Best Gas Water Heater Installation in San Francisco CA

I noticed water damage under my kitchen sink. I filed a claim with my insurance, and the day before they were scheduled to come, they informed me I needed a plumber to identify the leak source. I called BeastBay. They were able to fit me in same day. Stephen Arruda came out, and was super friendly, and knowledgeable. He even offered to wash one of my cups he accidentally dropped while looking for the source of the water damage. I have never had a plumber come out, that I wanted to continue to use as my go-to plumbing service. I will recommend them and use them again! Customer service goes a long way!

Original one-star review:
My landlord hired Mr. Rooter to install a gas shutoff valve on the gas meter on my house and my neighbors house. A plumber named Lance came over at 8AM and installed mine first. When he turned the gas back on I told him where all the pilot lights were that had to be re-lit. Oh those are self-lighting he said. I said no, they are not self-lighting! After a little argument about what kinds of appliances I had, he said well I can check. I took him to all of the pilots--water heater, floor furnace, and three pilots on the stove--and I watched as he re-lit each one.

When he finished at my house, he began working on the neighbor's shutoff valve. I checked that he didn't need access to my unit anymore, and I locked up and went to work around 10AM. I had an uneasy feeling about that guy unfamiliarity with gas appliances all day, so I decided to go home early to check on the house and make sure my cats were okay. When I opened my front door at 4PM, I was almost knocked over by the natural gas that poured out.  I found my two cats were still alive, so I stuffed them into carriers, ran outside and called 911.

The fire department got there within one minute, shut off the gas, contacted PG&E, and began taking readings. One fire fighter remarked that my cats were alive because my bedroom window was open.  They brought giant fans into the house to air out the gas while we waited for PG&E.

I called the plumber and the landlord and when the plumber saw what was going on he said that it was the old stove. (The stove is fine.) After I pressed him for more information, he finally admitted that he had accidentally triggered my shutoff valve while he was installing the neighbor's shutoff valve, and then he simply turned the gas back on in my house WITHOUT RE-LIGHTING ANY PILOT LIGHTS. My house filled up with natural gas from four different un-lit pilot lights for the next six hours.

This plumber knows next to nothing about common gas appliances, and he is a danger to any customer who hires him to do any work related to gas lines. I have reported him to the CA State Licensing Board.

UPDATE and two added stars ten days later:
Spencer, the owner, called me to apologize and assure me that he takes this very seriously. He said that he spent an hour talking to Lance about his poor judgement and he is updating his training to include this issue. He said that he gave my landlord a full refund on the installation of the shutoff valves. I hope all of this is true.

I can say that Spencer's apology and acknowledgement meant a lot to me, because the incident left me feeling horrible about trusting anyone who calls himself a professional. Most of us want to believe that the professionals know best, and trust that they would never do anything to jeopardize our safety. It's frightening when that trust is broken.

My wife has been doing business with these guys for decades and they have been consistently providing us with great service. We were recently forced, due to a PG&E program, to deal with California Energy and had huge problems with them. When one of the units they put in two years ago went down, we called Tromborg and, once again, they came though for us (clearly no hard feelings on their end). When my wife called late morning they recognized her and said they were very busy but would fit us in between 3PM and 6PM. They got here at 4PM and we were back up and running by 4:30PM (dirty flame sensor - after only 2 years! Not good Trane). We highly recommend them for fast competent, and reasonably prices service.

Toilet broke this morning.  After calling all over town  and leaving messages, Nick at Advanced Plumbing immediately picked up the phone and was over in a couple hours despite a very busy day.  He was a few minutes later than his estimate which didn't bother us at all.  Nevertheless he volunteered to do the $125 job for free!   Did it in a couple minutes and did it well.  Feel bad we didn't give him a bigger tip but we'll definitely call back. Highly recommended!

Joven understands customer service.  We needed our shower snaked.  He did it no problems.  Then, without bening asked, he tighten the shower head which had a minor leak/was squirting from the threading.  His rates are lower than most and he appears to be a one-man operation.   Great to be able to work directly with the boss...And he is in the neighborhood.

Luis was super responsive and was able to get the job done the same day. Highly recommend and would definitely use again.

EDIT:
Almost immediately after posting this review, Saul called me up to give me a refund for my latest invoice and offered a really sincere apology.
Honestly I'm blown away by his honesty and integrity. He's definitely earned my respect and I'll continue looking forwards to working with him and five star plumbing in the future.
With as many plumbing issues i've had the past few years, Saul is the first and only one I can honestly say i have this much respect for.

