Family-run since 2011 · Shop at Alameda & Federal · Denver, CO
Somebody
picks up.
Wheeler & Daughters is a two-truck family plumbing shop at Alameda and Federal. Fifteen years inside Denver houses — the 1920s brick bungalows with galvanized pipe hiding behind the plaster, the split-levels with a water heater wedged into three feet of crawlspace. Call us and you get a plumber, not a call center in another state.
Emergency calls · any hour
Water is moving and you want it to stop.
Call first, read second. But if you have ninety seconds while the phone rings, these three things are what save the drywall.
What counts as an 11pm call: burst or actively leaking pipe, no water at all, sewage coming up a floor drain, a water heater leaking from the tank itself. A dripping faucet is a next-morning job and we'll tell you so — we're not going to sell you a night rate for it.
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Find the main shut-off
In a Denver bungalow it's usually on the basement wall facing the street, near where the line comes in from the meter pit. In a split-level or a ranch over a crawlspace, look for the access hatch in a closet floor. Turn it clockwise until it stops.
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If it's at the water heater, cut its power
Breaker off for electric; gas control to Pilot for gas. A heater that keeps firing on a draining tank turns one repair into two.
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Towel down, then call — and send photos
Text pictures to the same number. Half the time we can tell you on the phone whether it's an $89 visit or something that needs a truck at midnight, before anyone charges you for either.
Call (303) 555-0148
At 5,280 feet, it isn't the same appliance.
Denver is not a normal install market, and most homeowners find that out from a home inspector years later. Here's what a correct install includes here — and what to go look at on the one you already have.
Altitude changes the appliance
Above roughly 5,000 feet a gas water heater needs high-altitude derating documentation, and its combustion air and venting adjusted to match. A unit pulled off a big-box shelf and set in place over a weekend is very often wrong here — it's the most common thing we find on a handyman install.
The permit isn't optional in Denver
A plumbing permit and a licensed plumber are required to replace a water heater here. Straightforward swaps are usually approved same or next day, and the inspection itself takes about twenty minutes. We pull it, we meet the inspector, you keep the paperwork — which is exactly what a buyer's inspector will ask for later.
Thermal expansion tank
Required on tank-style heaters in Denver, because heated water has to expand somewhere that isn't your pipe joints. If the heater you've got doesn't have one bolted above it, that's a decent sign the last install skipped the permit too.
What the day actually looks like
Old unit drained and out, new one set and connected, expansion tank, sediment trap, vent checked, floor swept, old tank hauled away. Most swaps are finished before lunch and you have hot water that evening.
Your pressure didn't drop. The pipe got smaller.
Denver houses plumbed before the 1980s were run in galvanized steel, and galvanized has a service life of about forty to fifty years. It corrodes from the inside out — so the failure isn't a leak first, it's a shower that stopped being a shower. Scroll and watch it close.
What we actually find
Galvanized supply lines throttled to a third of their bore, and cast iron drains in the same houses with cracks, root intrusion, or a belly holding water where the line sagged. They tend to arrive together, because they were installed together.
Three to five days, room by room
We repipe in PEX or copper depending on the run and what's open. You keep water every night — we don't leave a house shut off overnight. Drywall gets cut deliberately in the places that patch cleanly, not wherever is fastest for us.
The estimate is free and it's in person
Nobody can price a repipe over the phone honestly. We come look at the basement, the meter, and the runs, and you get a fixed number with the patching scope written down.
The unglamorous list.
Most of what we do is neither an emergency nor a project — it's one visit, two hours, done. We print the numbers because you shouldn't have to book a truck just to find out what a toilet rebuild costs.
Get a quote on yoursFlat rates cover labor and standard parts on a typical setup. Old houses hide things behind plaster — if yours does, you get the new number before we start, not on the invoice after.
Every other plumber in Denver gives you a bulleted list of towns.
Here is the actual board we dispatch off. The shop sits at Alameda and Federal, which is close to the middle of the metro on purpose. Pick your neighborhood and see the drive — these are real typical times, not a marketing promise, and they get worse at 5pm like everyone else’s.
Swipe the map sideways — or just tap a name below.
Dispatching to
Pick a neighborhood
—minutes, typical
Tap a dot on the map, or a name below. Not on the board? If you’re inside E-470 the answer is almost certainly still yes — call and ask.
Call (303) 555-01480
Years on Denver houses. Not the longest in town — we compete on how fast the phone gets answered.
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Service calls since 2011, the large majority of them within four miles of the shop.
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Water heaters installed — permitted and inspected, every one of them.
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Median arrival on emergency calls inside the city last winter, including the 3am ones.
“Called at 10:40 on a Sunday night with water coming through the kitchen ceiling. Somebody actually answered.”
“They pulled the permit, met the inspector, and left the paperwork on the counter. Our last water heater guy did none of that.”
“Four days to repipe the whole house and we had water every single night. The patching scope was written down before they started.”
Tell us what it's doing.
This goes to the shop phone — not to a lead broker who resells it to four contractors before dinner.