Academia Roofing & Attics

I called Gordon from Academia roofing to come to our home to try to understand why we were having flooding in our basement and 2 floors of our house built in 1885. The drain from our 3rd floor deck runs down the inside corner of the house between the outside brick wall in the inside plaster walls. We knew that the drain pipe had been replaced in 1970 when the house was gutted and rebuilt. During the ice storm in Dec 2014 we had flooding in our basement and the main and second floors of our house. We called our insurance company and they sent a roofer out and said that our newly installed roof was leaking and applied some temporary material to stop the leak. the leaking did not stop. we called them again and again the roofer applied materials to stop the leaking. the leaking continued. In the meantime we called Gordon at Academia to come out check out the roofing job we had just had done and he suggested doing an infrared scan of the drain to see if there was a blockage. He came promptly and looked at the roof and did the scan pointing out a blockage at 19'6" down in the drainpipe. He charged us $500 for the scan. We asked if we could have a receipt which he said he would email us. Gordon also suggested that we engage him to re do the roof for an approximate cost of $10.000.00. The roof is 8 x 16 feet. We paid $4500 just the month before to have the roof redone. We called a drain company that Gordon kindly found the next day and they came and did a scope and found a blockage where Gordon said it would be. They could not determine what the blockage was...ice or other material. They said that the pipe was cast iron and was cracked in a number of places...explaining why the leaking on 3 floors of our house. The drain company suggested we put a temporary plug in the drain to see if the leaking would stop. This led us to believe that the roof was not causing the leakage and the cracked pipe was. We temporarily plugged the drain Feb 3. No further leaking occurred in the house. We decided to wait until it got warmer to see if the blockage would melt if it was ice. In the meantime the insurance company sent out one of their contractors to do an infra red scan of the drainpipe again. The scan revealed no blockage. The insurance company then suggested we remove the interior walls around the drain on 3 floors to see if the pipe was damaged as suggested in the scope. that was done and to our surprise the pipe was not cast iron but PVC..in perfect condition. In May I decided to have a the same drain company come in and re-scope and remove the piece of pipe around the area that Gordon had suggested there was a blockage. They re-scoped and found a blockage at 26 ft. they cut out the pipe at that location and found the pipe to be full of organic material very densely packed. We still could not understand why the we had leakage on the upper floors. Finally the insurance company at my insistence sent their own plumber out and we found the problem. The drain from the flat roof on the 3rd floor had an aluminum flashing installed by the roofer with an attached 8" long drain pipe. the pipe had been set into the existing PVC drain pipe without a seal around it. when the drain got blocked the water backed up and came out from between the two pipes ...running down the PVC pipe and into our floors and walls on each level and flooding the basement. The drain pipe had a very large blockage of roots in the pipes below the basement level which we have had removed and the drain pipes replaced. I don't think we will have further water leakage problems ...at least from the drainpipe or roof areas. We were grateful to Gordon for his early advice of a blockage in the pipe. The existing roof, as it turned out has been great and completely watertight. Because we had a temporary plug put in the drain...the roof has been flooded for a number of months. there have been no further leaks in the house. After Gordon came I asked for a receipt a number of times for the scan he did in Dec. 2013 for $500 He emailed me suggesting that I submit a review to Homestars. I emailed Gordon a number of times recently to get the receipt to submit to the insurance company on May 21 with the other receipts... and to date have still not received one. I feel that by Gordon's actions we were basically being told that if we didn't write a review that he would not issue a receipt for the work we paid for. I think that writing a review is a discretionary choice for a customer. I had planned on submitting a review of his service and a couple of other contractors that worked on our problem once we had determined what had caused the leak which we only discovered the second week of May. With all work that I have done with Homestar referred contractors or any other contractor....I wait to see the work finished and functioning before reviewing. it took months to find out what was really the cause and follow the insurance company's protocol....if we had done the roof when Gordon suggested we would have spent a lot more money replacing something that did not require replacement. I feel Gordon is a knowledgable contractor and was helpful to point me in directions that I might not have thought of....but I would suggest thoroughly analyzing your situation with the help of several contractors before hiring anyone.