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I'm finally writing this review after calling Fivestar plumbing out for 2 separate quotes. I'm fairly disappointed in my latest experience after calling them back for a second job. Both Saul, and Fernando are really kind and good people to work with, so I really do not want to write a negative review (hence 3 stars), however after 2 subpar experiences.
I called them recently for a quick quote with Fernando and am currently very disappointed with the experience where he charged me $325 to give me blatantly incorrect information, and try to sell me on a $10k+ job for an issue that i've found out is free to fix.

***
Overall - i think they can do a good job on standard plumbing jobs. They charge you for a visit fee though, so i would NOT call them again for anything that i do not know the fix for or that i would not be willing to spend their visit fee amount on fixing.
***

Job 1: Lateral line replacement.
My HOA had this job done in winter of 2021. We had tree roots clogging up our entire lateral line to the building.
Initially Saul quoted us $12k to do a trenchless procedure and used a hydraulic press to pull a new lateral line through. They dug 2 ditches and within a few days had the new line all replaced.
The inspector came out and then told us that the fall of the line was insufficient. This is something I would have expected Saul and Fivestar to have been able to notice and address, so it was a little upsetting to hear that after already spending $12k, we were now going to need to trench up the entire thing anyways, and fix the slope. Saul then quoted us another $12k to trench up and fix the line, which we went with since we already had his team out here working on it.
We eventually had the inspector come out and give his approval. We have not had any issues since

Job 2: Tankless Water heater ignition error
I decided to call Fivestar plumbing again because I respected Saul and he seemed genuine even with the issues on our last job. When Fernando came, i explained my situation, explained what the error code was, and my assumption for what he could look at to help me fix it (replace the ignitor). He took a look at my gas line and decided that the issue was actually that my gas line to the water heater was shared with other appliances. He opened up the line so we could feel the pressure in the line - and it was perfectly fine, even though he insisted that it was low. We took a look at my neighbors line too (who hasn't had any issues), and it was exactly the same.
Fernando then proceeded to tell me that we would need to run an entire new line from the meter to the heater, and that it would cost me $10k+, but because i was a repeat customer they'd knock it down to $9k.

I just had another plumber come out to take a look (who actually does tankless water heater maintenance), and he immediately found the actual issue - pulled out the igniter plug, and showed me that it was slightly oxidized, which is why my heater would work sometimes, and other times failed to ignite. This is a free fix and i just needed to call the company for a replacement part.

Needless to say i'm pretty upset with my experience with Fernando, and that he ignored my request and charged me $325 to give me incorrect information and try to upsell me on a completely unnecessary job.

I admit, when i initially called, they told me that they do not do tankless water heater maintenance and I figured i'd have them come out to take a look anyways because i wanted to maintain a good relationship with the company. They did NOT mention that they charge a visitation fee on the call though which surprised me when I was presented with that invoice (I should have remembered).

If Superman was a plumber, I'm pretty sure I just found him. Edgar came by to fix a leaky copper pipe after hours. Earlier in the day I tried another plumber who tried 3 times to solder the pipe without success. That plumber said I needed a plumber with a special copper pipe crimping tool and left the pipe leakier than he found it such that my upstairs tenants we're going to be without hot water for the night.

So I found Pipe Arts on Yelp and called at 7:30pm. The proprietor, Edgar, sounded pretty confident over the phone but I was worried about being billed for a lot of work or work that couldn't be done without a special tool. Edgar reassured me that he wouldn't charge me if he couldn't get it done, so I only had to fear that it might take several hours to fix. Edgar got here and went straight to work. He properly assessed the issue and had a smart approach to completely draining the water from the pipe, which he said was a critical issue and it sounded like the previous plumber wasn't able to do. Then Edgar did a careful and thorough soldering job on every joint in the vicinity of the leak. After that we turned the water back on and viola: leak fixed! Hooray! It took him 45 minutes total. Fantastic! Brilliant! Superman exists and he drives a van with the Pipe Arts logo on the side. Thank you, Edgar!

(I haven't written a review on Yelp before but his work inspired me to do so.)

Zayah was on time, knowledgeable, asked enough questions to make sure we were on the same page, but was unobtrusive and efficient. He diagnosed Missi ng parts we needed, took a quick trip to the store in my behalf, and replaced our disposal/repaired some broken sink plumbing quickly and cleanly. Strong recommend!

