My wife and I recently bought a house in Livermore and it had the original 1960s-era galvanized steel plumbing. The old pipes were deteriorating and had some minor leaks, so we thought it prudent to re-pipe the house before one of the pipes gave out and flooded the home. At the same time, we we wanted to replace the 9-year-old water heater, old toilets, showers, outdoor faucets, upgrade the valves and supply lines for our dishwasher, faucets, fridge ice maker, laundry room, and install some whole-house water filters. In short, everything in the house that had a water pipe was to be replaced.
After getting bids from several companies, we ended up going with Simpson Plumbing and we're glad we did: early on Sergio came out an gave the house a detailed look-over and provided an estimate with a few different options (including a tankless water heater, which we opted for). Their bid wasn't the lowest (and wasn't, by far, the highest) but was a very reasonable, middle-of-the-road bid with no surprises.
During the work itself, Sergio, Nate, and James (and both Brandons, on some days) worked exceedingly hard for long hours and without complaints given the tough situation of a low crawlspace with lots of obstructions ranging from old pipes to air vents to the piers the previous owner had installed to repair some foundation issues. Even the presence of a rat skeleton or two from a long-ago rodent infestation didn't faze these guys a bit.
With certain areas of the crawlspace rendered impassable due to the piers being too close to fit between, they adapted and ran some pipes up through the attic rather than through the crawlspace even though this added at least a day to the project and additional expense on their part. What was originally planned as a two-day job turned into a four day job, but they ensured that we had at least one sink and toilet working every night except the first night (when they had ripped all the old pipes out, and during which we stayed in a hotel).
The nature of a re-piping job requires that they cut drywall in several places to access and run the pipes in the walls. Their cuts were clean, professional, and kept to the minimum necessary to accomplish the task. The drywall guy they recommend has worked alongside Simpson for decades, and spoke highly of their cuts and how it makes repairing the drywall easy.
Their attention to detail throughout the whole job was excellent, even down to the choice of silicone sealant used to seal around the base of the toilets, which they applied in such a way that makes cleaning around te toilet much easier (very handy when we have a young son about to start potty training).
While they were under the house laying pipe they noticed that the drain for the tub was leaking into the crawlspace. It wasn't part of the original job order, but I was happy to pay what turned out to be a very reasonable fee for them to repair it while they were there.
Of course, no project of this magnitude goes off without a hitch: two joints out of the hundreds made had leaks: one was a slow drip in the garage (part of the water filter bypass) which they repaired promptly. The other was found inside during a leak test: after noticing the presence of a leak they immediately turned the water off and searched the whole house, eventually finding the culprit (a bad connection on a T-joint) in the attic over the laundry room. Staying until nearly midnight after a long day of work, Sergio, Nate, and James fixed the leak, moved our items in the path of the advancing puddle in the garage, cleaned and dried any parts of the house that had gotten wet (fortunately nothing had been seriously damaged and everything dried out quickly), swept out the puddle from the garage, and generally went above and beyond what was needed to make things right.
Throughout the job they had a focus on cleanliness: they had tarps down everywhere they were working to minimize dust and dirt, left the workspace clean and tidy after each day (e.g., they the tarps into the garage and swept the interior of the house), and thoroughly vacuumed and mopped the house at the end of the job to ensure everything was clean.
In addition to being excellent plumbers, the folks at Simpson are good and decent people: seeing their trucks parked outside our house, our elderly neighbor approached them when they were taking a break and during the course of conversation asked if, when they have a moment, they might help him with replacing old angle stop valve in his house. They immediately grabbed the necessary part from the truck, went to his house, and installed it for him at no cost.
We're planning on doing a sewer line replacement within the next few years when we remodel our kitchen and Simpson will be at top of our list.
They should be at the top of your list too. read more