I contacted Cordia in January '24 and the boss, Steve Cordia, came to my house and eyeballed my job. I went into his nearby office read it and signed the contract for a leak in an upstairs drain, for $1950. I then heard nothing for three weeks while I could not use my upstairs bathroom. (There are two up there so not a huge deal.) He did tell me, at the time of signing, that I needed to "open up" the job" , meaning to cut openings in the walls and or ceilings, to enable access to the problem. This would save me money.
I did not know know exactly where the leak was coming from so I opened two holes in the living room wall and ceiling without seeing any pipes. Third time was the charm, but, stupidly, I used a rip saw in the walls, which was not the right saw to use. These walls were from the 30's. No drywall on studs in those days. Wire , lathing, concrete and plaster. Fine dust all over the living room, dining room and halls and everything that was in it. Wrong saw.
Finally, in the middle of February, the owner sent his son, a licensed plumber,
to work on the leak, which was coming from a lateral drain line in the ceiling between the living room and hallway. He cut away the damaged section of pipe, which was copper (not used for drains now, but common before the use of PVC) . The section of copper he removed was indeed badly compromised. It was explained to me that while copper for supply lines lasted a very long time, copper drains, especially lateral lines that did not drain completely, because they were, well ....., lateral tended to have standing liquid in them Copper drains that came from upstairs bathrooms drained vertically into the lateral, and finally into a cast iron stack, did much better because there was no standing water in them. But the laterals collected bodily fluids and bathroom chemicals of all sorts, but they did not drain as well as the vertical runs. Eventually, the copper got eaten up, and then leaked.
I would say he spent about an hour and a half in the house. Had we stopped there, the leak would have been repaired, I could have made my case for total time of about 2 hours of work and requested an adjustment from Cordia, and gotten busy fixing all the holes in my walls and ceilings.
But I had signed a contract which included replacement of the bathroom drains in my upstairs bathroom. These were not leaking and did not need replacing but I didn't know that. Further, access to this drain system required opening the wall in my bedroom and creating a large hole in the ceramic tile floor of my bathroom to provide space to hook up with the first floor lateral.
Another month passed and nobody appeared for another month to hook up the drain. Finally in the middle of March two people appeared to finished the job. They were also part of the Cordia family. One was licensed. he went to work in the bedroom opening and hooked that upstairs drain to the lateral in the downstairs ceiling in plastic. Considerable copper line was removed. It appeared to me it was excellent condition. In the bathroom, the helper took a hammer and began pounding away at the ceramic tile floor tile under bathroom sink. I was horrified, although the company had told me that for purposes of access, it was necessary to do it. I did not feel the need to watch any more of this and went downstairs as they were getting ready to turn to water back on. This done, I went about my business as the workers packed up and, I suppose, made the short drive back to Cordia about a mile away.
The next day I noticed that a collection of antique cutlery that had been in a lucite box on my dresser was no longer there. (Only the top remained) I noticed a gray box containing a dozen rolls of quarters put aside from the days I operated a small apartment building with a coin laundry, was missing. There was a cigar box, kept for years in the top drawer of my dresser, was now sitting on top of a window AC in the corner of the room. All told, the value came to about one thousand dollars.
Nobody but Cordia, aside from my son, had even been in the house since January since the holes, dust, tools, plaster bags, paint cans were everywhere on the first floor. NOBODY had been in the second floor but the two plumbers.
To make a long story short, I contacted Cordia. The only investigation they made was to ask the plumbers if they were the thieves. Amazingly, the said no. That was it. Cordia said somebody else had removed my money and property, although nobody else had been in the house. They said they trusted their family employees and made no other effort. The Clayton police said in the absence of physical evidence there wasn't anything they could do.
I won't belabor this. Based on charging $1950 for what should have been a job of maybe $500 and then having been relieved of my property. I am not recommending you use Cordia Plumbing. Too bad. They seemed like nice
people. I paid my bill. read more
