Being in a state of panic is understandable if a plumbing emergency happens, especially when it occurs at the most inconvenient time.
Plumbing emergencies can range from an overflowing toilet at night, a clogged kitchen sink during holidays, to a leaking faucet flooding your kitchen floor on a Sunday. Dealing with these plumbing problems can be a headache if there are limited emergency plumbers or if you don’t know any plumbers at all.
When faced with plumbing emergencies, some homeowners might make rash decisions, such as calling a plumber without asking any questions. It’s best that homeowners like you avoid this.
Choosing The Best Emergency Plumber ─ How?
Hiring an emergency plumber is essential to ensure you have a specific person or company in charge of repairing your plumbing system in case of emergencies and inconvenient times. Most emergency plumbers are available 24/7, including weekends and holidays.
However, you must ensure you choose the one who can address your plumbing woes swiftly and effectively.
Below are tips on choosing the best emergency plumber for your household!
1. Look For A Local Emergency Plumber
You may see many national plumbing companies with well-known reputations and commendable services on the internet. Nonetheless, not all of them can offer local services in your area. If you encounter a plumbing emergency, they won’t be able to respond and solve your issue quickly.
Hiring locally is among the top tips for maintaining your plumbing system and choosing an emergency plumber. A local emergency plumber can respond to any plumbing emergency in the shortest possible because they’re based in your community. Local emergency plumbers are also much more knowledgeable about your state’s plumbing codes and regulations.
Additionally, one of the factors that affect the service rates of emergency plumbers is their fuel bills. By hiring a local emergency plumber close to home, you wouldn’t have to pay additional fees for travel.
Prepare a list of nearby emergency plumbers that you can review later on.
2. Check Their Qualifications And Customer Reviews
Now that you have a list of local emergency plumbers, it’s time to check their qualifications. It’s essential to hire an emergency plumber who can show proof of past experiences and successes, training certificates, and licenses.
These things show that the company and its employees have the skills and knowledge about plumbing repairs.
Furthermore, check their website for customer reviews and see what their previous customers say about their services. Better yet, you can do a quick check of them from local third-party reviews or government-approved entities too. It’s believed that information from these reviewers is more realistic and authoritative than feedback posted on a plumber’s official site.
Lastly, recommendations from your local friends and families are a good source. Perhaps they’ve experienced an emergency plumbing issue in the past and have worked with a commendable emergency plumber. You can’t discount their feedback.
3. Ensure They Have Proper Insurance
As much as possible, never hire any emergency plumber – or any home contractor – who doesn’t have a proper and up-to-date insurance policy. Their insurance policy will ensure you receive adequate premium compensation in case the plumber does shoddy work or incur costly damages, losses, and liabilities.
4. Find An Emergency Plumber With 24/7 Services
Not all emergency plumbers provide 24/7 services. This means that while they can quickly arrive at your house on time and deal with the plumbing emergency, they can only do this within normal business hours.
So, when choosing an emergency plumber, ask if they can offer round-the-clock services to ensure they can cater to your plumbing emergencies at any time of the day, including midnight and wee hours of the morning. And you may ask if their 24/7 services are available on holidays and weekends. Otherwise, you may continue your search until you find a few emergency plumbers available 24/7 all year round.
5. Be Cautious Of Plumbing Prices Offered Over the Phone
It can be tempting to inquire about plumbing prices when talking to a prospective emergency plumber over the phone. Yet remember that professional plumbers usually only give their final prices after they’ve inspected the extent of the damages and repairs. Thus, be cautious of plumbers who immediately give away their plumbing prices over the phone.
Instead, you can inquire about their plumbing emergency fee. For example, the cost of a normal plumbing emergency can be around USD$200. Nonetheless, suppose the same plumbing problem occurs at 1:00 AM on a Thanksgiving holiday or weekend and requires emergency repair. In that case, the plumber may charge you USD$400, adding USD$200 for the emergency repair fee.
Each emergency plumber may differ in their emergency repair fee; hence, ask around and compare their rates.
6. Choose An Emergency Plumber With Guaranteed and Warrantied Work
Even if some emergency plumbers are professional and skilled at what they do, things might still go wrong during their repairs or services, despite their best intention. Henceforth, to ensure your chosen emergency plumber is committed to rectifying such situations, opt for someone who offers a work warranty.
This written promise will give you peace of mind knowing that your emergency plumber will redo the repairs immediately if any problems occur within a fixed period.
7. Make A Shortlist of Emergency Plumbers Beforehand
You’ll never know if your first choice of an emergency plumber is available when you call them in the middle of the night. Perhaps they happen to be repairing someone else’s blocked drains when you had a plumbing emergency as well.
Ideally, create a shortlist of all the reputable, honest, trustworthy, and trained local emergency plumbers beforehand. That way, in case your first or second choice of emergency plumbers is busy, you still have other professional emergency plumbers to reach out to.
8. Get The Name Of The Person You’re Talking With And Who Will Handle The Repairs
During a plumbing emergency, your first instinct is to call one of the emergency plumbers on your list and give your home address so they can come over immediately. But letting someone into your property in the middle of the night or on weekends/holidays can feel intrusive and intimidating.
Not to mention that this puts you at risk too of letting strangers in who claim to be plumbers when they’re not.
To preserve your safety and security, ask for the person’s full name, who you’re talking to on the phone, as well as the person intended to handle the repairs. Once they reach your home, ask for their names again and company-issued IDs and government IDs to verify their identity.
Emergency Plumbers To The Rescue
Whatever plumbing emergency you’re dealing with, the right emergency plumber will always be available to your aid.
So, while you’re not dealing with any plumbing emergency yet, use these tips and get started on finding the best emergency plumbers in your area who can offer you quality plumbing repairs any time of the year.