Darrin's Plumbing

Darrin (the owner) called prior to arrival in the morning and showed up shortly after his call. He assessed the currently installation and then informed me the installation would be an additional $300. I wasn't in the mood to argue so I agreed and had him proceed. He then informed me that since they were gas water heaters that are vented outside, that they would be breaking the seal on the roof when they pushed the vents up to remove the heaters. He stated they didn't go on roofs and I would be responsible for re-sealing them. I was disappointed in this, since I was paying a pretty hefty price and I felt like I was owed a complete job. I don't know if this is standard with all plumbers. They put down protective tarps over my carpet, however they didn't have enough to cover all of it. You guessed it, they left a rusty water stain right about where the tarp ended. Not a huge deal. I was able to get the stain out with some spot remover and a sponge. After about three hours (of which about 30 minutes of it was a break) they informed me they had completed the job. As I was reviewing the work he asked his assistant to get a wrench for him. He tightened one of the outlet fittings. He then said I might find some condensation around the fitting. This seemed odd to me since they really hadn't had much if any water flowing yet and it was on the hot outlet of the heater. I checked the heaters when I arrived back home from work and found a considerable amount of water on top of the heater and in the drip tray. Definitely not condensation. I also noticed that he threw the old pipe insulation he had removed during the removal of the old units onto the insulation in the attic. That seemed a bit unprofessional to me. I called Darrin and he agreed to come out and look at the leak the next day. He did come out as promised and fixed the leak, but of course this required my wife to stay home for a good portion of the afternoon. The city building inspector came about a week later. He noted that some of the pipe insulation had melted because Darrin allowed the pipe to rest against the hot exhaust pipe. The inspector pushed the pipe away so it no longer rested on the insulation. Other than that it passed inspection. Darrin was a nice enough guy, but I can't say the quality of work was great, adequate at best.