Plumbers, handymen and electricians in Monroeville
One number for plumbing, electrical, heating & cooling, roofing, handyman work and more in Monroeville.
Part of our Pittsburgh service area · median home here was built around 1968
What breaks in Monroeville
The age of the housing decides the work.
Three quarters of Monroeville's 13,875 housing units were finished before 1980, the busiest single decade was the 1950s at 3,509 of them, and the median build year is 1968. That is a stock plumbed and wired before most of what now governs it existed. What governs it now sits in more than one office. Building permits come from the Municipality's own Building and Engineering Department, plumbing is permitted and inspected by Allegheny County under Article XV, and electrical is signed off only by an inspection agency Monroeville has registered. A sale adds a further track, the Monroeville Municipal Authority's sewer certification. Each of those has its own queue, and the fee schedule puts a price on taking them out of order.
What the fee schedule charges for going out of order
Monroeville prices the mistake, not just the work. Two lines in the permit-fee schedule exist because people get the order wrong: anyone found building without an authorized permit is charged double, and a re-inspection caused by incomplete work or a failure to show is $50. Both sit in the schedule's general building-permit fees rather than on the one- and two-family line, so ask Building and Engineering which applies to your job. The schedule publishes timing too: 15 to 30 business days on a building permit, and 24 hours' notice to book an inspection.
The certificate follows the occupant, not the closing
Monroeville's occupancy chapter was re-adopted in April 2026 and fires on any change in the persons occupying a dwelling unit, so a tenant turnover produces the same inspection a sale does. The Municipality inspects the dwelling itself, graded against the 2021 International Property Maintenance, Residential, Building and Fire Codes. It re-inspects only after the owner notifies it that every deficiency is corrected, which puts the clock on the owner. An appeal does not go to a Monroeville board but to the Turtle Creek Valley Council of Governments Joint Board of Appeals, within 20 days.
The sewer certification runs on its own 30-day clock
The Monroeville Municipal Authority's certification is a separate approval on a separate schedule. The application goes in at least 30 days before the sale date, and the Authority then runs whichever of its tests it deems necessary: dye testing at each downspout and area drain, foundation drains flooded or injected, smoke, air and hydrostatic testing, or televising the lateral. Everything is pass or fail, and it can reject a result it thinks inconclusive. If weather blocks the test, a temporary certification takes $3,000 in security and the buyer's written agreement to fix what it finds.
The water those tests are looking for comes off the hills
Monroeville covers 19.54 square miles of small hills with floodplains on five separate streams. On 1 July 1997 a thunderstorm cell formed over the Monroeville area and put roughly two and a half inches of basin-average rain down in under three hours, with an isolated maximum near four and a half. It damaged 101 homes here and overwhelmed Dirty Camp Run downstream in Pitcairn. The Municipality now bills stormwater by equivalent residential unit, one unit being 2,385 square feet of impervious surface, and unpaid charges become a lien on the property.
What we run in Monroeville
What actually gets called in the most here
Plumbing
Monroeville writes the sequence for plumbing down in its own ordinance. A house sewer may not be built, repaired or reconstructed in Monroeville without a permit from the Municipality's sewer inspector, and backfilling may not start until that inspector has made a final inspection and approved the work. On the sale side the sanitary lateral test is $250, and a pass holds for three years.
See plumbing →Handyman
Monroeville grades the occupancy inspection against the 2021 International Property Maintenance, Residential, Building and Fire Codes, and no certificate issues until every deficiency on the list is corrected, so nothing on it is optional. Because the trigger is a change in the persons occupying the unit rather than a sale, the same house can be put through the same list twice in a year.
See handyman →Electrical
Monroeville does not inspect electrical work itself. It has to be signed off by an agency that registers with the Municipality and re-registers every December 31, and an inspection by a non-registered inspector is rejected outright. Four inspections are required, nothing may be covered or concealed before it is inspected, and the proof is a placard fixed inside the service disconnect door.
See electrical →We cover the other trades in Monroeville too — all ten services. Not sure which one it is? Describe the symptom and we will work out the cause.
On the ground in Monroeville
The water coming into the house has a different chain of custody. The Monroeville Municipal Authority buys finished drinking water from the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County, drawn from the Beaver Run Reservoir and the Youghiogheny River. Its lead service line inventory has so far identified no lead or galvanized lines requiring replacement, with about half the system categorized as non-lead and the rest listed unknown, which here means a line installed before 11 May 1960 with no record of what it is. Past the curb box that line belongs to the property, and so does keeping it leak-free to the meter.
Digging has its own order. Excavation next to a foundation wall or footing may not extend past the soil's angle of repose unless the footing has been underpinned first, which is a live constraint on a deep lateral or a dig tight against the house. Erosion and sediment control plans go to the Allegheny County Conservation District before any grading starts, and a retaining wall design is filed with the land disturbance permit application rather than drawn afterward. A topographical mine map costs $10 at the counter. Every one of those goes to a different counter — the Municipality's Building and Engineering Department for the permit, the Allegheny County Conservation District for the erosion and sediment plan, the land disturbance application for the wall — and Monroeville's fee schedule is where the cost of clearing them in the wrong order is written down.
Monroeville questions
Straight answers for Monroeville.
Which two approvals does a Monroeville home sale need?
Two separate approvals, from two separate offices. The Municipality inspects the dwelling and issues the certificate of occupancy, and no certificate issues until every deficiency on it is corrected. The fee is $100 — the schedule charges that for inspections of single-family, two-family and townhouse dwellings on a real estate transaction or a change of tenant. Separately, the Monroeville Municipal Authority has to issue a sewer document of certification, and selling without one carries a $1,000 fine plus costs. A dye test done earlier under the consent order does not satisfy the home-sale test; the Authority says so directly.
My sump pump drains into the basement floor drain. Is that a problem in Monroeville?
Yes, and it is the exact thing the sale test is built to find. Monroeville prohibits roof leaders, surface drains and groundwater drains from connecting to the sanitary sewer, inside the building or outside it, and prohibits rain and surface water drainage into that system generally. What the code does not do is say where the water should go instead. It names no required discharge point, so once the connection is cut, finding a lawful outlet is a grading and drainage decision on your own lot, and it is yours to make before the retest is booked rather than after. That part takes the time; the disconnection rarely does.
I have the county plumbing permit. Does that clear the job in Monroeville?
Not on its own, because Monroeville reserves the right to be stricter. Plumbing here is permitted and inspected by the Allegheny County Health Department under Article XV, and only inspectors employed or approved under that Division satisfy the requirement. Monroeville's own building code then says that where it and Article XV conflict, the stricter of the two applies, so clearing the county does not automatically clear the Municipality. That is worth settling before a basement bathroom or a kitchen relocation is scoped, because the stricter rule is not always the county's.
Do I need a permit to replace my roof or my furnace in Monroeville?
A straight shingle replacement does not; heating work does. Monroeville's fee schedule states that a permit is not required for residential shingle replacement only, and where a residential roof permit does apply it is $50. Heating and ventilation work, chimneys, flues and vent pipes included, is also priced at $50 on that schedule, so it is a question to settle before the old equipment comes out rather than after. For anything larger, residential building permits run $0.50 per square foot with a $50 minimum, and additions and alterations add a $50 plan review on top.
Nearby