Plumbers and electricians in Upper St. Clair
One number for plumbing, electrical, heating & cooling, roofing, handyman work and more in Upper St. Clair.
Part of our Pittsburgh service area · median home here was built around 1972
What breaks in Upper St. Clair
The age of the housing decides the work.
Upper St. Clair's median house was finished in 1972, and the two decades on either side of that did most of the building: 1,828 houses in the 1960s and 1,636 more in the 1970s. About 68 percent of the 7,836 units here predate 1980, and only 12 percent were built in 2000 or later, so modern-code venting, drainage and wiring are the exception rather than the rule. Sitting on top of that age is a sewer rule that reaches past a sale. The private lateral goes on camera before a deed changes hands here, and what moves a closing date is not the test itself but the calendar that starts once it is done.
The camera has been required here since 2018
Upper St. Clair has videoed private laterals at sale since January 1, 2018, under an ordinance adopted the previous September. Two conditions do more work than the test does. The inspector has to hold NASSCO PACP, LACP or MACP certification, which an ordinary drain camera operator does not. And a defect the video finds has to be repaired before the close of escrow, or where there is no escrow, before the deed transferring title is recorded. There is no credit-at-the-table version of it. The township's closing paperwork can then take two to four weeks.
The ground here has its own paperwork
PA DEP mailed Upper St. Clair homeowners address-specific mine maps in 2015, showing where abandoned workings sit beneath their own parcels. That same summer a ballfield at Boyce Mayview Park sank more than three feet. Grading, excavation and fill fall under Township Code Chapter 71 and need their own permit, $85 for the first 1,000 cubic yards, and more than 400 square feet of impervious surface pulls a stormwater plan, $50 for projects under 2,500 square feet, or a $300 application fee plus a $500 escrow above that. Digging here is a filed decision.
A remodel can pull the same camera as a sale
The lateral video is not only a sale requirement. Any property improvement needing both a Township building permit and an Allegheny County plumbing permit triggers one, which reaches work scoped as ordinary remodeling. The second half of that pair sits outside the township: plumbing permits come from the Allegheny County Health Department Plumbing Program, and the permit has to be in hand before the plumbing work starts. A job scoped as a kitchen can arrive with a second office and a camera attached.
Home rule, and a utility map that does not match the county
Upper St. Clair adopted a home rule charter in 1973 that took effect on January 5, 1976, so it is not governed by the Pennsylvania Township Code. Its rules are its own, and what is true one municipality over does not transfer here. The utility map is its own too: electric is West Penn Power rather than Duquesne Light, and gas splits between Columbia Gas and Peoples Natural Gas, so the shutoff call depends on the street. Sewer is billed by Jordan Tax Service, $13.69 a month plus $19.55 per 1,000 gallons in 2025.
What we run in Upper St. Clair
What actually gets called in the most here
Plumbing
What the camera looks at is a pipe the township does not maintain: Upper St. Clair's own guidance says homeowners are fully responsible for the maintenance and repair of their sewer lateral, from the house out to the township main. Ordinance 1787 puts a second plumbing job on the same closing, a dye test on the same house, and a defect on either run is an excavation with a date attached rather than a repair that can wait for better weather.
See plumbing →Electrical
Upper St. Clair's service panels date from the township's two building decades, when a house was specified around one oven, one air conditioner and no chargers. Electrical permits here are township-issued and priced by service type: a residential permit starts at $110, a service upgrade runs $110 for up to 100 amps to $194 for up to 400, an EV charger $110 to $157, a pool or hot tub $143. The price list is the useful part, because it tells you the township expects each of those as a separate filing rather than as one job.
See electrical →Basement Waterproofing
A dye test that finds the downspouts or a sump feeding the sanitary line is not a plumbing repair inside the house. Ordinance 1787 prohibits surface and ground water connections to the sanitary sewer, so the fix is drainage work outside it. The township publishes Downspout Disconnect Information, holds an MS4 stormwater permit, and its Public Works Department will visit a property to review a flooding problem at no cost.
See basement waterproofing →We cover the other trades in Upper St. Clair too — all ten services. Not sure which one it is? Describe the symptom and we will work out the cause.
On the ground in Upper St. Clair
The rule behind all of this is still open work. Upper St. Clair has been under an Administrative Consent Order with the Allegheny County Health Department since March 2004, mandated by PA DEP, and that order is what produced the dye test ordinance in the first place. The camera rule came later, and at adoption it was reported as a demonstration project under an interim consent order. As of July 2025 the township engineer was still briefing commissioners on the consent order, the MS4 stormwater permit and ALCOSAN regionalization. That is why the camera requirement has not softened in eight years.
It is also why the sequence on an Upper St. Clair job is set by the permit counter rather than by the calendar. The question that decides it is not the closing date, it is whether the work needs a Township building permit, because that is what pulls in a county plumbing permit and a camera on a project that started life as a remodel.
Upper St. Clair questions
Straight answers for Upper St. Clair.
My dye test is from last year. Do I have to do it again?
It depends on the date, because an Upper St. Clair dye test expires one year from the day it was performed. That cuts both ways on a slow listing: run it too early and the certificate can lapse before the sale closes, run it too late and the township's processing window eats the closing date. The camera side runs longer. When the lateral ordinance was adopted in 2017 it was reported that an inspection stays valid for three years, so a house that changed hands recently, or that went through a permitted remodel, may already have one on file worth asking about.
What does Upper St. Clair charge for the sewer tests at a sale?
The township's charge is $50 at point of sale, $25 for the dye test and $25 for the sewer lateral inspection. That is the fee for the township's side of the process, not the cost of the work: the dye test is performed by a registered plumber and the video by the certified inspector the ordinance requires, and both are billed separately. One other sewer figure is worth knowing before a project is scoped, because it sits on a different scale entirely. A new sanitary sewer connection here is $1,500 plus $1,000 per equivalent dwelling unit.
Which jobs need a Township building permit here?
More of them than most people assume. Upper St. Clair requires a permit for garages, storage sheds, air conditioners, generators, decks, swimming pools, hot tubs, fences, gazebos, on-ground patios, retaining walls and signs, alongside the work everyone expects to file for. Mechanical permits start at $35 for the first $10,000 of estimated value, which covers a typical furnace or air conditioner replacement, and building permits come from the Township's Department of Planning and Community Development. Worth checking while a job is still being scoped, because on this list the filing is what sets the start date.
Who supplies the water in Upper St. Clair, and do I have a lead service line?
Pennsylvania American Water, a private utility rather than a municipal authority, and its service line material map will tell you what it has on record for your own address. Look it up rather than assuming, because the record and the pipe are not always the same thing. It is worth doing here in particular: the utility has been replacing main in Upper St. Clair repeatedly, roughly three miles in 2024 and a $2.5 million project in 2023, and a main replacement is the moment the service line attached to it gets examined. If your street is on that list the question is timing. If it is not, the map's answer for your address is the one you want in hand before a buyer's inspector asks for it.
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