About True Flow Plumbing PDX
A woman-owned, family-operated plumbing company based in Hillsboro, licensed in Oregon under CCB #200212, working across Washington County and the Portland metro.
What We Actually Do
We're a residential and light-commercial plumbing company. The work splits into a few buckets, and it's worth being specific rather than listing every service word we could think of:
Water heaters
Repair, replacement, and annual service on tank units; installation, repair, and descaling on tankless. Tank failures and “no hot water” calls are the single most common reason people ring us.
Drains & sewers
Drain cleaning and hydro jetting, sewer camera inspection, sewer scope for home purchases, trenchless sewer repair, CIPP pipe lining, and pipe bursting.
Leaks & pipes
Leak detection and repair, whole-home repiping, water line replacement, and the smaller work — angle stops, supply lines, hose bibs — that quietly causes the expensive damage.
Gas & fixtures
Gas line repair, new gas runs and appliance connections, backflow testing, faucets, toilets, shower valves, garbage disposals, and sump pumps.
What we don't do: we're plumbers, not an HVAC company. We'll run and size the gas line to a furnace or heater and connect it, but we don't repair the heating equipment itself. We'd rather tell you that up front than send someone out to look at a furnace we can't fix. Same with roof leaks — if water is coming in from above during rain, you want a roofer, and we'll say so on the phone rather than charging you for the visit that discovers it.
What Woman-Owned Means Here
True Flow Plumbing PDX is majority-owned and operated by a woman, and that isn't a marketing line bolted onto the footer — she owns the controlling share of the business and runs day-to-day operations.
We mention it for a practical reason as much as a principled one. Plumbing is a trade where a lot of people, particularly women scheduling work on a house they live in alone, have had the experience of being talked down to, upsold, or quoted a number that moved once the work started. If that's shaped how you feel about calling a plumber, it's a reasonable thing to have learned. The way we try to answer it is with published pricing and plain explanations, both of which are further down this page.
To be straightforward about the paperwork: we describe ourselves as woman-owned as a statement of fact about who owns the company. We are not currently certified through Oregon COBID or WBENC, and we don't claim to be.
Why Does My Paperwork Say Clog Busters?
This is the question we get most often, so here's the plain answer. True Flow Plumbing PDX is the sister company of Clog Busters LLC. Same people, same trucks, same standards — two business names.
Where you'll notice it: if you finance work through our Wisetack application, the prequalification form reads “Paying Clog Busters LLC.” That's correct and expected, not an error and not a sign you've landed somewhere you didn't intend. The financing runs through the Clog Busters entity. Everything else — the estimate, the work, the warranty, the person answering your call — is us.
We'd rather explain that here than have you discover it at the moment you're entering financial details on a form.
What We Charge
Most plumbing companies won't tell you a rate until someone is standing in your house. We publish ours, on the theory that you shouldn't have to book a visit to find out what an hour costs.
Mon–Fri, 8am–4pm
$185/hour plus parts & materials.
Evenings & early mornings
$462.50 minimum covering call-out and the first hour, then $185/hour.
Saturday & Sunday
$462.50 minimum covering call-out and the first hour, then $185/hour.
Estimates are free. Permit fees are set by the city and passed through at cost — we don't mark them up. Water heater replacement is quoted as a flat job price rather than hourly, because you should know that number before we start rather than watching a clock.
If a job can safely wait until regular hours, we'll tell you that on the phone instead of collecting an after-hours minimum you didn't need to pay.
How a Job Actually Goes
No mystery to it, but knowing the shape of it helps:
- You call or request an estimate. Describe what's happening. We'll tell you whether it's urgent, whether it can wait for regular hours, and sometimes whether it's a plumbing problem at all.
- We look at it. Diagnosis first. For drains and sewers that often means a camera, because clearing a line without knowing why it blocked usually means clearing it again in a few months.
- You get a number before work starts. If something changes once we're into it, you hear about it before we keep going — not on the invoice.
- Permits and inspection where required. Gas lines, water heaters, and sewer work are permitted and inspected. We pull the permit and meet the inspector.
