Precision Plumbing Heating Cooling & Electric

I had a bath tub drain that was clogged. I have girls, so that is not uncommon. Usually, I can get some pliers and clean the drain myself. I also have a small hand drain snake and that usually does the trick. Well this time that did not work. I called Precision and asked them for an estimate over the phone. The guy claimed he could not give me one because every case was different. He said the minimum charge / trip charge was $59, but that would be waived if I proceeded with the work. I was skeptical, but I scheduled a service call. The plumber arrived on time. He was polite, professional and honest. I do not remember his name, but he was from Arkansas. You'd know by his accent. He looked at the drain and I told him what I had done so far. I told him that I thought about renting a power snake from Home Depot for $55, but I'd rather have a professional clean out the drain in case something went wrong. He said that he would have to use his hand snake as he did not have a power snake that he could use on this drain. I thought that was pretty odd. Realize that in order to come up with his charge to clean out the drain, he had done nothing but stand in the bathroom next to the tub. Then he gave me the price. He opened a binder and showed me a page that had the drain cleaning prices. A bath tub or sink drain was $375.00. I was stunned. He said that if I did not want to do the work, he would not charge me anything. I thanked him and he went on his way. Here is my complaint. When I made the appointment, the person who took the call new full well what the charge was going to be. He could have told me that over the phone. It is not like they had to look up parts and prices. The price was pre-printed in the binder. This is exactly the reason consumers do not trust tradesmen. You never know when you are getting a straight answer. I ended up going with another company. They charged me $100 and told me what the charge was going to be before they came to the house.

They were available the day I called. They sent a plumber and a heating guy over (not the same person). They were extremely professional and called 15 min before they arrived. They wore protective shoe coverings in the house. I explained the problems to them and they discussed prices with me before they started work (they have standardized prices for everything - it all comes out of a book - so you get the same price every time). The guy who worked on the furnace fixed and explained where the whistling sound could have come from. He also let me know that I would probably have to replace the pilot light switch thing (I am not exactly sure whats its called) and he told me what would happen when it did go out so I wouldn't freak out when it did happen. He offered to replace it but I told him I would wait a while (he didn't push it like a sales person). The plumber fixed the shower quickly. I had had someone look at the broken sink handle before and they said I would have to replace it but the plumber came out knew where to look. He took the handle apart in 2 sec and found a missing screw and screwed it back in! I would have bought a whole new sink set if he would not have found that. Both guys were also great with my curious kitten!

I called them early in the morning and they were there at 8 in the morning. They did a good job and the price was pretty reasonable. I spent $230 on that work. The fact that they came out within a few hours of me calling them was pretty awesome.

