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How we research, write and check what we publish

Every page here makes claims about money, building codes or the law. This is the standard each one has to meet before it goes live, how the cost estimates are built, and what we do when we are wrong.

Who writes and who reviews

Pages are written by the PlumberMatch editorial team, and each one is checked against the sources listed at its foot. We have not yet appointed a licensed technical reviewer, so no page claims to be expert reviewed.

When a named, licensed reviewer is appointed, this section will show their name, license number, state, years in the trade and a link to the public registry entry, and each page they have read will say so. Until then, treat the sources at the bottom of each page as the authority and check anything that matters with LARA or your city.

Where the numbers come from

FigureSourceHow often it is checked
Population, housing age, home valueU.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates 2023 (tables B01003, B25034, B25077)Each ACS release
Plumber wagesU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters. These are wages paid to plumbers, not prices charged to homeowners.Each BLS release
Permit feesThe city's own published fee schedule where we could read it (Grand Rapids, Sterling Heights, Flint, Dearborn, and eight more city, township and county forms). Where a city publishes none, the estimate uses the median of the published forms and says so.When the city adopts a new schedule
National published rangesThird-party national cost guides, used only as inputs to the estimate model. We have not been able to verify them, and we never show them or cite them as Michigan prices. Each estimate says how many of them it rests on.Twice a year, and when we re-check a source
Michigan company pricesPrices Michigan plumbing companies publish on their own websites, with the date we read them. They are shown in their own rows, and they also cap the low end of the estimate.Each price collection
Codes, permits, licensingMichigan statutes (MCL), Administrative Code rules, LARA pages, and city permit pages, each linked on the page that uses itWhen a rule changes or a reader reports one
Water hardness, lead service linesThe utility's own published annual water quality report or lead service line inventory, or the state's EGLE pages. Where a utility's report prints no hardness figure we say so.When the utility publishes a new report
RebatesThe utility's own program page. Dollar amounts appear only where the utility prints them.Each review

The rules every page follows

  1. 1A fact we cannot source is left out. A fact we could only read through a search summary stays in only if the sentence says so. We do not guess a code rule or a permit fee from memory.
  2. 2Every cost figure is labelled an estimate and shows how it was built. We never present a range as a quote.
  3. 3Pages say when you do not need a plumber. If a plunger or a reset button fixes the problem, the page says so before the form.
  4. 4We do not publish reviews, rankings or "best of" lists. We have no basis for ranking companies we do not inspect.
  5. 5Referral income never changes what a page recommends. Companies that pay for requests do not see pages before publication and cannot edit them.
  6. 6Each page shows the date it was last reviewed and, where it quotes prices, the date those prices are as of.
  7. 7Pages may be drafted with software help. A person reads each one, and every factual claim has to trace to a source we list, or it comes out.

How we estimate costs

The ranges on this site are estimates, not quotes. Each one is built the same way, in four steps. First, we take the national published cost ranges for the job (two or three per service, from third-party cost guides we have not been able to verify) and use the median of their lows and the median of their highs. Those guides are inputs only: we do not show them as Michigan prices. Second, we multiply by Michigan's plumber wage ratio to the US, 1.07 (the Michigan mean of $37.14 an hour divided by the national mean of $34.70, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). Third, for work that needs a permit, we add the permit fee the city publishes where we could read it, and a typical Michigan fee otherwise ($75 for most jobs and $100 for a water heater swap, the median of 11 city, township and county forms we read). Fourth, where Michigan plumbing companies publish prices on their own websites, the low end of our estimate is held at or below their median, and their prices are shown in their own rows with the date we read them.

A wage is what plumbers are paid, not what you are charged, and the wage ratio is the only way wages enter an estimate. The estimates are a model, not a survey: they do not rest on customer quotes or invoices, so read each range as a planning figure and not as an offer. Where the sources disagree widely the band is wide, and each estimate row says how many sources it rests on. Ranges are reviewed at least twice a year and whenever BLS or a city's fee schedule changes, and each page shows its last review date. Your actual price depends on your home, the work and the plumber you choose.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, tell us which page, which number or rule, and what you saw instead, with a link if you have one. We check it against the source. If you are right we fix the page, write the date of the fix at the foot of that page and add a line to the log below.

  • Oct 19, 2026: Michigan launch. No corrections yet.

How the site is paid for

PlumberMatch earns money when a plumbing company, or a referral partner acting for one, receives a homeowner request from us. That is a conflict of interest and we say so on every page. The way we deal with it is in the rules above: sources on every claim, no rankings, no paid placement, and pages that tell you when not to call anyone. The full account is on how it works.