Erik showed up on time and fixed the leaking shower faucet quickly.  Highly recommended for any plumbing issues in the area.

This Company is the best! I used them to gain sewer lateral compliancy on a house we purchased in Berkeley late last year. They came next day once I sent the signed contract, started the job and it was done within 2 days WITH approval from city of Berkeley. The inspector that came to sign off knew the company and the owners of Harry Clark on first name basis--clearly this company has been around and knows how to work efficiently and what to do. They are Incredibly professional and they left our yard exactly as they found it. Every other company that gave me a quote for this job was way above their price and did not promise to replace any landscaping that was damaged during work. I will DEFINITELY be using them again. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE AT HARRY CLARK! You are the bomb.com!

We've had recurring problems with our toilets that have been looked at three times by two different plumbers and still hadn't been resolved.  After reading all the great reviews for Wizard, I decided to give them a try.  Steven listened to what we'd tried already, explained his assessment of what needed to be done to fix the problems for good, and then got the job done.  Things are looking good so far and Steven let us know that if any problems recur within the next 90 days, he'll be right back to correct it.  I was impressed with his professionalism and efficiency and will definitely be calling Wizard again for our future plumbing needs.

7/7/16 - I originally reviewed Wizard a few years ago, when they impressed me by correcting a couple of problems that other plumbers we had tried just couldn't seem to fix properly. They have been our go-to plumbers ever since. I felt compelled to update my review after another example of excellent service. We had them out a few months ago to snake a drain and had also showed them another more minor issue while they were out. A part needed to be ordered to address the second issue, so they were going to order and contact us. They accidently dropped the ball on that and I got busy and didn't call back until the problem became worse and I thought about it again. They just came out and fixed the issue for FREE, to make up for accidently forgetting to follow up. I didn't even expect that, a nice surprise to not even pay. These guys really know how to run a business and insure that they are taking care of their loyal customers.  Thank you!

This place is so easy made an appointment for today and Ivan he's pretty good in working in my leaking kitchen sink fixed it good and also took care of my bathroom shower that is clogged and the water was really draining slow and he fixed the pipe with full of hair that's been clogged. Anyway I gave him 5 stars for working within half an hour.
Ivan thank you...
For saving my kitchen sink and bathroom shower.
Now it's working again.
He does concentrate on his job. Well done

Our sewer cleanout was overflowing. Called Oakland Rooter and they were prompt, friendly and helpful. They let us know what they were doing, and as home owners what we need to know to maintain clear drainage and what to do in the future in case something like this happens again.

Incredible Professional and honest. They came out to check my house to street line and gave me the free advice. The line was going to be fine with yearly maintenance ( extremely reasonable quote) .    Artie P. gave me a great revue of the line...   This was after a BIG NATIONAL  company gave me a crazy quote to fix, but when I balked it was cut in half in 15 minutes!! Obviously Advanced Trenchless  has won my respect.  TY --- We need more maintenance companies of this caliber

Heise's plumbers have always come out on time or early. They confirmed one of our toilets had a problem after one of the two most expensive plumbing contractors gaslit me repeatedly telling me there was no problem. The issue involved a moving part and it could be observed visually and objectively measured. But they kept lying to me. Not Heise's. Their plumbers are honest and work quickly. The price is affordable and I don't have to wait two weeks to get service.

Awesome! Professional, clean, honest and plain old good solid human. I strong recommend!

We had Kenny replace a kitchen faucet for us. Prompt clear communication, fast scheduling, fair prices and did a great job. Highly recommended!

I had my sink repaired by these guys and in less than a year it broke down again and needed repair. Most places offer to service it, especially if it's within 1 year and If needed just charge for the parts.

They wanted to charge me the same amount to do the SAME work that should have been completed and fixed the first time. Not only that, but the owner was being incredibly rude and argumentative when I brought up my concerns.. this is just bad service overall.

They were hard to reach in the first place when I needed a follow up- it took me calling multiple times to get them to come out again to check on the sink and then charging the FULL price of the sink all over again was just shocking and very bad service. I do not recommend these guys.

It's never fun to come home to a clogged kitchen drain, especially on the Sunday of a holiday weekend.  We reached out to a b drain and spoke with an extremely professional representative that scheduled Raffi to come to our house the same day.  Not only did Moses arrive earlier than expected but he was professional, straightforward, and great to work with.  He also walked us through each step he took, making us feel very confident in the work performed.  I highly recommend him!