Although modern residential plumbing systems are known to be highly durable and reliable, they are not indestructible. Indeed, your plumbing system can develop a wide variety of problems that can negatively affect its effectiveness, cause serious inconveniences, and even put your home and family in danger. Some common examples of plumbing issues you can run into as a homeowner include blocked toilets, clogged drains, leaking pipes, burst pipes, frozen pipes, sewer backups, a broken water heater, slab leaks, low water pressure, and many more.
Considering the sensitivity of your plumbing system, most of the plumbing situations you might face will need to be resolved urgently. For instance, if your toilet is blocked, it will render your bathroom unusable, meaning that you will not have the option of waiting to fix it another day. However, no matter how quickly you want to see a plumbing issue in your house in Weatherford, TX fixed, you should not try doing it on your own. Instead, you should have a professional plumbing service you can call every time you encounter a plumbing problem.
Unfortunately, although there are many plumbing service providers in the town, finding a reliable one is not necessarily easy. This is because there are many quacks masquerading as professional plumbers. Therefore, if you are looking for a plumber you can trust with all your plumbing issues, you must do your due diligence and be courageous enough to ask some uncomfortable questions. Here is a practical guide you can follow to minimize the risk of hiring an incompetent person and improve the odds of finding a dependable plumbing contractor.
Consult Your Network and Search the Internet
If you are new in Weatherford, TX, or you have never needed the attention of a professional plumbing service in the past, you might be asking yourself where you should start now that you have realized that you need to have a professional plumbing contractor on speed dial. The good news is that there are many people around you who could give you leads to trustworthy plumbers. For example, you can ask your friends, workmates, and neighbors to refer you to the plumbing contractor they have hired in the past. You can also talk to the attendants at your local hardware store since they interact with plumbers almost every day. Alternatively, you can take your computer or smartphone, go to your favorite browser, and search for plumbing services near you. By taking these steps you will be in an excellent position to create a list of plumbing contractors you can potentially hire. However, you should not be in a rush to trust a plumber simply because they have been recommended by a person you trust. As such, you need to take your time to gather more information about all the plumbers on your list in order to make an informed choice.
Check Online Reviews
Once you have created a list of plumbing service providers in Weatherford, TX, you need to start finding out what other people have to say about them. In addition to word of mouth, you can go to online customer reviews sites, such as yelp and BBB, to see what the people who have hired the plumbers on your list in the past have to say about them. Of course, you are not going to find a perfect business without some critical reviews. However, if a plumbing service provider has attracted so many negative reviews that their overall rating is below average, hiring them could be too risky. This is because there is a good chance that a plumber who has disappointed other clients in the past could also leave you disappointed. Therefore, although online reviews should be taken with a pinch of salt, they can help you identify the plumbers should avoid completely. Indeed, if a plumbing contractor’s online reputation is tainted, you should not consider hiring them.
Consider the Quality of Customer Service
Once you have eliminated the plumbers with negative online reputations from your list, you can go ahead with contacting the rest. In your initial conversation with a plumbing service in Weatherford, TX, you need to take note of how they communicate. Indeed, a good plumbing contractor should communicate professionally. They should be willing to listen to you, understand your issue, and respond promptly. They should also be willing to explain what they intend to do to resolve the issue at hand. As you talk to a plumber for the first time, you should be wary of any signs of unprofessional conduct in their communication. If a plumber talks in a way that makes you doubt their professionalism, you should not take the risk of hiring them. This is because hiring a plumber who does not observe high standards of professionalism could leave you exposed to the risk of receiving substandard services.
Ask for Experience and References
When you are looking for a plumber to do a major plumbing job, such as plumbing installation, water heater replacement, or whole-house repipe, you need to be sure that they will do a good job. To this end, you need to be satisfied with the similar projects they have handled in the past. Therefore, experience is one of the factors you need to consider as you shop for a plumbing service. Indeed, plumbing jobs are quite technical and plumbers seem to get better at what they do with experience. In any case, the more experienced a plumber has been in the business, the more conversant they are with most plumbing situations, including the most complex ones. Besides, experienced plumbers can refer you to the clients they have served in the past, making it possible for you to judge their capacity based on their history. On the other hand, an inexperienced plumber may not be conversant with some plumbing situations, meaning that they may struggle with some plumbing assignments. Therefore, before you can settle for a given plumbing service provider, you need to ascertain if they have been in the industry for more than a few years and demand to see some of the projects they have completed in the recent past.
