NorthSide Plumbing

Our kitchen sink was backing up.  Northside Plumbing was close to our house and our tenant would need use of the sink sooner than later so we used Northside Plumbing (owned by Glen).  Glen?s repairman made the repair, which involved working underneath the sink, cutting and replacing PVC pipes as well as repair on the drain line running to the basement.  

The repairman used purple primer, however that?s typically used in commercial applications as it allows inspectors to visually determine that joints have been primed (and glued).  For residential work a clear primary is often used.  During the repair purple primer ended up on the wood underneath the sink (inside the cabinet) and stained it.  Also, the primer was spilled in the middle of the kitchen floor, which is one solid sheet of vinyl, and left a three or four inch purple stain on it.

The repairman tried but was unable to remove the stain.  He said he had a product at the shop that would remove the stain and that he would come back at a later date to fix it.  The repairmen presented me an invoice with an overcharged for labor (three hours instead of two).  I noted this and he made the correction.  He noted on the invoice/receipt that (Northside Plumbing) would "....remove stain at a later date on kitchen floor."  

Later I contacted Glen to fix the stain.  Glen tried to remove the stain with carburetor cleaner but failed.  The bright purple stain was permanently etched into our kitchen floor.  Glen offered to hire a professional flooring contractor to cut the vinyl and replace it with a patch.  I researched this technique and found it wasn't feasible as the original glue would leave ridges that would come through any new vinyl flooring.  Also, cut marks where the new patch meets the original flooring would be visible and a likely way for moisture to get under the vinyl and to cause it to peel or curl.  As our house was completely renovated two years earlier and the vinyl flooring was new at that time, I declined his offer.

Glen was persistent.  He offered to complete the repair himself.  My position was that entire sheet of flooring needed to be replaced, that I visited with several flooring installers who all advised a patch would not produce desirable results.    

At this point Glen denied responsibility.  Attempts to work with Glen were unsuccessful; he would often hang up on me and wouldn't return phone calls.  We (my wife and I) participated in a third party arbitration process.  We spent a significant amount of time (well over 30 hours) gathering information and documenting details, which included getting bids from several flooring professionals (made numerous trips to the house for them to take measurements).  Ultimately we were successful.

Note:  if the repairman would have used clear primer or would have used tarps then this situation would have likely been avoided.

We received three quotes from three different plumbers when trying to find a company to dig up and re-install our sewer line both in our crawlspace and in our yard out to the street.  When Northside Plumbing showed up, they seemed professional and gave a great price for the job.  At first were were told by their company that the sewer line in the crawlspace was the only problem.  So they charged us $3000 to dig it up and replace it.  Then our line started backing up again, and it was then that we discovered that the sewer line in the yard needed to be dug up and replaced as well.  We had problems getting the plumbing company to call us to tell us if they weren't going to be able to make it out with their machinery.  We would stay home from work only to find out later in the afternoon that they weren't coming.  After several tries, we finally got someone out to do the work.  Everything went well that day.  They dug it up and replaced it as promised, but when they refilled the hole, we were left with some very shotty landscaping.,  Our gate wouldn't close and there was no dirt around the sidewalk, and very large sharp pieces of the clay pipe were near the surface where one of our dogs ended up cutting their paw on.  We also took a look around in the crawlspace and found that the original cast iron sewer line was left cut into pieces.  Why didn't they remove it?   While we had no problems for a couple of years, were were eventually met again with a backed up line.  This time we called a different company and we were told that the line in the crawlspace collapsed because they failed to correctly attach it to the line that went through the foundation.   

They were pretty good. They came out early. They called before they came and got here when they said they would. After he had left, the pump was vibrating and making a lot of noise. It took me a while to realize that that's where the sounds came from. When it broke, I called him all the way back out here. He had already gone to the other side of town, but he didn't complain when he came back out. He did everything he could to keep it from making noise.