Oshawa & Durham Region · 675 written inquiries · Dec 2021 – Jul 2026
What 675 Written Inquiries Taught Us About Durham Region Plumbing
For 4.5 years, Durham homeowners have told us what they need through our contact form — one message at a time. We read all 675 of them, added 16 months of local search data, and here’s the honest picture: what people ask for, and exactly when. No prices, no guesswork — just what the messages actually say.
- 34.8% of the inquiries homeowners write to us ask for a quote or estimate up front — roughly 1 in 3, before any phone call. 235 of 675 written inquiries
- 80% of bathroom-renovation inquiries are a request for a quote or consultation — the most quote-driven job we get. 117 of 147 bathroom-reno inquiries
- #1 Toilets, faucets and fixtures are the single thing Durham homeowners write in about most — 23.0% of everything. 155 of 675 written inquiries
- Apr + Oct Inquiries peak twice a year — spring and again in October — the same rhythm every year for 4.5 years. April 75 · October 70 (calendar-month sums)
All four figures come from written inquiries (n=675). What customers say after the job — 170 Google reviews — has its own section further down, and the two sources are never blended.
What Durham homeowners actually write in about
From written inquiries (n=675)
Every one of the 675 written inquiries we kept was sorted into a service category. Toilets, faucets and fixtures top the list — and bathroom renovations are close behind. 447 of the 675 inquiries (66.2%) named a service we could classify.
Percentages are shares of all 675 written inquiries. “Other / unspecified” covers inquiries that did not name a single service clearly (including a small water-treatment group folded in to protect privacy).
Most people who write in are planning, not panicking
From written inquiries (n=675)
We also sorted each inquiry by what the person wanted us to do. The biggest single group isn’t an emergency — it’s a request for a price. The contact form is where Durham homeowners plan work, and quotes top the list.
Bathroom renovation is the most quote-driven job in Durham Region: 117 of 147 bathroom-reno inquiries were a request for a quote or consultation — the highest quote share of any service we offer.
117 of 147 bathroom-reno inquiries
Shares are of all 675 written inquiries. Only 2.8% of written inquiries are flagged urgent — when a pipe bursts, people phone. The form is a planning channel: leak-and-pipe inquiries split 36 repairs to 27 quotes, and fixtures split 51 repairs, 50 installs and 46 quotes.
Plumbing-inquiry season peaks in April — and again in October
This is the pattern no single year could show us. Adding up 4.5 years of inquiries by calendar month, two peaks appear every time: spring and October. Bathroom-renovation inquiries follow the same twin-peak rhythm — homeowners plan renos for spring and fall, not summer.
Each point is the total for that calendar month across December 2021 through July 2026. Bathroom-reno inquiries run 48 across March–May versus 31 across all of June–September. The quietest months overall are November (41) and June (42).
Show the monthly data
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All inquiries | 58 | 59 | 69 | 75 | 57 | 42 | 56 | 50 | 48 | 70 | 41 | 50 |
| Bathroom-reno | 15 | 14 | 16 | 19 | 13 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 18 | 8 | 13 |
What Durham searches for: drains dominate local search interest
Alongside our own inbox, we tracked how often hayesplumbing.ca showed up in Google for four families of plumbing searches over 16 months. This is search interest — how often these topics were searched in our area — not phone calls, jobs or sales. Drain, clog and sewer searches tower over everything else.
Over the 16 months, drain/clog/sewer drew 86,970 impressions — 3.8× the water-heater class (22,916) — and peaks in summer. Water-heater search interest climbed hard into 2026, reaching 4,429 in June 2026 versus a spring-2025 average of about 793 (roughly 5.6×). Leak/pipe (24,660) sits mid-pack; sump/flood (3,407) is small but spikes with spring melt.
Impressions reflect how often the site appeared for these searches, which is shaped by ranking as well as demand — so we read the seasonal shape, not year-over-year levels, and never as traffic or sales.
