The Drain Doctors, Inc

My husband and I highly recommend Drain Doctors! Our crawl space was flooded with almost a foot of water. Three other companies had given us estimates for expensive sump pumps but had no interest in finding the cause of the problem. By scoping the pipes, Drain Doctors quickly found that the cause was a blockage in an underground drain pipe in our backyard, so no sump pump was needed. They were able to start fixing it the next day! Their price was reasonable and their service was superb.

Joe was a pleasure to work with. He was professional, friendly and explained things very clearly. He kept us informed every step of the way, especially when they discovered unexpected issues that might impact the price. He always texted us when he was on his way over, and returned our calls promptly. He and William had to dig fairly deep holes in several places in our backyard, but they left the yard looking exactly as before. My husband and I are very happy with the results. We also appreciate the help Joe offered us when we tried to file an insurance claim (although it was not covered by our insurance).

We would definitely hire Drain Doctors again! It is great to work with a family-owned, local business that puts the customer first, is reliable, communicates well, is reasonably priced, and does business with integrity.

These guys were great. They not only had the best quote, but they did a wonderful job and were quick. Talked with the owner a few times and he was really friendly. All around positive experience.

They always do a great job. Our go to.
we've used them twice in the last few years.
Demolished old septic one year, and replaced outside sewer line a few years later.
Great guys.

This was a pleasant experience, Drew was punctual and very professional. He made sure I understood what he would be doing and how much it would cost. His equipment allowed me to see the condition of my downspout drain system and what was needed to get the system functioning. What I really appreciated was giving me options for the repairs. I would definitely recommend this company.

Paid $365 for septic cleaning.  LESS THAN SIX MONTHS the same problem started happening again.  I looked up how long a clean septic tank should last.  THREE TO FIVE YEARS it should last.  Called and spoke with Caleb and he told me it was my fault.  He said if he comes out again it will cost me $425.      $60 more than I paid LESS THAN SIX MONTHS AGO.  What's wrong with this picture???????????  Very disrespectful.  This is how they treat senior citizens?  SHAME on you Caleb.  Some day you  will be a senior citizen.  SHAME ON DRAIN DOCTOR in  (Ocean View) Tuckahoe, NJ

Drain Doctors installed a french drain in our driveway to protect our house from flooding. Works perfectly as designed. They also returned on several occasions, on their own time, to fix plastic paving covers that were failing due to a manufacturing flaw. Super professional and customer focused. I'd gladly recommend them for your drainage work.

Timely, knowledgeable and professional. Provided expert advice and constructive recommendations and cost effective solutions. I would hire him again.

From appointment booking through to getting a detailed report of their diagnosis, I had a great experience with the drain doctor team. They are very professional and have the expertise to do a proper analysis and help you understand your options.

I have hired The Drain Doctors for two different jobs now and in both cases the results have been excellent.  There are some drainage issues that are very challenging, and others that are more routine, but still warrant careful execution.  I had one of each - fairly routine and perhaps less routine.  They are super keen on details and excellence therein and I'd hire them again without any hesitation.

After heavy rains threatened to enter the crawl space under our house, I called The Drain Doctors for help.  In less than a week, Joe Hartwick jumped into action.  He used his expertise, tools, and common sense to track down multiple points of failure hidden underground for  20+ years.  He maneuvered around large boulders and an elaborate drainage system with ease.  During the entire experience, I found Joe to be authentic, hardworking, and dedicated to resolving our drainage issues.  His customer service, follow-up, and root cause analysis were excellent.   I am relieved to stop searching for a drain doctor that I can trust.  Thank you, Joe, and the team at The Drain Doctors!

As promised, I'll only call DD for my plumbing issues.  And I have another.  You free to take a look, Bob?

Bob and his team are fantastic! We bought a house a little over a year ago and discovered several problems with our sewer and water lines. Bob gave us honest opinions, took the time to answer all of our questions and helped us prioritize the work that needed to be done. Everyone at the company has been very helpful.

Bob came out to our private road. Worked on the drain and came up with a plan the 4 home owners can live with. Putting in a catch basin. He is logical and comes up with options knowing funds might be tight. Very friendly. Thanks Bob.

