Plumbing companies.

[Highpower]

(09-28-2024, 09:41 AM)rubes Wrote: Man...that's out of control!! Sorry for you.
I dread the day (i know its coming sooner than I would like) that I cant do that kind of stuff for myself.
I have to assume you had an estimate? and that you shopped around. or was that a surprise bill?

Well, I guess I should post this as a public service announcement for all.
PLEASE get your combustible heat appliance vent stacks inspected at least annually.


A couple of weeks ago my entire family came close to dying in our sleep. No joke.
My wife and I started having headaches. One morning I woke up and thought I smelled something 'funny'. I asked her if she smelled anything and she said no, but she doesn't have a great sense of smell anyway. The next morning we had headaches again and my daughter said she felt a bit dizzy...  

I had my wife go down to the basement with a flashlight to have a good look at our flue pipes. She took pictures for me and it wasn't pretty. I immediately had her turn off the gas to the water heater, and open up the doors and windows to air out the house. And YES - we have smoke / carbon monoxide detectors on every level of the house. Not ONE of them set off an alarm.  

About 2 years ago I bought all new duct work and elbows after cleaning my furnace and noticed things getting rusty inside the duct work. I also bought a new inducer fan for the furnace because the fan blades were also starting to rust. I was ready to replace it all myself when I started having issues with my leg. Followed later on by an amputation. I haven't been able to get back in my basement since then and the duct work slipped my mind.

Anyway since I had to hire someone now to replace the duct work I wanted to replace the water heater along with it. Nothing really wrong with it other than being 12 years old, and I wanted to get a shorter tank to improve the amount of draft in the flue to get a better exhaust flow.

I called 3 different plumbing companies to get quotes. One never called back. The second one wanted to send out two different crews and charge me twice. One crew for the duct work and another for the plumbing. Two separate service charges. The third company came out and said they would do the water heater and the plumbing but not until the duct work was replaced by an HVAC company.  

I broke down and had a HVAC company come out and replace the duct work and the inducer fan in my furnace. The young man that came out said he would use all my parts since I already had them and he would just charge me for the labor.  
I now have a new "go-to" HVAC guy from now on!  

After two weeks of not having hot water I had to submit to plumbing company #3 to get it done. Well almost. I still need to get my chimney liner replaced since it has rotted through as well. Which means yet another company i have to deal with. The good news is the chimney company can also replace the drier vent hood the plumbers broke outside while moving in/out the water heaters. (Which they never mentioned.) The wife found it after they left.  

I looked up the cost of the water heater they installed. It retails for $1000 - $1200. The rest is for not a lot of copper pipe, fittings and 3 hours of labor.