This review compares Climate Masters, Precision Plumbing, and Save Home Heat. My furnace was 22 years old and working fine. My annual heating bill was about $250, as my house is insulated and I keep the thermostat low. Going from a perhaps 70% efficient furnace to 95% efficiency would save about $80/year, hardly worth spending thousands of dollars. Supposedly these furnaces last 15-20 years, but an informal survey of my neighbors found that everyone has or had a furnace last more than 40 years. On the other hand, the 30% federal tax break was ending on December 31; and Murphy's Law says that my furnace would die on a Friday evening of the coldest weekend of the year. My first bit of advice: before your furnace dies at least choose an installer and a furnace, so that when your furnace breaks you know who to call and what to order. Don't get pressured into making a quick decision. Interviewing companies and choosing a furnace takes a couple weeks; you don't want to do this with a broken furnace in the middle of January. Looking thru Angie's List I saw there are only three furnace contractors serving Boulder: Save Home Heat, Climate Masters, and Precision Plumbing. I had all three come out and give me quotes. Dan Lewis from Climate Masters was the first I crossed off the list. He didn't look at the furnace or ask about square footage or insulation. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as we have a 1960s tract house identical to hundreds in the neighborhood; if he's installed furnaces in similar houses then maybe he doesn't need to do an inspection. He gave me quotes for Lennox's three most expensive furnaces, one of which is 80% efficiency despite my saying that I wanted a high efficiency (95% or better) furnace to get the 30% tax break, and he didn't give me a quote on Lennox's cheapest high-efficiency furnace, which is what I ended up buying. But the reason I'm giving him a failing grade is that he told me that the Lennox SLP98V, the top-of the-line ($6626) 98% efficiency furnace would use half the fuel of the 95% efficient G61V. He said that the SLP98V is a variable fuel model so most of the time it runs at 30,000 BTU, using less than half the fuel of a 70,000 BTU furnace. I pointed out two fallacies here: first, the cheaper furnaces are two-stage, i.e., they run at 43,000 BTUs most of the time, then switch to 70,000 BTUs in very cold weather; and second, a 30,000 BTU furnace running 7 hours per day will use the same amount of fuel as a 70,000 BTU furnace running 3 hours per day. He insisted that the expensive furnace would use far less fuel. In reality, a 98% efficiency furnace would save about $1.50 a year in fuel and cost $1100 more than the 95% efficiency furnace. Dave Choka from Precision Plumbing looked at my furnace and asked about the insulation, etc. But he gets a failing grade because he told me that a 95% efficiency variable blower furnace is more efficient than a 95% efficiency furnace with a single-speed blower. When I questioned this, he said that the two furnaces would use the same amount of fuel, but the variable speed blower uses one-tenth of the electricity because it can run at 60 watts, when the single-speed blower runs at 600 watts. I pointed out the fallacy here, that a 60-watt blower running for ten hours will use the same amount of electricity as a 600-watt blower running for one hour. The same amount of air has to be moved through the ducts. He insisted that the variable speed blower would use less electricity. Then he told me that the Honeywell HE365 humidifier they install is better than the HE265 humidifier that Save Home Heat installs. He couldn't explain why the HE365 is better. It took me 10 minutes on the Internet to find the difference: the HE265 is a passive humidifier, i.e., it uses the furnace's blower to move air over the humidifier's pads; when the HE365 has an electric fan to blow the hot air over the pads. The HE265 uses no electricity, when the HE365 uses electricity. I felt that he was hiding from me that what he wanted to sell me would use more electricity than what Save Home Heat wanted to install. His prices were the highest -- $100 over Climate Masters and $1000 over Save Home Heat. He included a ten-year extended warranty, which I wasn't certain I wanted. Lastly, he tried to pressure me into signing a contract on the spot, without giving me time to think about it or discuss it with my wife. Sarah Gillis from Save Home Heat inspected the furnace and the insulation, etc. She didn't lie or pressure me to buy a more expensive model. The furnace includes a two-year warranty; she said that we could wait two years and then decide if we want to extend the warranty. I decided to get the Lennox G61, which is the bottom of the line 95% efficiency furnace. The only advantage of the more expensive variable speed and/or variable fuel models is that the expensive models are quieter. This isn't worth $700-1100 to me. I decided to use the difference in price to add a humidifier ($485) and an air filter ($450). I get headaches when our furnace is on, maybe the air filter will help. The furnace totaled $5700 (with thermostat, air filter, and humidifier). I'll get a $1500 federal tax credit, $500 from Recharge Colorado, $120 from Xcel, $100 off as an Angie's List member, and a 3% discount for paying by check. My out-of-pocket will be $3309. This was worth it to get a more comfortable house (cleaner, more humid air), to not worry about the furnace breaking down, and to save $80 a year.

The line needed to be "Roter Rooted". They unclogged the line. I would use them again for an emergency but I would also shop around first. I chose not to use them for other work which needed to be performed due to the cost.

They are prompt, professional, take their time and do not rush, and the work is done right on the first time. The product they use they stand behind it. They are a little bit pricey.

Though prompt and professional he quoted me $1200 to replace both the circuit board and transformer. When I asked "about how old the unit is", he guess it to be between 12 and 15 years old. I asked for a quote at the same time to replace the entire unit figuring it may be at its "end of life". He quoted $3500 for a new/comparable unit plus $900 for a new flue liner. I took the estimate and said thanks. I called a competitor who arrived the next day. Based on the Serial Number he showed me, the unit was from 2004 and no more than 6 years old. He replaced the Transformer and the pressure switch (circuit board was fine). Total cost $204. Work was completed in 18 minutes start to finish and is working fine. Flue liner was new corrugated stuff and did not need replacing. I've had good/bad experiences with Precision in the past, but this will keep me (and friends) away in the future.

This "service" wasted a lot of our time, accomplished nothing, and we were over-charged. They tried to talk us into expensive and unnecessary excavation and sewer line replacement work which was later proved to be unnecessary. They had two trucks there with a total of three men trying to talk us into unnecessary work. No wonder they are expensive.