I have none other than respect and admiration for these guys. As someone who works with various contractors in both our owner occupied and rentals, I can say that Drain Doctors folks are simply exceptional.
We recently had sewer hookup job with them. We had a few bids. Their bid isn't the lowest but my husband has really good feeling with them. Paul came to do estimate and he took careful measurements of things, really serious about the job. They listen to our concerns. In the entire week of the job they come early each morning (with heads up given daily by email). If there's glitch, they informed us promptly. The process went smoothly and well coordinated. The lady at the office, Charla is really pleasant to work with too, and responsive.
I remember a plumbing job we had years ago in a rental house with Fischer Plumbing. I wish we knew Drain Doctors back then, no sales tactics, not trying to up-sell us with unnecessary items beyond scope of job. With Drain Doctors it's simply good old fashioned hard work, quiet but listening carefully to customers. They go above and beyond in putting things back to how it was before they started. They even helped me replanting an old tree (hope it will make it). Thanks Paul (and his colleague whom I didn't quite catch his name), and Charla for the job well done.

I made an appointment and confirmed it.
They did not arrive. I had to leave for work.
Why to schedule meeting 10 days in advance if they can keep up their promise.
No text, they don't answered the phone.
They are chewing more than they can bite.

I asked The Drain Doctors to come out and look at a cracked patio that was also tilting downward due to a hill in my backyard. Someone told me that it was probably due to my downspout from my gutter being clogged under the patio and the ground being saturated. Drain Doctors (Lucas) came out, assessed the situation by running water down the downspout and going down the hill in the backyard. He totally talked himself out of job by saying he didn't think the downspout was the problem and told me all the reasons why, he thought the patio was just 'settling' and he gave me the name of some gutter people who could move the location of the downspout to the rear of the house to remove all doubt of it being any factor of the cracking patio. I just really appreciated his honest input, he could have done a lot of work knowing it wouldn't have had any affect on my issue, but he just came out gave me an honest assessment. Much appreciated!!!

I hired the Drain doctors to do a water main.  Once this was done water began flooding the basement where the old water main was. They had just bent the old water main over and left it sticking up. I advised them of the situation, they came out and said for $16,000 they would put in new down spouts and this would fix the problem. Well I failed to get other bids and had them do this. IT TOOK THEM ONLY 6 HOURS.  Two days later it rained and the whole basement flooded. I left them several emails with no response.  I then had a great outfit come out called Gary's pipeline.  It turns out the drain doctor cut off my footing drain around the house and then did not put to code the drain line so all the water was running back to the house.  The required drain was supposed to be 1/4 per foot. BEWARE of these crooks. I see from my other review they now have a local number instead of their 800 number but they are still hiding their business address, the one listed for them is a pony express style P.O. Box not a suite as listed on their site. I have a complaint filed with the better business bureau looking to sue.

Bob is awesome. We had a water leak in our wall and I had to jump to it and call around. It was during a cold snap so I knew finding someone would be a challenge.

I had booked another big name (read really expensive) plumber but they couldn't come out same day. So I started calling around to see if I could get something sooner. When I reached Bob he said he was booked and couldn't make it out till the next day. I thanked him and explained I already had an appointment but wanted someone same day because I was worried about further damage. He could have just hung up but instead he asked a lot of great questions and offered up some advice to help stabilize the situation. I was so impressed that I decided to cancel with the pricy plumber and wait for Bob.

Bob was super personable and explained the issue while he was fixing it. He even took care of another quick repair we needed done. I also like that part of their proceeds from every job go to breast cancer charities.

This is an all around great business.

Our foundation drain system was clogged and water backed up into the house. Bob, the owner, inspected it with a camera sysyem, diagnosed where the clog could be and he was correct. He repaired and made changes so this could be prevented in future. This happened in 2 days where I had 3 other service company couldnt figure it out. Highly recommend Drain Doctors over the others.

If you know exactly what you need done and just need labor then drain doctors does quality work.  If you are having flooding issues and need the problem identified then this is long but worth the read for you.

This work was done last October and I wrote the review then.  I waited to post it to see if I would change my mind about anything.

During the initial sales pitch, the tech told us that the hardpack at 12 would divert water and
was probably draining toward the house because that's the way the hill sloped.  We asked him if the water could penetrate the hardpack and I believe he said hard as rock, no water is going through that.  At another point he said we do a lot of research into these things and that although a French drain wasn't 100% certain, it should do the trick unless there is an underground stream. He quoted a 12-18 drain because of the hardpack.  When they arrived, he dug a four foot test hole and found water coming out the bottom so they dug a four foot deep French drain (no extra charge) to capture all that water.  The drain goes to about 12 from the surface then they dump the clay hardpack that they said previously was impermeable on top of it.  When I argued about it, the tech said the drain wasn't mean to catch surface water, it was meant to catch ground water.  When I demanded a fix before paying, he said topsoil wasn't permeable so replacing the clay hardpack with topsoil wouldn't help and offered to do a drain on top of the drain to catch surface water.  (Again, no extra charge).  

