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Toilet Repair in Gloucester, MA

In Gloucester, 84% of the housing was built before 1990. About 63% of households own their home and 37% rent, so this page has two readers.

Short version

Tenure in Gloucester is close to even, at 63% owner-occupied and 37% rented. Where a home is rented the fixture is usually the landlord's to repair, so the lease decides who arranges the work and who is billed for it. Housing there is 84% pre-1990, which dates the house rather than the fixture.

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, tables B25003 and B25034.

Tank and Bowl is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. Every state page sets out who licenses plumbers there and where to check, so you can confirm before work begins. We carry out no work, we sell no fixtures, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

Who this page is for in Gloucester

Tenure in Gloucester is genuinely mixed — 37% of its 13,180 households rent. That matters more than it sounds: it decides whether the next step is calling a contractor or writing to a landlord.

Occupied homes in GloucesterShareHomes
Owner-occupied63%8,347
Rented37%4,833

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25003 (tenure), 2023 release. Universe: 13,180 occupied housing units.

What the age of Gloucester’s housing suggests

84% of Gloucester’s housing predates 1990 and 48% predates 1940. That makes the pre-standard fixture the base case here rather than the exception.

It is a statement about the housing stock. A house built in 1935 has had ninety years in which somebody could have replaced the toilet, and many have.

Housing in GloucesterShare
Built before 194048%
Built 1940 to 198935%
Built 1990 onwards16%

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25034 (year structure built), 2023 release. Universe: 14,630 housing units, including vacant ones — a different universe from the tenure table above. Flush volumes: US EPA WaterSense, tank-type toilet supporting statement

What is actually wrong with it

Most calls are one of five things, and the useful first step is deciding which. Three of them — running, a weak flush and no flush at all — live inside the tank. The other two, a leak at the base and a rocking fixture, are underneath it and are related to each other.

Two questions are worth asking whoever comes: which part they tested before reaching a conclusion, and whether anything under the fixture needs attention. The second one is what separates a repair that lasts from one that repeats.

Other Massachusetts towns we route in

  • East Boston 29% owner-occupied · 79% built before 1990
  • Melrose 68% owner-occupied · 89% built before 1990
  • Haverhill 61% owner-occupied · 80% built before 1990
  • Weymouth 61% owner-occupied · 83% built before 1990
  • Winchester 83% owner-occupied · 84% built before 1990

Everywhere we route in Massachusetts

Checking a plumber in Massachusetts

Checking a credential in Massachusetts

Massachusetts licenses are issued by the Massachusetts Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters, which publishes a public search you can use before work begins.

If the dye test pointed at the flapper, that is a part, not a fixture.Worth saying on the call, because it changes what somebody arrives with. We connect you to a contractor covering your area and you are never charged. Toilets are one subject; we serve Gloucester on all the others too.

Call (888) 525-3450
Call (888) 525-3450