seize in the position they’ve sat in for a decade, and the moment you need it is the worst possible time to discover it won’t move.
Fixture work looks simple and often isn’t, particularly in older Lakes Region houses. A faucet swap turns into a real job the moment the shut-off valve under the sink won’t close — and in a house with original multi-turn stops, it usually won’t. We replace those valves as a matter of course rather than working around them, because a working shut-off at every fixture is the cheapest insurance in a house.
On remodels we do the rough-in: moving supply and waste to where the new layout wants them, setting vents properly, and getting it inspected before the walls close. Moving a toilet or a shower drain is a framing and venting problem as much as a pipe problem, and getting it wrong is expensive to discover after the tile is in. We’d rather be involved early, when a five-minute conversation can save a week.
We also do the unglamorous list that keeps a house dry: replacing failed hose bibs with frost-free ones, adding shut-offs where there aren’t any, and swapping supply lines that are past their life.
Straightforward fixture work — a faucet, a toilet, a set of shut-off valves — typically runs $200–$600 installed. Bathroom and kitchen remodel rough-in is quoted per project after seeing the plan; getting us in at the drawing stage usually saves more than it costs.
It is usually a $15 part and ten minutes, and most homeowners can do it. Call us if it keeps coming back, if the shut-off under it will not close, or if you are on a well — a running toilet cycles the pump continuously and will shorten the life of a pump that costs well over a thousand dollars to replace.
Yes. Moving a fixture means relocating both supply and drain, and the drain is the constraint — waste lines need proper fall and proper venting, which depends on what the floor framing allows. Bring us in while the layout is still on paper and we can tell you which moves are simple and which ones are expensive.
If they are old multi-turn stops and you have never touched them, yes. They seize in place, and you find out at the worst moment — with water spraying and no way to stop it short of shutting down the whole house. Quarter-turn ball valves are inexpensive and they work when you need them.
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