The Three Decker and the Two Family
Wollaston, North Quincy, Quincy Point and South Quincy are full of wood frame two and three family houses, and the plumbing in them follows a pattern. The supply comes in low at the front of the basement, the meter is near it, and the main shut off is within arm’s reach of both. Every riser stacks: kitchen over kitchen, bath over bath, out to a single drain line. Cast iron waste piping, often original, runs down the same chase.
Practically, that means a second floor kitchen sink that will not drain is frequently not a second floor problem at all. It is grease and scale narrowing a shared stack somewhere below it, and the tenant on the first floor is about to notice. We work that from the lowest accessible point up, which is why we ask to get into the basement before we start pulling apart a trap upstairs. The way we approach a shared stack is covered on the drain cleaning page, and the short version is that clearing the branch without checking the stack just moves the phone call to next month.
These buildings also tend to have one heating plant serving all three units, or three small ones crowded into the same corner, with zones that were split and re split by different owners over sixty years. Reading which zone valve feeds which floor is half the diagnosis on a no heat call in one of these houses.
Old Boilers, Cast Iron Radiators and Electric Baseboard
Quincy heats in three different ways at once. About 54 percent of occupied homes use utility gas, close to 30 percent use electricity, and about 12 percent use fuel oil. That electric share is high for this area and it tells you where the condos are: baseboard and wall units in buildings from the 1960s through the 1980s, in Quincy Point, Marina Bay and along the North Quincy line.
The older houses are the other end of it. In the pre 1940 stock you find hot water and steam systems with cast iron radiators, some of them still on their original piping, plus the things that fail around them: seized valves, air bound upper floors, a circulator that hums but does not move water, a fill assembly that has not been touched since the Carter administration. When a Quincy house has heat on the first floor and nothing on the third, the cause is usually air or circulation, not the boiler itself, and it is worth someone actually bleeding the system and watching what happens rather than condemning equipment over the phone. Cold weather here does not wait, and the no heat service page explains the order we work through.
MWRA Water and What It Means in a Basement
Quincy is a full MWRA community for water, so what comes out of your tap arrives through the metropolitan system rather than a local well field. What we notice is less about chemistry and more about pressure and age: in the older sections, the house side of the connection is frequently the oldest pipe in the building, and galvanized supply that has been in the ground and in the wall since before the war narrows from the inside until a second floor shower drops to a trickle whenever the washing machine fills.
That is the symptom worth calling about early. A slow fixture is a nuisance. A supply line that has lost most of its inside diameter is a leak looking for a winter. When water is already showing up somewhere it should not be, the leak repair page covers how we trace it, which in a plaster walled Quincy house means finding it without opening four rooms to check three guesses.
Working Close to the Water
Quincy’s own Multi Hazard Mitigation Plan divides the city into geographic planning areas drawn around watersheds and then refined around coastal flooding patterns: Houghs Neck and Germantown, Merrymount and Blacks Creek, Neponset River and North Quincy, South Quincy and Fore River, Squantum Point and Marina Bay, and Furnace Brook North. The city’s own language is that in a coastal community like Quincy, hazard planning tends to focus most on flooding, and the most recent update was written in a year of record flood events and extensive damage to coastal properties.
You do not need the plan to know this if you live on Sea Street or off Edgewater Drive. The mechanical equipment in those houses sits low, sometimes on a slab a step down from the yard. Water heaters on the floor of a Houghs Neck basement, boilers a few inches off a Germantown slab, laundry and floor drains that are the lowest point in the building. After a bad tide or a heavy storm the calls are the same every time: a unit that has been standing in water, a burner that will not light, a floor drain that backed up into the room.
Two things we do differently in those sections. First, when a water heater or a boiler is replaced in a low basement, we talk about where it sits, not only what it is, because six inches of height is the difference between a bad week and a ruined appliance. Second, we look at the floor drain and the laundry drain while we are down there, since in these houses those are the drains that tell you what the rest of the building is doing.
Squantum, Marina Bay and the Condo Side
Nearly a quarter of Quincy’s housing units are in buildings of fifty or more, which is a different job entirely. In a Marina Bay or Squantum Point building the unit owner controls the fixtures and very little else. The riser, the shut offs and often the water heating are common property, and getting a valve closed means finding the trustee, the management company or the building engineer first.
We are used to that sequence, and we would rather make the calls than surprise a building. It also changes what a visit looks like: an isolated unit shut off if one exists, coordination with management if it does not, protection for common hallways and elevators, and a written scope that an association can actually put in front of a board. If you are a trustee or a property manager reading this, call (617) 549-5734 and say so up front. It shortens everything.
