After a blissful week-and-a-half in Denver, filled with skiing, outdoor Jacuzzis and warm fires, my family returned to Atlanta only to find the plumbing repair nightmare we couldn’t have imagined. Our basement was under two feet of water and rising by the second—our new carpeting ruined, as well as all the belongings we’d been keeping down there. Fortunately this happened before the second phase of our basement renovation, but the damage had already set us back well over a thousand dollars just in the ruining of our possessions.

Before the cleanup could begin, it was time to hire a plumber- a good plumber to do a little plumbing repair. He would either to fix the problem or at least rig something up to stop the water flow for the cleanup process. We found the culprit pipe, and before any plumbing repair began we were able to simply turn off the main water to the house—we had some wonderful neighbors who were more than willing to donate water to us during these three days—and called in some flood recovery experts to drain out all the water.

We didn’t think that damp, moldy smell would ever go away. We wanted to blast the entire basement with bleach, or do something to make that foul odor disappear. Unfortunately, that would have to wait.

Our water was turned off, and it was time to call in a master plumber for the plumbing repair to fix our pipes so that we could return to business as usual.

Can We Fix It?

Not only did we need the problem remedied, but it was also a good time to look over our system to see if there were any problems that should be corrected in order to keep this from happening again. Sure it wouldn’t be a cheap proposition, but it was important to us that we be willing to spend a little extra money on a good licensed plumber now in order to avoid any future disasters.

With our plumbing repair about to begin, we had a lot of things to learn, and a lot of homework to do.

The story of our little quest for the perfect master plumber and great plumbing repair is to be continued…

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It’s pretty common knowledge that when you want a plumber, you need a plumber who is a bonded, insured, and licensed plumber. You’d be surprised just how many freelancers are out there, or commercial plumber who seem experienced but have recently left (or worse, been fired from) a major company and have no insurance of their own. A good plumber will always have his credentials on hand, ready for you to have a look and make sure that he’s legitimate.

When you’re planning and negotiating the plumbing service, there’s no need to let on that you may never have hired a licensed plumber for a major task before. If you’ve done plenty of homework and read plenty of trustworthy online articles, there’s a good chance you already know more about the process than many individuals who’ve been through the rigmarole a few times already.

Questions are Key When you want a Plumber

So if you want a plumber to come to your site or home and give an estimate, any local plumber should be willing to do so. Unless he’s booked and overflowing with work, there’s no reason why he wouldn’t spare a few minutes and drive a bit out of his way in order to present his plumber service plan and give you a price quote before you call him out to work.

Remember though, if you have a major project you’ll also want a plumber who works well alongside other contractors. Some plumbers seem to know plumbing alone, and they’ll do all the plumbing repairs you need when working solo, but they have little experience with home remodeling projects and the dance one must do in order to coordinate projects alongside changing electrical and structural needs.

There’s plenty more to be said about the things you can do to make sure you’re working with a reputable master plumber, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first and best thing you can do is ask around—most of us have neighbors or nearby friends who’ve had to spruce up their homes with projects involving plumbing work, so get a good reference and take out the guesswork out of picking the right plumber.

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Once the basement drained, the water shut off, and the carpet ripped out, we were still in need of a lot of work to get things back to normal. Our first priority was our need for a local plumber to see to the plumbing repairs so that we could turn the water back on and regain at least some civility.

We did what everyone does when it’s time to find a good local plumber: we hit the yellow pages. Okay, we didn’t have a copy of the yellow pages- we hit Google. Hopefully, we thought, our dream master plumber has gotten with the modern age and listed his business online. A local plumber in our area usually has the reputation for being manually rather than technically inclined, but this is no complaint; we needed plumbing repair savvy, not internet savvy.

Choices, Choices: Hire a Plumber- A Good Plumber

A simple search revealed the myriads of local plumber companies, lone wolves and shade tree plumbers. We already decided we didn’t want to use a major company. Large companies have much more overhead than a one-man operation, and they hire employees that may not be of the same talent level as a local plumber whose business rests upon his own skills.

Granted, we also realized that this was a risky move. A full-scale plumbing company has much better insurance if anything goes wrong, and if any plumbers find themselves stumped, they have superiors to fall back on. Also, in the absolute worst case, if we feel we’ve been cheated, a well-established plumbing contractor company is much more capable of compensating us if we end up in court for any reason.

So with this in mind, we had to remember that we were navigating a minefield, and with this being our first foray into any plumbing needs beyond unclogging a toilet, it was important to do some research and be as careful as possible in our search for a local plumber.

But for all our forethought, we still didn’t realize how tough it would be to actually find a good plumber. In the next entry, you’ll get to hear all about the selection process, so stay tuned.

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