Show the monthly impressions
| Class | Mar25 | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan26 | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drain/clog/sewer | 7726 | 6207 | 7284 | 8316 | 8504 | 7625 | 4691 | 4252 | 4187 | 4717 | 4169 | 3937 | 2907 | 3883 | 4134 | 4431 | 86,970 |
| Leak/pipe/burst | 2712 | 1018 | 1807 | 2126 | 2118 | 2244 | 848 | 1668 | 1561 | 1492 | 1453 | 1189 | 1152 | 847 | 1204 | 1221 | 24,660 |
| Water heater | 1708 | 517 | 497 | 448 | 1890 | 2461 | 1315 | 446 | 530 | 822 | 1199 | 903 | 1209 | 1651 | 2891 | 4429 | 22,916 |
| Sump/flood | 450 | 170 | 155 | 131 | 366 | 260 | 120 | 56 | 87 | 225 | 182 | 74 | 286 | 366 | 262 | 217 | 3,407 |
The questions homeowners actually ask
358 of the 675 inquiries carried a real question. Grouping the 15 most common question themes into families shows where curiosity concentrates. Family totals below are simply the theme counts added together — nothing is re-labelled.
- Bathroom renovation quotes27
- Shower or tub replacement quotes19
- Bathroom renovation quote / consultation12
- Shower repair & replacement11
- General quote or pricing inquiry19
- Scheduling & callback availability10
- Miscellaneous service questions9
- Toilet installation / replacement / repair15
- Dripping faucet or spout repair10
- Faucet installation or replacement9
- Miscellaneous leak or pipe inspection23
- Pipe & valve installation11
- Water-heater related inquiries16
- Kitchen sink drain clogging9
- Dishwasher or appliance installation8
These 15 themes account for 208 of the 358 questions. One number stands out for what’s missing: only 13 of all 675 inquiries named a budget figure. Durham homeowners ask for pricing constantly — but almost never volunteer a number of their own.
What 170 Google reviews add
Written inquiries tell us what people ask for before a job. Google reviews are the other side of the story — what customers say after it. We read all 170 public Google reviews of Hayes Plumbing (retrieved July 11, 2026); 147 of the 170 carry written comments, and the corpus averages 4.3 stars — the same figure the public listing displays.
- 4.3★ Average rating across every public Google review we could read — matching the listing. 170 reviews · 147 with written text
- 46.3% praise courtesy or professionalism — “polite,” “professional,” “respectful,” “clean.” 68 of 147 text reviews
- 40.1% praise speed or responsiveness — “same-day,” “prompt,” “right away.” 59 of 147 text reviews
- ≈1 in 4 use repeat-customer language — “again,” “for years,” “always use.” 34 of 147 text reviews (23.1%)
| Measure | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Public Google reviews read (retrieved Jul 11, 2026) | 170 | — |
| Reviews with written text | 147 of 170 | 86.5% |
| Average star rating | 4.3★ | |
| Courtesy / professionalism praised | 68 of 147 | 46.3% |
| Speed / responsiveness praised | 59 of 147 | 40.1% |
| Repeat-customer language | 34 of 147 | 23.1% |
| Emergency / urgent work described — reviews | 15 of 170 | 8.8% |
| Emergency / urgent flagged — written inquiries | 19 of 675 | 2.8% |
Every figure above states its own denominator: “of 147” means the reviews with written text; “of 170” means all reviews including the 23 that are star-rating-only; “of 675” means written inquiries. Review numbers are kept separate from the inquiry numbers elsewhere on this page — the two sources measure different moments and we don’t blend them.
How we built this — and what it can and can’t tell you
Form data through July 9, 2026; Google reviews retrieved July 11, 2026. We’d rather show our work than round it off.
The written-inquiry sample
Everything on this page about what people ask for comes from 675 messages that real homeowners typed into the contact form at hayesplumbing.ca between December 2021 and July 2026 — more than 4.5 years (first kept message Dec 11, 2021; last July 9, 2026). We call these “written inquiries” because that is exactly what they are: what someone chose to write to us, not a phone call, a job or a sale.
How we got from raw submissions to 675
Our form-submissions records held 1,263 total submissions (Dec 8, 2021 – July 9, 2026). Of those, 1,225 carried an actual message; the other 38 had no usable text. From the 1,225 we removed 550 before counting anything:
- 490 — URL / link spam (backlink and search-ranking solicitations, affiliate invites, loan and crypto pitches). A spot-check of 20 random removals was 20/20 spam.
- 53 — other spam patterns (crypto/loan offers, database-for-sale and B2B solicitations, template praise bots). Spot-check 20/20 spam.