For Your Home
Plumbing, drains, water heaters, heating and cooling in houses, three deckers and condos, which is the housing this area is actually made of.
See Residential ServicesFor Your Building
The same trades planned around a building that has to keep working while you fix it, and written down afterwards for whoever has to be told.
See Commercial Services
Three Deckers, Two Families and Old Boilers
Quincy and Dorchester are built out of three deckers, century old two families and apartment buildings that have been added to for decades. The plumbing and the heating in them grew up together, and a basement full of copper, cast iron and a boiler older than the people living upstairs is the ordinary day here.
That is the work Casper does. Licensed technicians and permits pulled where the work calls for them, on a kitchen sink in Milton, a no heat call from a landlord in Dorchester, or the water heater replacement in a Braintree storefront.
Permits and the City
Plumbing work in Quincy is permitted and inspected through the city’s Inspectional Services Department, which handles alterations, additions, repairs and new installations of plumbing, equipment and fixtures, and which has moved its applications onto the ViewPoint online permitting system. A permit has to be taken out by a licensed plumber, and the inspection is scheduled against that permit.
We pull our own. Casper Plumbing & Heating LLC holds Massachusetts Plumbing Corporation license 4667-PL-C. Permitted work leaves a record, and that record is what shows up cleanly at a closing years later. That is the point of it.
What a Visit in Quincy Looks Like
Someone calls (617) 549-5734 and describes the problem and the address. On the phone we ask the questions that decide what goes on the truck: what kind of building, how many units, where the shut off is if you know, how old the equipment is, and whether anything has been done to it recently.
On site, we start at the source rather than the symptom. On a heating call that means the boiler, the fill, the circulator and the zones before anyone touches a radiator. On a drain call it means the lowest accessible cleanout in the building. On a leak it means isolating what we can and watching pressure. We explain what we find in plain language and we agree the price with you before work starts. The house is left the way we found it, minus the problem.
Quincy is a small enough city that this shop’s reputation is the whole business. We are eight minutes from most of it, and the towns we reach from here are listed on the service area page.
Questions We Hear
Where Is the Main Water Shut Off in a Quincy Three Decker?
Almost always in the basement, at the front wall facing the street, beside or just after the meter. In the older Wollaston and Quincy Point houses it is a gate valve that has not been turned in decades, which is worth knowing before an emergency rather than during one. If yours is seized or you cannot find it, that is a reasonable thing to call (617) 549-5734 about on a calm Tuesday rather than at midnight with water running.
Why Does the Top Floor of My Quincy Two Family Lose Heat First?
In a hot water system, air collects at the highest point, and the top floor radiators are that point. Add a circulator that is tired or a zone valve that is not fully opening and the upper floor is the first to go cold while the first floor stays comfortable. It is usually air, circulation or a zone control rather than a dead boiler. We bleed, watch the system run and check the circulator and zone valves before anyone talks about replacing equipment. The no heat page goes through the sequence.
My Basement Flooded in Houghs Neck. Is the Water Heater Finished?
Not automatically, but it needs to be looked at rather than guessed at. What matters is how high the water got relative to the burner or the controls, how long it stood, and whether it was salt water. Controls and burners that have been submerged do not become reliable again by drying out. We check the unit, the piping around it and the electrical or fuel connection, and if it is replaced we also talk about setting the new one higher off the floor. The water heater page covers what we inspect.
Do I Need a Permit for Plumbing Work in Quincy?
For alterations, additions, repairs and new installations of plumbing, equipment and fixtures, Quincy Inspectional Services issues the permit and inspects the work, and applications go through the city’s ViewPoint portal. It has to be pulled by a licensed plumber. We handle that as part of the job rather than as a separate errand for you, and the inspection is scheduled against our permit and our license.
Do You Work With Quincy Condo Associations and Property Managers?
Yes, and it is a large share of the work here given how much of Quincy’s housing is in larger buildings and rentals. We are comfortable working through a trustee or a management company, coordinating a common riser shut off rather than assuming one, protecting common areas, and putting the scope in writing so a board can approve it. Tell us on the first call that it is an association building and we will start with the right person.
Are You Actually Based in Quincy, or Just Serving It?
Casper has been a family run Quincy business the whole time. That is also why the service area is drawn the way it is: it runs from here out to Dorchester on the Boston side and Milton to the west, rather than covering half the state from a phone bank. Licensed, bonded and insured, with the state license numbers printed on this site.