About Plumbing & HVAC

Plumbing & HVAC

Overview

Plumbing & HVAC is a Canadian trade magazine for the mechanical contracting industry, published by Marked Business Media Inc. It is written, in its own masthead's words, for the individuals across Canada who purchase, specify or approve the selection of plumbing, piping, hot water heating, fire protection, warm air heating, air conditioning, ventilation, refrigeration, controls and related systems and products. In practice that means plumbing and HVAC/R contractors, wholesalers and the manufacturers who sell to them — the people who install and service the mechanical systems of Canadian homes and buildings.

The magazine appears in print and as a digital edition, supported by a busy website carrying daily industry news, feature articles, product coverage and an events calendar. Issues in 2026 have included combined May/June and July/August editions and a September 2026 issue of some eighty pages, alongside themed supplements such as a Contractors' Guide to Residential Hydronic Systems and a Business Management Supplement. Although the title was born in Toronto and is still often listed there, its publishing office today is in Oshawa, Ontario, where Marked Business Media occupies the second floor of a converted century home at 167 Simcoe Street North.

History

Plumbing & HVAC descends from an earlier Toronto trade title, Mechanical Buyer & Specifier. The lineage is documented in a retirement tribute the publisher printed in the magazine itself: editor Simon Blake left a newspaper career in 1998 to join "the plumbing and heating magazine in Toronto called Mechanical Buyer & Specifier," and that magazine changed its name a few years later to Plumbing & HVAC. Blake's planned short stay turned into twenty-two years as editor, over which, the tribute records, he became a leading voice in the industry, interviewing countless contractors and engineers and attending conferences and trade shows across North America.

Blake insisted that every cover of the magazine feature people rather than products — "Product pictures are great, but our industry is about people building things," he said — and the industry returned the respect: he was presented with the President's Award at the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada's 2019 conference and was recognised by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating for his contributions before retiring after twenty-two years of service, around 2020. The tribute was written by Mark Vreugdenhil, the magazine's publisher, whose Marked Business Media Inc. continues to publish the title. A print masthead from the period describes the magazine as published eight times annually; recent years have settled into a rhythm of combined bimonthly editions plus special supplements.

The magazine should not be confused with HPAC, a separate mechanical-trades title published by Annex Business Media, or with the American magazine Plumbing & Mechanical — Plumbing & HVAC is an independent Canadian title with its own publisher, staff and readership.

Content and Coverage

The editorial mix is built around the working life of mechanical contractors. Technical features walk readers through real installations and system design: recent and representative articles cover commissioning hydronic systems, carbon dioxide refrigeration applications as traditional refrigerants are restricted, preventing frozen and burst pipes, ground-source heat pump retrofits in historic homes, and indoor air quality and ventilation guidance. Case studies drawn from actual jobs — a boiler retrofit in one of Oshawa's oldest homes, leak-detection technology developed by a Toronto-area commercial plumber — are a staple of the magazine.

Business coverage is equally central. Long-running columnist Bruce Nagy writes on climate policy, retrofit incentive programmes and building codes, and the magazine runs regular material on running a contracting business, from performance-reward programmes for employees to selling an HVAC company and plugging profit leaks. Its technical bylines include refrigeration specialist Greg Scrivener, on carbon dioxide systems, and contributors such as Francesco Lo Presti and business columnist Ron Coleman. Every two years the magazine surveys its readers for an Industry Trends Reader Survey — editions were conducted in 2016, 2018 and 2021 — tracking contractor expectations for hydronics, heat pumps, electrification and fuels. The website's news section reports association and industry developments (HRAI awards, CIPH events, Wolseley store openings, code and STANDATA changes), a Product Watch strand covers new tools and equipment, and clearly labelled sponsored articles from manufacturers run alongside the editorial content.

Audience and Reach

The readership is the Canadian mechanical contracting trade: plumbing, heating, hydronics and HVAC/R contractors, the wholesalers who supply them and the manufacturers and industry bodies — CIPH, HRAI and their peers — that surround them. The publisher's advertising proposition, stated on its own Advertise page, is that Plumbing & HVAC requires every recipient of the magazine to have purchasing authority, and that it audits the number of locations it reaches rather than flooding single offices with copies; those are the publisher's own claims, presented here as such. The same page points advertisers to a media kit, a circulation statement and readership studies, and says the company twice a year commissions Signet Research to conduct advertising-readership studies for its advertisers.

Print circulation terms from the magazine's masthead give an annual Canadian subscription at $40 plus taxes and a single copy at $5, with United States and foreign subscriptions priced above that. No independently audited circulation figure for the magazine is published in the sources consulted for this profile, and none is asserted here; what can be said is that the title has served the trade continuously since its predecessor title of the late 1990s and continues to publish on schedule in 2026.

Digital Presence

The magazine's home is plumbingandhvac.ca, which combines the print features archive with a daily news service, product coverage, a videos section, subscription and advertising information, and an events calendar listing industry gatherings — the site's calendar in the autumn of 2026 looks ahead to events including the Kitchen + Bath Canada show in November 2026 and the AHR Expo in January 2027. Its online archive is deep, holding news and features reaching back years, including a run of daily trade reporting from the early 2020s on association affairs, code changes and building-permit data. Full digital editions of the print magazine are published through FlipHTML5, including the September 2026 issue and its supplements, and the brand maintains Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube channels and an RSS feed. Articles on the site in October 2026 — on copper press technology, artificial-intelligence back-office tools for contractors and profit management heading into 2027 — confirm a title publishing steadily through the current year.

Ownership and Organisation

Plumbing & HVAC is published by Marked Business Media Inc., an independent Canadian trade publisher headed by publisher Mark Vreugdenhil. The company's office is at 167 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1G 4S8 — a large, three-storey century home converted to offices whose own boiler retrofit was, fittingly, documented in the magazine's pages by Simon Blake. The magazine's telephone number is (289) 638-2133, and its Canada Post Publications Mail Sales Product Agreement number is 43029513, with postage paid at Toronto. The Advertise page invites advertising enquiries directly to the publisher.

Contact and Availability

Plumbing & HVAC Magazine, Marked Business Media Inc., 167 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada L1G 4S8; telephone (289) 638-2133. Subscriptions, the current media kit and digital editions are available through the magazine's website, plumbingandhvac.ca, where the current issue and recent combined editions and supplements can be read in full. The magazine is distributed nationally to the plumbing and HVAC/R trade across Canada.