Kurt McCarthy

Review of Skilling's and Son's

What an adventure it was to get water flowing agai...

What an adventure it was to get water flowing again. Original service was provided by Tim and Mitch who found bad wire going to pump which was 3 wire. Couldn't pull 3 wire out so went with a two wire pump. Was happy to replace 16+ year old 1/3h.p. pump to new 1/2 h.p. and up the size of the pressure tank too. All was going great and was quoted a verbal price of $3,200 said OK and felt much better after seeing service call work form which they fill out after work is done. Parts $2,496 and labor for 2.75 hrs $524 seems fair and was happy to pay. After sanitizing well I was told to open valve 30 minutes and then close valve near pressure tank every 30 minutes to flush chlorine out for 5 hours. When clearish open main valve and all should be good. Well, I opened the main valve and was like man this is making a lot of noise and taking a long time to fill up toilet tanks. Flow was low and has thinking it was clogged pipes and tried to reverse backflow by shutting off pump and hooking up garden hose to outside, open drain valve and hope pressure from garden hose would reverse flow back thru main valve. Listened to pipes(put my ear to them) and found most noise was just before shutoff valve right after a blue plastic PEX pipe section with a shark bite compression type fitting to old copper work and then my old main valve.
All I could think of of is bad valve, teflon tape left in pipe, deliberate rock shoved in there so they could come back to do more work what the hell? 1:30AM it's time to go to bed. Next morning took a weak shower cleaned all aerators and screens in faucets and shower head, listened to pipe again and was debating whether to call my plumber or Skillings and Sons. Called Skillings & Sons and they said they would have someone there by 12 to 4 PM. Anthony and Joe showed up and were already on the job for 15 minutes before I got back from doing some errands (my elderly mom was home to let them in). Explained kitchen faucet goes to a trickle when you flush toilet and shower was weak. They took the Blue PEX pipe out and the Main valve and found a nickel in the pipe inside the Shark bite compression fitting and old work and main shutoff valve. They sweated on new copper and new shutoff valve (minus any coins) and all is well in the McCarthy household. No charge for this because it was their bad. I don't recommend any plumber use PEX fittings or sharkbite fittings if they have been in your pocket : )
Thank You Skillings and Sons, will use you again. Anthony and Joe don't be too hard on Tim and Mitch. If Tim and Mitch had a nickel every time stuff like this happened they'd be rich.