- We tell you when repair beats replacement. Including when that means a smaller invoice for us. A well-maintained eight-year-old water heater with a failed thermocouple is a repair, not a sale.
What We Warranty
Most plumbers say they stand behind their work. Here is what that means in numbers. All of the below covers workmanship — our labour and installation. Equipment carries its own separate manufacturer warranty, which we'll come back to.
One year workmanship
Spot and point repairs, inside or outside — the single failed section, the one fitting, the isolated fix. Water heater installations also carry one year on our workmanship.
Five to ten years workmanship
Full repipes, water line replacement, and sewer repair or replacement. The exact term depends on the job, and we tell you which one applies before you agree to anything.
The gap between those two is wide for a straightforward reason. A spot repair is a fix to a system that keeps aging around it. A repipe or a new sewer line is a system we installed start to finish — we controlled every joint in it, so we're willing to stand behind it for years rather than months.
Workmanship and manufacturer warranties are two different things
This trips people up, so it's worth being plain about. Our warranty covers our work. If a joint we made leaks, or something we installed wasn't installed correctly, that's ours to put right.
The equipment carries its own warranty from whoever made it. Put a new water heater in and the tank itself is covered by the manufacturer, on their terms and their timeline — typically far longer than a year. So a new water heater is protected twice over, by two different parties, for two different things.
Worth knowing: most manufacturers require documented annual maintenance for their warranty to stay valid. A tank that fails at year seven with no service history is often a tank you end up paying for twice.
Ask which warranty applies to your job. If the answer is ever vague, that's a fair reason to keep calling around — with us or with anyone else.
Where We Work
We're based in Hillsboro and work across Washington County and the greater Portland metro:
Regular hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm. Emergency service is answered 24/7 — see service areas for the full list, or services for what we handle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is True Flow Plumbing PDX licensed and insured?
Yes. We're a licensed Oregon plumbing contractor, CCB #200212, and we carry insurance. You can look the license up on the Oregon Construction Contractors Board site, and we'd encourage you to do that with any contractor you're considering — including us.
What does True Flow Plumbing charge per hour?
$185 per hour plus parts and materials, Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm. Outside those hours and on weekends there's a $462.50 minimum that covers the call-out and the first hour, then $185 per hour after that. Estimates are free, and water heater replacements are quoted as a flat job price rather than hourly.
Why does the financing paperwork say Clog Busters LLC?
Because True Flow Plumbing PDX is the sister company of Clog Busters LLC, and financing runs through that entity. If you use our Wisetack financing option, the form will read "Paying Clog Busters LLC." That's correct and expected. The work, the estimate, and the people are the same either way.
Are you actually woman-owned?
Yes — the company is majority-owned and operated by a woman, who holds the controlling share and runs day-to-day operations. We should be equally clear about what we don't claim: we are not currently certified as a woman-owned business through Oregon COBID or WBENC. When we say woman-owned, we mean it as a statement about ownership, not as a certification.
Do you do furnace or heater repair?
No. That's HVAC work and we don't take it on. We handle the gas side — running and sizing the supply line to a heater, replacing corroded or undersized pipe, installing shutoff valves, connecting the appliance, and pressure-testing the system. If the heating equipment itself has failed, an HVAC contractor is who you want.
Do you charge for estimates or after-hours calls you talk me out of?
Estimates are free. And if you describe a situation that can safely wait until regular hours, we'll say so rather than booking an after-hours visit at the higher minimum. A slow drip you can catch in a bucket generally holds until morning. Water you can't stop, sewage backing up, or the smell of gas does not.
What kind of warranty do you offer?
It depends on the work, and it covers workmanship — our labour and installation. Spot and point repairs, inside or outside, carry one year. Water heater installations carry one year on our workmanship. Full repipes, water line replacement, and sewer repair or replacement carry five to ten years depending on the job. Separately from that, any equipment we install carries its own manufacturer warranty on the manufacturer's terms, which for a water heater tank is usually considerably longer than a year. We tell you which terms apply to your job before you agree to the work.
Ready to Work With a Plumber You Can Trust?
Call us today or request a free estimate online.