Reviewer G.
04/12/2017 12:00:00 SA
You get what you pay for. With most of my reviews (largely of restaurants), we'd already be knee-deep in snark by this point, folks. This time, I'll have to restrain myself, because Plumbing Express lived up to their claim, which representative Blake Mowe trotted out (in a polite way) when I'd brought him a cheaper estimate for a full-house re-pipe job from another company.
We all know how you usually have to watch yourself with contractors, particularly with a job as major as redoing a home's entire plumbing system. You're just waiting on the other shoe to drop to the bottom of Lake Superior, and on its way down you're certain it's going to take your wallet with you, whether now in the form of an inflated quote, or later when a pipe installed in a substandard manner tears itself free of its moorings and vomits all over an interior wall and floor like the girl from the Exorcist. That second scenario would describe where my luck would typically settle, by the way.
Here's my forensic break-down of the situation as it was: I was blessed to purchase a home with not one, but several major defects an incompetent home inspector didn't notice. In Georgia, developers and materials producers win, not consumers, who are left with the fallout from houses built in ten minutes in the cheapest manner possible compliments of the never-ending population boom that will one day push the metro area northward all the way to Brasstown Bald. Stop complaining, fellow homeowners. There's graft and property tax revenue to be had!
One of the symptoms of this lovely phenomenon is called polybutylene piping, which we had in spades and which had already leaked outside twice. If you haven't heard of PB, just Google it and make sure you don't have it in your house. If you know what it is, you're probably here looking for the meat of this review. On with the gory details.
Of the plumbers and re-piping places we called, Blake Mowe was the quickest to get in touch with us. He is extremely dedicated to customer service. Never once did I get the impression that he was trying to rip me off or skirt my questions. He arrived with a written statement of exactly how his company would tackle the job at hand. We were also going to have our ancient Rheem water heater replaced and some additional work done in the yard, where we'd already replaced most of the supply line, but where said line needed to be brought into the house.
Yes, of course we sought other quotes. Some were in the stratosphere. One man--an honestly good guy--was cheaper. That's when Blake busted out the infamous quote that topped this review. Blake was giving honest advice. Ultimately, as cheap as I am, I ponied up the slightly larger amount for Plumbing Express. See, Plumbing Express is a dedicated re-pipe company and they back their actual re-pipe material (Uphonor CPVC) *and* workmanship for twenty-holy-crap-years. That's also transferable to the next property owner. They've been in business for a while. Of course there's a few minor components not covered, but basically when the job is finished, you're sleeping easy every night. That's fantastic.
And it's worth the premium over the next-cheapest guy. But were they overselling themselves?
The team arrived. The quality of work was excellent. We had water back the first night. And that's *with* the new water heater. The holes in our walls? Perfectly patched up and matched by a gentleman named Keith, who does credit to the under-appreciated art-form called dry-walling. Keith, who is one of the nicest guys I've met, was a hell of a hard worker. He even took extra steps I didn't know he'd do, like moving some of the furniture back in place, putting in a custom panel in the garage for accessing the new PRV and such from that point on. Plumbing Express needs to keep this gentleman around.
As with any job of this scale, there were a few last items that wound up on a punchlist. None of these were show-stoppers. Just the kind of touch-up stuff you'd see when you've had an army of guys working on different parts of the house simultaneously. In yet another show of their professionalism, a gentleman named Ed and his son arrived on a Friday afternoon, of all things, and knocked out these items quickly and perfectly, even taking care of a few items outside the scope of the original job.
We were done in three days. Three days!
I really think the review as it stands says everything it needs to, so I'll leave this as it is. Said shoe I mentioned? Never dropped. And I was very impressed. Well done, Plumbing Express.