Sam Maples

We first met Sam in Sept. when he had installed a water heater for our neighbor and asked if he could do the same for us, which he indicated he could. We did not contact him to do the job, however, until October. He came out initially on Oct. 2 to go over the job specifics, give us an estimate, at which time we gave him a check for $1600 for the materials. He came back on Oct. 4 to start the job. Sam did a good job, as far as we can tell, on the water heater portion. The problems came later, when he (and also his son who worked with him) were to come back to finish the special piping job he had recommended to us to re-route access to the cold water shut-off valve from our crawl space up to the laundry room. The water heater was installed on Oct. 4 and Sam was scheduled to return on Oct. 8 to finish the piping, but never showed up or called us back, even after we called and left a message. Sam called the following week, on Oct. 9, and said he would come that day, which he did, but did not finish the job. His son came the next day to finish the job and blow out the pipe. At the conclusion of the job we paid Sam the balance of what we owed him ($676--which was in addition to the $1600 we initially gave him; job total was $2276). We assumed everything had been done correctly, but our mistake: we did not go down into the crawl space to check to see what he and his son had actually done. When it came time to change out our furnace filter (Jan. 2014) , my husband and I discovered that Sam and his son had installed the special piping right next to the duct work where the access panel for the furnace filter was located! As such, we could not slide open the panel to change out the filter! We had to call our furnace man out to see what he could do to fix the problem. Fortunately, our furnace man resolved that problem for us. Lesson learned: ALWAYS inspect what a plumber (or anyone else) does for you to make sure they have done it correctly! It was obvious that Sam and his son had failed to notice the access panel for the furnace filter! They should not have installed the piping there in the first place, or at least should have made us aware that such location would be a problem! Because of punctuality and responsiveness issues, as well as failure to notice the problem with the furnace filter access, we will not use Sam's services again.

In the middle of the night I heard a loud report, like a big gun. It turned out that the toilet tank had cracked in two. (I know, right?) I turned off the water, and called Sam the next morning. He came later that morning to fix us up. He said he'd never seen a toilet tank break that way before. But, he also said he had a spare tank in his van and, if I was ok with that, he'd just switch them out. I was definitely ok with that. So I ended up paying only labor. I've extolled Sam's virtues before, but he always goes above and beyond what I think I need. I will never use any other plumber in Aurora. In fact, I have his business card (and quot;Don't say d***, call Sam!) prominently on my refrigerator in case we invent a new plumbing crisis! This guy is a gem!

He is great. He is funny. He came day after I called him. He explained along the way everything he was doing and what I could do. He gave his opinion of what he would do if this were his house, but he was not overbearing. He also showed me some tank-less water heaters and a valve that reduced water pressure. He did a temporary fix at first and then put in a bend joint that did much better. He had a group of people who worked after.