Bad experience - would not recommend
Do not use this company unless you want incompetent plumbers that put your families life at risk. We have a gas boiler and 2 of our zones were not working. Our regular plumber was unable to come when we needed, so we tried out Drips and Drains. Never again. While the specific issue was resolved (pump part was broken and needed replacing), our entire experience was horrible. Firstly, the junior plumber did not appear to know what he was doing and took over 7 hours to perform the job. Our suspicions were confirmed following the job when we started to smell an off smell coming from our crawl space where the gas boiler is. We immediately called Fortis BC who confirmed we had a gas leak from our gas boiler. We had such little trust in Drips & Drains that we called another plumber at emergency on-call rates to come fix. His professional opinion was that following the job there were no checks following adjustments to gas piping - he also said piping doesn't just slowly turn into a leak over time. This was a serious health risk for our family. In addition, we then had extreme noise from our gas boiler and air in the baseboards to the point that it was waking us up in the middle of the night. We had no issues like this previously. The owner then came to resolve after feeling bad about the gas leak, but unfortunately he still did not fix the issue. After another unhappy call to demand this be fixed, I was told that he did all he could and it was because my gas boiler was old and I would need a $2k repair job to fix. I immediately called my regular plumber who came and fixed it in less than 30 minutes. I can appreciate sometimes junior people are on jobs, with systems they aren't familiar with, and they can make mistakes or take longer. But when the owner takes no ownership and is incompetent, I have to write a review and ensure other people don't make the same mistake by trusting this company.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $700.00
- Company Response
Hi Jeremy,
First and foremost, we’re sorry for the inconvenience this caused you. We had hoped that our in-person and phone discussions had addressed your concerns.
Regardless, we are happy to hear that you have agreed upon a whole new system to be installed by our good friend and your go-to plumber.
To provide some context to readers, we would like to mention the service that was provided.
We attended the property to replace a pump.
Normally with a pump replacement, an isolation shutoff is used to isolate that part of the system and when turned off the pump can be replaced without having to perform a lengthier system drain.
However, in this case the isolation shutoff was damaged and required the necessary drain so that the replacement could occur.
Post service: we’re sorry that we didn’t hear from you regarding this issue. The gas pilot tubing that required adjusting is something we definitely would have liked to have addressed.
However, we were glad that you later made us aware of the issue by phone.
From that conversation, in wanting to ensure that you felt supported, we agreed upon a visit to remove air from the system.As you mentioned to us, you have always experienced air in the system, but it increased with the replacement of the pump.
Our process to service any system (remove air or otherwise) is of course met with the machines age and condition.
As with any outdated system, one can understand that an increase in service and eventual replacement is a relatively standard course of action.In this case, the system required flushing water through each zone to get the air from the top floor and main floor out through a hose in a crawl space where the boiler was located.
As recommended by us and your go-to plumber, a new system and adding air removers to your baseboard radiators would alleviate the need for continued service to address the noises from your old system.
We’re glad to hear that you registered for the current FortisBC rebates and do hope that you follow through with the new recommended system as it will be very efficient, service friendly and result in lower costs.
Wishing you all the best.
Drips & Drains