Good Plumbing

With the occasional horror story about incompetent/price gouging plumbers being discussed I want to post my recent experience. Our Bradford White water heater stopped working. Playing with the reset button didn't work. At 7 am I called the plumber who installed the water heater 7 years ago. Talked to a real person who asked intelligent questions. I went to work. Plumber came same day at 10 am. Fixed problem by cleaning the burner. Took 30 minutes. Did not try to sell my wife a water muffler, pipe vacuum or any other hypothetical device. Cleaned up the mess. Charged me less than $70. Professional, fast, honest, reasonably priced. I am pleased.

In my part of the country (the nation's capital) no contractor will come out for less than 7 times that.

Two shut-offs (ball valves) on the washing machine cost me $500. That taught me to solder.

Of all the contractors I have ever called out (over 30 by now), over 90% turned up late, at least a third never showed up at all and three-quarters did not do the job as I would have liked (inferior materials, code violations etc.)

So from now on, I DIY whenever possible.

In every other country I have lived in I always hired licensed professionals for all types of home work (because they tended to be better with far fewer cowboys due to stricter laws and compliance both for contractors and what DIYers are allowed to do). Pick almost any other country, phone any contractor from the phone book and if he turns up unlicensed you can call the police and he would be put out of business. The first contractor I called from the phone book where I now live (a glazier) failed to show until our 3rd appointment, then took my money (yes, most other places do not require deposits) and then never came back to do the work.

This is why the big box stores around here are so big. It took me so long to work out why. Most other countries' DIY stores stock far fewer items because there simply is no home-owner demand to do this type of work yourself. Here we are not left with much choice.

I wish I lived where you live.

Pipehacker, Where do you live? When I decide to quit the rat race and bring all my gold with me I bet it would go a lot further wherever you are! Around here I make better than twice that for augering a toilet and I need to or I would not last long!

heater

1. Gas heaters do not have "reset" buttons
2. Cleaning the burner would have no effect on it not starting up.
3. Here you only get marginal handymen for $70.00.

1 In Iowa town of about 60,000 people
2 This BW gas wh has an access panel near the bottom behind which is the temperature adjustment control and a red button marked "reset"
3. Plumber came 3 weeks ago and did what he did and there have been no problems since.

pipehacker said:

1 In Iowa town of about 60,000 people
2 This BW gas wh has an access panel near the bottom behind which is the temperature adjustment control and a red button marked "reset"
3. Plumber came 3 weeks ago and did what he did and there have been no problems since.

Click to expand...

The red button sounds like the thermocouple bypass to light the pilot. Don't know why it would be labeled reset.

heater

That is the reset for the FVIR burner system. I haven't serviced any of those so far so I hadn't realized that is how it is labled. In that case he must just have cleaned lint out of the vents.