My wife and I have been a continuing customer of Sean's for over 10 years. For starters, I endorse…read moreevery review I see posted here on this Sat. Feb. 20, 2021, everyone of which is unsurprisingly positive. In particular, be sure to read the reviews of MhC, DaveL, Bill G, Nacny D, David W, Jeanett W, and Joyce Y.
Because of a decade of experience working with Sean, I can say without reservation or hesitation his work during several phases of remodeling our 3-story cabin in the high Sierras (gutting each floor back to studs; floors removed, etc.), plus his on-going coaching and oversight and fixes here and there has earned him the highest possible score as a long-term track record for performance and value.
Hard to believe: he's never made a mistake. He's never failed to solve a problem. He's never "not cared." He's done MAJOR work for us and little mundane jobs too, plus coached me over the phone to solve some issues within 90 seconds! This has been critical for us, as we use our cabin part-time, so we're not there all the time during winter.
So, why did we first start using Sean? We went through 2 other plumbers beforehand. The first one had a drinking problem and thanks to 4 years of shop courses way back in high school I could see his soldering jobs were mediocre. Then, under our first general contractor we gutted the top floor and moved the location of the bathroom, which required opening up the entire ceiling to all exposed pipes in our master bathroom immediately below, which the contractor's plumber re-piped completely. But he was not reliable. Chris Barrett of Barrett Builders (who I highly recommend), who became our next and "permanent" go-to general contractor, recommended Sean.
So Sean arrives, walks into our master bathroom, stands there looking up at all the new exposed piping and starts pointing and counting "There's one, there's another, that's a 3rd one, and there's a 4th. Yea, you have 4 traps, see? The water cannot drain, so each one of these will have water left in these sections and when it freezes the pipes will burst."
The second plumber was from the Bay Area and had not thought about the snow OR THE CODE, that of course requires a specific angle of decline of all pipes so they can be fully drained and that prohibits the very faulty "traps" (acting like traps under your sink) the 2nd plumber had installed. Then Sean tells me that the whole thing is wrong and the guy even violated the code and common sense about where the main sewage outflow pipe was from the new toilet upstairs and how it was not properly vented! And then he tells me I would have to rip up the brand new porcelain floor upstairs and relocate the toilet or replace and move the main sewage pipe that was running up through new finished walls upstairs. I thought I was going to have a heart attack after spending thousands and thousands of dollars already. There he was, our "new" plumber, telling me we had to gut much of which we'd just rebuilt upstairs. Like, "Who IS this guy?"
But he stood there thinking. Then he asks "What county are you in?" (We are almost on the line between Placer and Nevada counties.) When I told him Nevada, he told me I'm in luck, for Nevada County (unlike Placer) allows the use of a special vent/valve (can't recall the name of it) that would be easy to install in the master bathroom and would completely eliminate the need to re-do the entire bathroom plumbing upstairs and wreck our new floor! All he'd have to do is re-pipe all the ceiling pipes in our master bathroom! His knowledge of the differing codes of two counties pertaining to a rather arcane and not common piece of plumbing impressed me (and Chris Barrett who himself is an expert contractor, which is why he uses Sean too).
That same second plumber was supposed to have installed and hooked up our two new big electric water heaters to have the capability to shut down either of them to use the remaining one in case one of them went out. In walking around the rest of the cabin at my request, Sean observed the waer heSo Sean rebuilt the whole quite complex labyrinth of pipes and valves so we can bypass either tank in the even of a problem with either. In short, you're talking about a real professional plumber here, who has saved us far more than we have ever invested in him. That's true value. And that stems from a couple of things: the guy is smart! He thinks before he opens his mouth. He's "people smart" too. He's totally customer-centric. He defines great service and the term "rapid response." He is not "transactional" -- he's focused on establishing a good long term business relationship for repeat business. Totally honest. Completely fair and practical. He will not try and "oversell you". And he's a nice guy with a good sense of humor. There's only one problem: some day he's going to retire.
