Islip issues plumbing permits to Town of Islip licensed plumbers only — a Suffolk County licence does not reach inside the Town. We hold the Islip licence, so the filing on your job is ours to make.
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631-587-0085WE ANSWER EVERY CALLThe Town of Islip licenses its own plumbers, and it is stricter about it than most places on Long Island. Chapter 40 of the Town Code set up a seven-member Plumbers’ Examining Board in 1967, and the rule it wrote is short: a plumbing permit is issued to a Town of Islip licensed plumber only, the work has to be done by that plumber or under their supervision, and licences cannot be subcontracted or rented. Suffolk County’s county-wide licence does not get you in — the county article steps aside wherever a town has written its own, and Islip has.
NJM holds the Town of Islip master plumber licence. In practice that means the permit for your job is ours to pull rather than something we have to go and find someone else to sign. It sounds like paperwork until the day it is not: a great deal of the unpermitted plumbing and gas work that turns up at a house sale in Brentwood or Bay Shore was done by somebody who could not have filed for it in the first place.
It is a big town to be licensed in. Islip runs from the Great South Bay up past MacArthur Airport and holds roughly 340,000 people — Brentwood alone is around 62,000, more than most Long Island villages put together, and Central Islip, Bay Shore, West Islip, Holbrook and Ronkonkoma each run past 18,000. We are about fifteen minutes from the western end of it.
Master PlumberLicensed to pull permits
TASK 86/87Certified for gas work
Navien NSSFactory-trained on tankless22+ years on Long Island · Plumbing, heating, cooling, gas and contracting under one roof
We don’t charge to quote a job. We do charge to find a problem nobody has identified yet. Which one you need — and what it costs — gets agreed on the phone, so nothing about the cost is a surprise on the doorstep.
You get the number on the phone, before anyone is dispatched, and it is what you are charged when the technician arrives. One rate across all four trades — plumbing, heating, cooling and gas.
A licensed, insured technician carrying the certifications the work needs, and the time to find what has actually failed — not a quick look and a guess.
A call-out advertised at almost nothing gets recovered once someone is standing in your basement. Get the number before anyone travels — from us, or from anyone else you call — and hold them to it when they arrive.
A boiler that fails in January is not a purchase anyone planned. Financing is available on the big-ticket work, so a system replacement does not have to come out of savings in one go.
Boiler, furnace and water heater replacement, a full air conditioning system, a whole-house repipe, sewer and water main work, and larger contracting jobs — kitchens, bathrooms, dormers and extensions.
At the estimate, before anything is scheduled. It is worth asking even if you think you will not need it, because knowing it is there changes what you are willing to consider fixing properly.
The price of the job. The quote is the quote whether you finance it or not — and on a straightforward repair it is usually not worth the paperwork. We will tell you which one you are looking at.
Islip’s flood provisions live inside the Zoning chapter rather than a standalone flood chapter, which is part of why this one gets missed. It is worth knowing before you replace a boiler on the south shore.
§ 68-442B(3)(a) requires that new AND replacement electrical equipment, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and plumbing connections be located at or above the base flood elevation, or designed to keep water out during a flood. A like-for-like boiler swap in a special flood hazard area is caught by that sentence. Plenty of people assume the rule only applies when you build.
Service equipment goes at or above BFE. The lowest floor, basement included, goes at two feet above BFE under § 68-442C(1). They are separate rules with separate heights, and merging them is how a job gets quoted wrong in both directions.
Under § 68-439B, work costing 50% or more of the structure’s pre-work market value is a substantial improvement, and the whole building has to be brought up to the flood standard rather than just the part you touched. It is worth knowing which side of that line a project sits on before it starts, not after.
The Town’s own hazard mitigation annex records that it does not participate in FEMA’s Community Rating System, citing funding and resource limits — so Islip policyholders get no CRS premium discount, unlike some neighbouring communities. Nothing we can change, but you should not be told otherwise.
The Town carries roughly 5,400 active flood policies and has paid out over $207 million across some 5,400 claims, with around 560 repetitive-loss properties. Superstorm Sandy put more than 14,000 Islip homes inside the inundation areas. Almost all of it is the south shore — Bay Shore, West Islip, East Islip, Oakdale, Great River.
No contractor should tell you what flood zone you are in from the kerb. Look the address up on FEMA’s Map Service Center, or ask the Building Division. Then we can price the work against the actual requirement instead of a guess.
"Are you licensed by the Town of Islip specifically?" Not "licensed and insured", not "licensed in Suffolk County" — licensed by Islip. The Town keeps its own register and its own examining board, and § 40-9A means the permit can only be issued to somebody on that list. A Suffolk County licence does not substitute here, and neither does a licence from Babylon or Huntington. It is a fair question and it is not rude to ask it.
"Who is pulling the permit, and is it going in your name?" § 40-2 requires that a Town of Islip-licensed master plumber hold a controlling interest in the business doing the work, and the code says plainly that no subcontracting or rental of licences is permitted. If the answer involves a licence borrowed from a third party you never meet, that is the arrangement the rule was written to stop.
"Does this job need a permit at all?" Often the honest answer is no, and we would rather say so. But the Town’s own list is broader than people expect: gas piping and new fixtures, an AC install whether central or ductless, a gas fireplace, a gas stove, an outdoor BBQ or fire pit run off the house gas, an oil tank going in or being abandoned, a lawn sprinkler connection, a commercial kitchen hood. A surprising number of the jobs homeowners think of as swaps are on that list.
