Monkey Wrench Plumbing and Heating

Monkey Wrench Plumbing and Heating is a Salem plumbing shop with a striking pattern in its 66 reviews since 2023: there isn't a bad one in the bunch. Eric, the owner, runs it as a family business and says he's covered Salem and the surrounding North Shore — Beverly, Peabody, Danvers, Marblehead, Lynn, and Swampscott — for 18 years. The written record backs up that headline with specifics, not just adjectives. Reviewers describe Eric showing up the same day to pull out a burst cast-iron drain pipe and flooded kitchen and replace it with PVC before the day was over, tracking down a hidden wall leak while fixing a corroded shower valve, and — in one 2023 review — regutting and replumbing an entire drain stack in a 1900s three-family from scratch, done to code without a callback. He's Navian-certified and has repaired tankless water heaters on short notice for families left without hot water, and in a 2023 review an HOA manager in Lynn described him fixing a frozen boiler in a vacant unit within a couple of hours during a deep cold snap. The jobs on file run the ordinary range of the trade too — water heater swaps, gas line hookups, garbage disposal and faucet installs, drain clearing — and the same note recurs across almost all of them: he responds quickly and explains the fix before doing it. Two separate North Shore Reddit threads recommend him by name, independent of the review platforms. The state's registry confirms his Massachusetts plumber license is active, the company carries an A+ with the Better Business Bureau, and Google shows five stars across 70 ratings — all consistent with the written reviews. One thing worth knowing before calling: the pace of new reviews has slowed lately, with only one posted in the last six months against a much heavier run in 2023–2025, and nearly every account describes working directly with Eric himself rather than a larger crew — in line with the family-owned description. Neither is a mark against the work on file, but it's worth confirming his current availability and timeline, especially for anything that isn't urgent, and checking that your town is inside the area he lists. Monkey Wrench is a solid call for everyday plumbing and heating repairs — leaks, water heaters, boilers, drain work — from a North Shore customer base that keeps naming him directly. Confirm he can take the job and roughly when before you count on same-day service.