In addition to the two destroyed bushes, they piled the clay from the trench onto the rest of our yard without any tarp.  When I told them to scrape it off, he said that he did it to level the yard so water would hit the clay and the surface water would flow into the drain - the drain that on another day he said wasn't to collect surface water.

So lets review: Tech says on that hardpack is hard as rock and when water hits it, the water will flow through the topsoil to the 12 deep French drain.  Then later, tech says that the drain is to catch deep water which means water underneath the supposedly impermeable hard pack, and that water won't flow through the topsoil anyway.  Those are the facts, my opinion is that they say whatever suits them at the moment.

Lured by a 10% if you book now!! offer and a hurry to get the job done, we hired them to do a French drain.  Since then our basement has flooded again and we've had four other companies out to look at it.  One said the odds of a French drain having worked was 50/50, the other two flatly said they wouldn't have done a French drain.  Three of four suggested an interior footer drain.  Drain Doctors had also suggested an interior footing drain and quoted $12k for it.  We went with their $6k French drain instead.  Here's the kicker, the three quotes we got later for an interior footer drain range from $5.5 to $8.5k (because they use gravity feed instead of the sump pump that drain doctors said to do.)  Had we waited, we could have had a 100% effective interior solution for the same price as the probably work French drain.
After the work was done, the basement flooded again.  The tech wanted to relevel our yard (no extra charge) so the surface water flowed to a corner and then cut a trench through our planting berm for it to drain out of.  When I told him that would look ugly his reply was we're the drain doctors, not the landscape doctors.  When they were selling the job, the French drain was the solution.  No mention was made of leveling the yard.  

(It was pretty obvious they weren't landscape people since they tore out two bushes and threw them away without a word.  They were the kind that die back in the winter so they looked like just a bunch of dead sticks, but they were obviously enough bushes that a question would have been in order - I was home at the time)

Then the boss came out to look at the site (at the other companies it was always the boss or a 20 year veteran that did the quoting.)  His suggestion was to tear all the drywall off the basement to see where the water was coming in, then build an exterior footer drain will wall board down to the point water was coming in (up to eight feet deep).  We didn't have them quote that, but another firm ballparked an 8 foot dig at $30k.  This is the same boss who, when told another firm wanted to do a drain board partway down the wall said that was a ridiculous solution.  Apparently not such a ridiculous solution when it's his firm doing it.

Drain doctors did do quality work, and they came back and tried to fix the problem at no extra charge (although we were withholding payment).  But when it comes to diagnosing the problem shame on us for not waiting for more experienced firms to quote the job.

Drain Doctor is fair, reliable and honest.

Although they couldn't come late at night on a weekend, they can first thing Monday morning.

Unfortunately we ended up needing someone over the weekend to snake our sewer in the yard and another company (CPI) price gouged us and had so many add ons and said they needed to come back to finish, and gave us a crazy price to fix it permanently, etc...

Drain doctors was totally different, the guy came and snaked our drain and showed us where in the yard it was broken and said his boss would be by later to give us a quote to fix it. He came by later to look at it and ended up fixing it on the spot for a great price. Problem solved and I'm glad I didn't have to give any more $$$ to CPI.

It's been over a month since I first called and despite Steve and Bob each coming out separately for the same initial consultation, almost a full month apart, and despite repeatedly promising to get back to us the next day or even later the same day with a quote, these guys still don't have a quote and still won't call us back when they say they will.

Bob - if you can't help us, just let us know so we can find someone else who can. I can't wait months on end for you to string me along telling me you'll get me a quote tomorrow, or later today. And I'm fed up having to wait days or weeks after you promised to call back and then be the one to call to see what's going on. My advice to you is to show up on time, make only one first consultation, call back when you say you will, provide a quote when you say you will, and let customers know if anything changes. If you can't help us, tell us promptly so we can find someone who can.

Shame on me for giving these guys so many second, third, fourth, etc... chances. Don't bother with these guys and go with someone else who actually cares.

Drain Doctors was absolutely fantastic to work with. They helped us with running new plumbing for our laundry room, including water, gas, and wastewater.

Bob was able to quickly come out to provide a quote, and we were able to schedule the job within the next week. Before and during the job, he went as far as to provide us with direction on how he planned to run the plumbing. This was much appreciated as it gave us a an opportunity to for feedback and guidance with regards to how we intend to use the space. Despite needing to cut into sections of existing drywall to complete the work, everything was put back the way it was, and looks great.

