ENCO PLUMBING SAVED THE DAY

I am not one who normally writes reviews but here goes: Last week, my wife raised a concern about the amount of water that was accumulating in our front yard. After going through the routine of testing the sprinklers, thinking this was most likely the problem, I quickly found a broken sprinkler head and assumed this was the culprit that was turning our front yard into Louisiana swamplands. I shut off the sprinkler system and assured my princess that all would be fixed the following weekend. Well, on my way home Wednesday, my wife called me expressing her concerns again that the water seemed to still be accumulating in the yard and the front sidewalk. Knowing I already expertly diagnosed the problem I said to go ahead and call the city to check the meter for a leak, as this issue was already handled from my side, again, due to my flawless troubleshooting skills. Pulling into my house I could see that the city water guy was already at my house with the cover off the meter. Me, still in my work cloths, calmly walked outside to greet the gentleman who was going to tell me I was right and all is well.

This is where I began to doubt myself. After quick introductions, the gentleman showed me the two dials on the meter. One dial looks like the minute hand on a clock and 1 full rotation is 10 gallons of water that has been sent to my home. The second dial is smaller, and 1 full rotation is 1 tick for the other dial mentioned. After seeing the second dial was working its way to 88 miles per hour I was sure this entire meter was going to quickly send itself somewhere into the future. Doc and Marty were nowhere to be found so I knew I had to act quickly. I went inside, changed cloths and went to work. With my pants rolled up and flip flops on I was ready to address this issue. I went to the main shut-off valve to the house and began to turn the valve to the right(righty-tighty, left-loosey). The valve went snug but not tight. My new city friend informed me that my new flux capacitor had almost completely stopped. Oh, oh, as “almost” means it’s not stopped. The valve would not completely tighten and worse, as I left-loosyed it, the water would not turn back on. Crap, time to call a plumber.

Assuring my wife that I got this under control I began thinking about all the things we take for granted with indoor plumbing. Cooking, dish washer, washing machine, ice, and heaven forbid, BATHROOMS…gone…all gone! I didn’t hesitate and quickly jumped on the computer and began to type all kinds of search terms to find a local plumber who could help immediately. I started off with the big guys (you know who they are) as well as with any plumbing company that advertised 24/7 in their name or description. After calling 5-6 companies I was beginning to wonder if some of these 24/7 guys should just change their name to “Next Day Plumbers” as it seemed everyone was booked. I was getting desperate so I decided to call a company that only had 15 to 16 reviews. Being in IT, I am very skeptical of reviews as sometimes companies will have their friends and family leave 5 stars and then you’ll have trolls who leave a bad review because they didn’t get their narcissistic way for some reason or another. Anyway, I made the call.

The person on the other end sounded like a good ol’ boy that was relaxing at home. Oh, oh, red flag, or so I thought. We discussed the situation, went over some basic pricing and I swallowed hard as he told me the trip charge. Trip charge, ug, you mean I am probably going to pay one hundred plus dollars for someone to come out and say “Yep, you’re screwed buddy, we’ll have to come out tomorrow to fix this for sure”. Again, I was desperate and had to show some sort of progress to the wife before she began calling pricy hotels for us to shack up in for the night.

About 30 minutes later, Chris with ENCO Plumbing showed up at our door. After looking around my new swampland, Chris began to give me some news that sounded like a financial minigun was about to attack my bank account. Here it comes I thought. Trip charge AND some sort of plumbing lingo that sounded like an introduction to a plumbing novel written by Steven King. See, with my awesome troubleshooting skills (as mentioned earlier), I came to another conclusion that since the sprinklers were not the root of all the newly found evil in my world, it must be this valve thing as it’s broke and water is coming from this area so anything else is just a sales pitch right? Wrong, keep reading J

Chris is a straight to the point kind of guy and so am I, so we quickly agreed that since the main valve is broke, it definitely needs to be fixed before we continue additional chapters in the plumbing novel I am now living. After agreeing to a price, Chris went to work. It’s now 9:00pm, the sun has gone down and my wife and kids are pulling water out of the pool to fill toilets for essential living.

I begin to research some of what Chris informed me from his initial assessment. At this point, the only thing I could do (beside worry) was learn more about my new predicament. Leak detections, slab leaks, jack hammering and the like begin to fill my google searches and each result was a new bullet in the above mentioned minigun.

A few hours pass, and reinforcements arrive. Chris now has a buddy helping him vacuum water out of the hole, cut the old valve out and put a new one in. I probably didn’t mention it before, but the main valve to our house is inside a heavily bushed garden that would have been a tight fit for a small child much less two grown men. Mud, prickly bushes, the stench of rotting vegetation and no sunlight were the elements these guys were fighting. Finally, around 1AM, Chris (my new pipe surgeon) knocked on the door. He was either about to tell me all is well or that they did everything they could but my wallet died on the operating table. Chris was still energetic (again, 1AM) and showed me my newly installed valve. He also showed me when he turned it on, water quickly came gushing out of the hole near the foundation wall. Oh carp, the minigun is now whirling and home owner victimhood is settling in. I looked at Chris and said that it looked like the leak (now a clear jet of water like an exposed artery) was within reach. Knowing this guy just spent almost 4 hours getting us to this point I felt bad pushing him, but he quickly agreed the victory line may not be too far off and a new look of determination came across his face. Chris jumped back into the hole like a paratrooper jumping for the 100th time out of a plan. He said he could feel where majority of the pressure was coming from and if I wasn’t in my flip flops I would have handed him some clamps to help the patient from bleeding out. Chris turned off the water, came out of the hole and put a plan in place to bandage the leak so we could at least get out of our 3rd world condition.

Once Chris was finished, we sat down, worked up the paperwork for the work performed, and set out an agreed plan for the next day as well as pricing for the remaining work. We shook hands and called it a night.

The next morning, after the family took their showers and used all the conveniences of indoor plumbing, we blew out all the prayer candles from the night before and started our day. A few hours later I received a call from my new friends at ENCO to let me know a crew was on their way to finish the job.

Chris, not the same Chris but a different one and his partner showed up. I gave them a debriefing of the battle from the night before and they were ready to get to work. After only about an hour, the new crew brought me the relic or the flag of the enemy; The pipe and the pin sized hole that sparked this whole ordeal. If I could punch a pipe in the throat, I would, as this one deserved it. The new Chris and team went to go fetch needed parts to complete the repair. Only a little chipping at the slab was needed. The minigun was whirling down; the flux capacitor was staying in this time continuum and shortly after the hole of doom was filled.

A company that was not even on my radar, much less my short list, is now my go to plumbing company. Honest, hard working people who go the extra mile, not for just a dollar, but for what seems to just be the right thing to do.

Thank you ENCO, you guys rocked it out of the park!

Sincerely,

The Boggs Family (dboggs@adaptiveips.com)

Ps. Their website is http://www.encoplumbing.com