And the reason any of it matters is the closing. Unpermitted plumbing, gas and mechanical work does not usually cause a problem while you live in the house. It causes a problem when a buyer’s attorney asks for the certificate and there isn’t one, and the fix has to happen against a contract date. Doing it on the permit the first time costs a filing fee and some scheduling. Doing it afterwards costs whatever the other side is willing to hold the deal up for.
Bay Shore and West Islip are roughly sixty per cent 1940s and 50s housing, and supply piping of that age fails in threes. We locate the leak properly before anything is opened up.
Much of the Town sits in the Southwest Sewer District and much of it does not — West Islip is a documented unsewered community. Which one you are in changes the job, so we establish it first.
Installation, service and honest repair-or-replace advice. In a 1950s house the heating plant is usually on its second life, and the reason the last one failed early is usually worth ten minutes.
An AC install needs a Town permit here, central or ductless. We file it. Ductless suits the additions and converted spaces the original system never reached.
TASK 86/87 certified. Islip defines gas piping in its own code and permits it separately — gas stoves, fireplaces, dryers and outdoor fire pits all count, not just the meter run.
Both directions carry a Town permit, above ground and below. An abandonment done without one is the item that surfaces at a house sale.
Gas, oil and propane, including high-efficiency tankless. Navien NSS certified.
Every day of the year. Sunrise Highway runs straight from North Babylon into Bay Shore and the rest of the south shore — this is close to home for us.
What it says on the coupon is what comes off the bill. Mention it when you call.
The Town of Islip, specifically. That distinction matters here more than almost anywhere: Islip wrote its own plumber licensing law in 1967, and Suffolk County’s county-wide licensing article expressly steps aside inside any town that has done so. Under § 40-9A the Town issues plumbing permits to Town of Islip licensed plumbers only. So a contractor holding a Suffolk County licence, or a licence from a neighbouring town, cannot file your permit here. We hold the Islip licence and the filing is ours to make.
Yes. The Town’s permit list includes an AC unit install whether it is a central system or a ductless mini-split, and that catches a lot of people who reasonably assume a replacement is not a new installation. The same list picks up gas stoves and fireplaces, outdoor gas BBQs and fire pits, oil tanks going in or being abandoned, lawn sprinkler connections and commercial kitchen hoods. If you tell us what the job is we will tell you honestly whether it needs a filing — sometimes it genuinely does not.
Ask us and we will check before we quote. Brightwaters, Islandia, Ocean Beach and Saltaire are the four incorporated villages inside the Town, and a village can run its own building department and its own licensing separately from Islip. We could not confirm from the published village codes whether any of those four license plumbers themselves, so rather than assume either way we check the specific address with the village first. If it turns out we are not the right people to pull that permit we will say so — and the heating, cooling, gas and contracting side of the work is a different question again.
Possibly not like for like. Islip’s flood provision at § 68-442B(3)(a) covers new and replacement heating, ventilating, air conditioning and plumbing service equipment, requiring it at or above base flood elevation or designed to keep water out — the word "replacement" is in the code text. If you are inside a special flood hazard area, the replacement may need to sit higher than the one it is replacing. That is not a reason to leave a failing boiler in place; it is a reason to find out where you stand before you buy equipment. Look your address up on FEMA’s Map Service Center and we will price it against the real requirement.
Suffolk County Water Authority put its first 1,4-dioxane advanced oxidation treatment system into service at its Commercial Boulevard pump station in Central Islip, approved by the State Health Department in February 2018 and expected to remove more than 97% of detected 1,4-dioxane. SCWA publishes an annual water quality report and that is the right place to read your own figures. What we will not do is quote you a hardness number for your street — SCWA does not publish hardness by distribution area, so anyone giving you one is guessing. If you want the softener question answered properly, the answer is a water test, not a sales pitch.
Maybe, but check the street first. SCWA has been replacing ageing mains across the Town — around 4,300 feet of new ductile iron on North Thompson Drive in Bay Shore in 2025, on pipe that had been breaking repeatedly, and an earlier East Islip run that replaced transite pipe. Work on a main will discolour water for a while and it is not your plumbing. It is worth ruling that out before anyone quotes you a repipe, which is why we ask what else is going on in the street before we open a wall.
The Town of Islip Building Division at One Manitton Court in Islip runs a separate plumbing inspection line from its building inspectors, which is a good sign — plumbing gets looked at by people who do plumbing. The Plumbers’ Examining Board that issues the licences sits at a different address on Main Street. We handle the filing and the scheduling; you do not need to deal with either office.
The whole Town, and the western end of it is close to home — Bay Shore and West Islip are a short run east on Sunrise Highway from our shop in North Babylon. Brentwood, Central Islip, Islip, East Islip, Sayville, Oakdale, Bohemia, Holbrook and Ronkonkoma are all Town of Islip and all served. Call 631-587-0085 with the address and we will be straight with you about timing rather than optimistic about it.
Based in North Babylon, working across both counties — close enough to get there fast, local enough to know the housing stock and the permit offices.
Proudly serving all of Nassau and Suffolk County, with deep local roots near our North Babylon home base.
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The experience I had with with NJM Mechanical & Contracting was a pleasant one. I had the pleasure of doing business with Neil. The work I had done was a basement entrance to my yard and it came out wonderful. The work performed as well as the communication is 10/10.
5 out of 5 stars
Neil has handled all my A/C needs over the years. He's very communicative and open about service charges. He never steers you wrong
5 out of 5 stars
As always, Neil is a pleasure to have as my plumber. He is so professional and knowledgeable. I wouldn't use anyone else! I highly, highly recommend him.
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