The previous location of our washer/dryer was in our daughter's closet, which included a gas pipe sticking out of the floor for the dryer. Rather than simply cap the pipe and leave it exposed, Bob was able to lower this below the floorboard; which is peace of mind for a parent of a curious toddler.

We'll certainly be calling/referring them again in the future.

I've had these guys come by 3x and every time they have been professional, pleasant, and did great work. .. even when I was not pleasant. Highly recommended.

I had a clogged drain pipe. Bob from Drain Doctors (he is the owner) was very nice and professional and resolved the issue quickly for a reasonable price.

On 10/18 had Casey from Drain Doctors Repair my sink and just loved the professionalism and wonderful spirit of Casey. He was fantastic and did not charge me for anything that i didnt need. Honest person and friendly. Thanks Casey I will call you in the future.

They had great communication and the price was fair. We have already referred them to other people.

These guys know their business - 'The Drain Doctors' are just that - they specialize in getting things functioning again - I have used other plumbing services and it usually  takes 2 or 3 companies to get the job right - this company separates themselves from all others - they get the act done in one try - I was cringing at the thought of how much this was going to cost me -  Brian H was at the house in about 2 hours and he sized up the situation in about 2 minutes - he got his equipment out of his truck - and went to work - this was a thankless job - but he expertly worked that snake without breaking any of the internals - 'Praise Our Higher Powers' - he did an absolutely splendid job -  Thanks Brian - the cost of his service was very fair - 'The Drain Doctors' are on my short list and I will use them again when the time arises!!

We have called on The Drain Doctors on more than one occasion and have been more than pleased. They do great, fast work and are very reasonable in their pricing! Casey and crew do great work and I refer them to all my friends!

I called and set up an appointment .. the tech called and said he was running late.I understand that things happen... That was the last I heard from them .. they never responded beyond that .. I'll never call them again.

Last spring after doing an extensive landscape project, our sewer backed up (of course). We discovered it was due to the main line disconnecting from the septic system pipe. At that point we decided to bite the bullet and connect to the new sewer system that the city recently connected on our street. We needed a new sewer connection, involving a pressurized system and decommissioning a septic system. Can you imagine my thoughts of destroying the yard to put in a new sewer line and pressurized tank system after an extensive landscaping? The Drain Doctors did everything as promised, on time, and within budget. Bob met with me on schedule to discuss, gave me a detailed bid, and spent time learning the permitting requirements and the specific pump system that the city requires. He brought in his own electrician and took care of all permitting. Truly a turnkey operation. He did the project on time, keeping me informed every step of the way. His father Gary who works with Bob also put in a new concrete step that cracked during the electrical trenching. Better than new. And the yard looks great, even after trenching with a backhoe and backfilling the soil during our recent thunderstorms! I have dealt with many contractors and Bob and his team at the Drain Doctors is the best there is, period.

I highly recommend The Drain Doctors.   They are reasonably priced and go above and beyond.  I had a very nice conversation with Bob who grew up in this business.  I like the idea of supporting a family business that is local.  Plus they take credit cards which is a plus since no one plans for plumbing emergencies.  If you are in need of  a plumber, call The Drain Doctors.

I had a job where the shut-off valve to the main water line coming into the house burst. I called them and a technician answered the phone immediately and had someone out to the house in extremely short time.  They cut out the damaged portion and installed a new, much better shut-off valve.  I was shocked when I got the bill.  It was fair and extremely reasonable.  The plumber was courteous and professional.  I  have since been able to use them on several other projects, including running new water lines throughout an entire house. They are always friendly and make me look good for recommending them.  I highly recommend this company for any of your plumbing needs!!!

I have used their service twice so far. I am very happy with their service, politeness, willingness to explain. Casey was the person who came to fix the issues and Bob was the person who took my call for making appointment. I have heard about how plumbers would charge huge amounts, especially if you are like me who knows nothing about plumbing. I like people who do not lie and Casey was sincere and very professional. Charge was very reasonable. I would highly recommend them.
         I had searched yelp for plumbers near our area. Top two services that came in the search that had over 60 reviews, but they were either super excellent or really unhappy customer whom the owners reached out to fix the problem. I don't know, it just seemed that rest of the excellent reviews were not real, I have read companies being paid to write reviews, so I was skeptical of such companies. The drain doctors had only two reviews, but they had the yelp deal and were able to come right away and so I decided to give them a try and I am happy I did.