Consider Licensing
The plumbing industry in Weatherford, TX is regulated by local authorities. This is because improperly done plumbing installation and repair jobs could put many people and buildings in danger. Therefore, some plumbing jobs will require you to obtain a permit from local authorities in charge of public water supply and sanitation. However, in some cases, these permits can only be issued to licensed plumbing service providers. As such, if you hire an unlicensed plumbing contractor, they may not qualify to obtain the necessary permits. Therefore, some of the jobs they do could be illegal. Unfortunately, if you hire an unlicensed plumber you may lose your service warranties, receive substandard services, or get at loggerheads with local authorities. Therefore, as you consider hiring a particular plumbing service, you need to ascertain if they are duly licensed. A good plumbing company will display its licenses for everyone to see. Therefore, if a plumber is unwilling to show you their license, you should not take the risk of trusting them with your plumbing infrastructure. In a nutshell, you have a responsibility to ensure that the plumber you hire is duly licensed to offer professional residential plumbing services.
Consider Insurance and Bond
Some plumbing jobs can be quite risky. Indeed, the people doing some of them could sustain serious physical injuries. For instance, if the job involves repairing or installing an overhead tank, the person doing it could be at risk of fall accidents that could leave them seriously wounded. There are also some plumbing jobs that could leave sections of your home badly damaged. For example, if your plumber needs to fix a slab leak, the job could leave your home’s slab foundations extensively damaged, compromising the structural integrity of the house. Good plumbing service providers take insurance covers to protect themselves from financial losses that could occur due to such issues. If you settle for an uninsured plumbing service, you could end up getting held financially liable for the injuries or property damage they might sustain or cause. To circumvent such an eventuality, you need to ensure that the plumbing contractor you are about to hire is adequately insured. If a plumber is not willing to prove that they are insured and bonded, you should not take the risk of hiring them.
Consider Availability and Response Time
You never know when you will need the attention of a professional plumber in Weatherford, TX. For instance, you can go to the bathroom one chilly morning only to realize that your water heater is broken and there is no hot water in your house. Besides, you can go to use your toilet at night only to realize that it is blocked. Such plumbing situations will need to be addressed urgently. Therefore, a good professional plumbing service provider should always be available. They should also have a positive response time. Therefore, before you can choose a particular plumbing contractor, you should find out if they offer 24/7 emergency services. If they don’t, hiring them could put you at the risk of having to live with a nasty plumbing situation for extended hours waiting for them to arrive. In a nutshell, you need to ensure that your plumbing service is always available and ready to respond to your calls of distress.
Consider Your Budget
Of course, every plumber offers their services at a unique price. Therefore, unless it is an emergency, it is important for you to get quotes from several reliable plumbing companies. Of course, you should pick a plumber who is willing to offer the service you need within your budget. However, as you consider the cost of plumbing services, you should not compromise on quality. In other words, you should not hire a quack simply because their services are cheap. Therefore, you should endeavor to strike a balance between cost and quality. In any case, there are a lot of qualified professional plumbers who will be willing to offer quality services at a reasonable cost considering the level of competition in the plumbing industry in Weatherford, TX. As you consider the cost, you also need to ask about the terms of payment. Some plumbers will require you to pay everything upfront, while others will allow you to pay them once the job is complete. This will go a long way in helping you avoid conflicts with your plumber.
Ask About Warranties
Finally, it is important to note that no matter how good a plumber might be, they are human and they could make mistakes. Therefore, even a highly qualified professional could potentially leave you dissatisfied. The good news is that good plumbing service providers will be willing to protect you against the risk of poor workmanship. To this end, they offer warranties to assure their clients that their products are of high quality. With a warranty, you will not need to pay anything to get a job redone should the issue at hand reoccur within a given time. Without a warranty, you will not have any solid grounds to hold your plumber accountable if they fail to resolve the issue at hand decisively. Therefore, before you choose to settle for any given plumbing service provider, you need to ask if you will get a warranty for the services offered. If the answer is negative, you should not take the risk of trusting them with your plumbing system.
The Bottom Line
As you can see, it is not easy to find a professional plumber. Therefore, you need to be very careful when shopping for a plumber to avoid hiring a quack. If you are looking for a dependable plumber in the city, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing of Fort Worth is the answer. We have been handling residential plumbing jobs for a long time, and we are a household name in our community. Feel free to get in touch with us to learn more about our company and services.