- 7 — our own form-health test submissions.
That leaves 675 kept (1,225 − 550). Anything that slipped past the filters was labelled neutral by the classifier, not counted as a customer signal.
The Google-review sample
Hayes Plumbing & Bathroom Renovations has a publicly visible Google listing carrying real customer reviews — 170 of them, averaging 4.3 stars, which we read in full (retrieved July 11, 2026). 147 include written comments; 23 are star-rating-only and are counted in every total but carry no text signal. All 170 are included in the review findings above — none were removed for being unfavorable, and none were invented to fill a gap.
Two limits we hold to: Google shows review dates only as rough ages (“2 years ago”), so we use them to year precision only and they contribute nothing to the monthly charts; and because reviews almost never say which town the writer is in, every city figure on this page still comes from written inquiries only.
The search-interest data (a separate source)
The search-interest chart is Google Search Console impressions for hayesplumbing.ca from March 1, 2025 to July 8, 2026 (16 full months plus a partial July), grouped into four search families. Impressions measure how often the site appeared for those searches — a proxy for local search interest that is also shaped by ranking. We publish it only as “search interest,” never as traffic, calls or sales.
Privacy & honesty rules we held to
- We publish counts and shares only — never any individual’s message, name or address.
- No published category is smaller than 5. One small water-treatment group was folded into “Other” to stay above that floor.
- Where a share has a denominator smaller than 675 (for example the question themes, based on 358 questions), we state that denominator with it.
- This is one channel of one plumbing company in Durham Region. It describes what people write to us — a useful window, not the whole market.
Cite this page
The findings on this page are ours to share — researchers, journalists and homeowners are welcome to cite them with attribution. The underlying aggregate figures are available as a downloadable dataset.
https://hayesplumbing.ca/oshawa-plumbing-data/ — based on 675 contact-form inquiries (Dec 2021–Jul 2026) and 16 months of Google Search Console search-interest data.
Download the aggregated data (CSV) — aggregate counts only; no customer text, no personal information.
Frequently asked questions
How many customer inquiries is this based on?
675 written inquiries that Durham Region homeowners submitted through the Hayes Plumbing contact form between December 2021 and July 2026 — more than 4.5 years of real messages, after spam and test submissions were removed.
What do Durham homeowners contact a plumber about most?
Toilets, faucets and fixtures are the single most-written-about topic — 155 of the 675 inquiries (23.0%). Bathroom-renovation plumbing is close behind at 147 (21.8%), followed by leak and pipe repair (75).
When is plumbing-inquiry season busiest?
April is the busiest month (75 inquiries summed across the years) and October is second (70). The quietest are November (41) and June (42). Bathroom-renovation inquiries follow the same spring-and-fall twin peaks.
Is bathroom renovation really that quote-driven?
Yes. 117 of 147 bathroom-renovation inquiries — 80% — are a request for a quote or consultation. That is the highest quote share of any service category we tracked.
Are these numbers prices or quotes?
No. This page holds no cost figures. It describes what homeowners ask about and when they ask — not what work costs. For an actual price we visit the home and provide a written quote.
What plumbing topic gets searched for most in the area?
Drain, clog and sewer searches dominate local search interest — 86,970 Google impressions over 16 months, about 3.8× the water-heater search class. This measures search interest in the topic, not jobs booked.
Have a plumbing project in mind? Let’s talk.
We’re Hayes Plumbing & Bathroom Renovations — family-owned in Oshawa since 1961, serving Ajax, Oshawa, Whitby, Pickering and Clarington. If you’re one of the many Durham homeowners planning a bathroom, replacing a fixture or chasing a leak, we’d be glad to give you a straight answer and a written quote.
Ask us about our senior labour-rate discount. 448 Ritson Rd. South, Unit 4, Oshawa, ON.
Explore our services
- Bathroom RenovationsThe most quote-driven job we do
- General PlumbingFixtures, taps and everyday repairs
- Drain Cleaning & RooterThe area’s most-searched topic
- Leak Detection & RepairFind it before it spreads
- Water FiltrationCleaner water at the tap
- Emergency PlumbingWhen it can’t wait for the form
- Plumber in OshawaOur home base since 1961
- ReviewsWhat Durham neighbours say
- About Hayes PlumbingFamily-owned since 1961