I felt the workers themselves were absolutely outstanding. They were conscientious, knowledgeable, thorough, and friendly. They were very considerate of the fact that we had a 6-month old baby at that time they were there. They were very quiet. They didn't ring the doorbell and knocked because they knew. They were really nice. I would be willing to use them in the future but that depends on if they would get the price down a lot or not. They are a little on the more expensive side but maybe that's what you have to do to get good service. But I would consider them in the future.

We were leaking into the basement from the water spout that connects to the house. They came and fixed it very well but it was extremely expensive. We would not use them again.

Precision called and told me they were running a special on A/C service. I said ok and then when the technician showed up, he said there would be an extra charge because my a/c unit was in the attic and he would need a laddar to get to it. I told him the phone person never asked where my units were, and that there may be a charge if they were difficult to access. So I told him I wasn't going to pay it and that I was not going to use the service. Then he told me I had to pay $59.00 for the trip to my house! I said I wouldn't pay that either and told him to leave.

Our 17-year old water heater had started behaving erratically with really hot water sometimes and lukewarm water at other times so we decided to replace it. We called Precision Plumbing, who were very courteous on the phone and had a technician sent out the same afternoon to give us an estimate of how much the job would cost. He quoted us about $1300 for providing and installing a new 40-gallon EnergyStar labeled water heater and hauling away the old one. When he was examining our old water heater, he discovered that we also had some non-functioning valves and some pipes showing some corrosion that he recommended to be replaced, as well as the water pressure in our house being much higher than recommended. It's not surprising that when you look around a 40-year old house, you'll find at least some additional problems, so it's a good selling point for the company. However, since these were issues we'd need to address sooner or later, we decided to take care of them as well. The cost for this extra work was another $600, which included a 15% discount of their regular prices. The same technician, Dave, came back a couple of days later and performed all the work very efficiently in about 5 hours. He didn't leave any mess and everything worked very well at the time he left. Before he left, he also performed a "free inspection" of our sewer line, and found some intrusion of branches. He explained what the costs would be for them to fix it, but without any annoying "sales pitch," so we found it useful to at least know what our options are (from this company) if this were to become a problem in the future. Overall a good experience, although I would think that if you look around you can probably get the work done at a somewhat cheaper price.

He did a good job. He suggested a pretty inexpensive fix and took care of it. I didn?t have anymore problems. I was happy with him. The work cost me $150. The company was flexible in sending someone to check the problem out. He was personable. I felt that he was honest. He made me comfortable with the service he suggested. The result was really good. I will hire this company in the future.

We had noticed some grey water in the basement so we had them come out to look at it. They put a camera down the line for free and they saw some roots coming through the ceramic pipe that is underground. We had them come out and replace the pipe and their price was the best of several plumbing companies we looked at. They did a good job. When they were done, you couldn?t really tell that they had done work nine feet under the ground except for a little patch in the street. They came in, dug a bunch of holes, and replaced the sewer line. The foreman on the job was really nice, very courteous, very thorough, and explained everything that was going on.

Our neighborhood had an extensive electrical outage one cold morning a couple of weeks ago. We believe the ensuing power surges "fried" the gas control valves for the furnace and the water heater. When I came home from work later that day, I discovered there was a severe gas leak in our house. Once the gas line to the house had been turned off and the fire trucks had driven away, we went to a hotel to stay the night. The next morning, we contacted Precision representative Todd Ruff. It just so happens we had already established a working relationship with him. He had given us an estimate a few weeks before and we were already in the process of working with our credit union on an equity loan for HVAC replacement and improvements. After our phone call to Precision, great things began to happen. Todd set us up for installation the VERY NEXT DAY! In the meantime, Precision loaned us several space heaters so we could stay at home that next night. Just 38 hours after the firemen drove away, Byron, Chris, Dave and Paul were at our doorstep ready to get to work. When I came home from work only 7 hours later, they were already cleaning up! My husband was able to work at our home office that day and said that everything was done with the utmost care and professionalism. Our job was not particularly easy since it was tight quarters (the utilities are enclosed in a closet), there were some unusual configurations of electric and gas lines, and we were adding 2 new pieces of equipment (the air cleaner and the humidifier). But they did a wonderful job of engineering a solution and Byron, Chris and Paul wasted no time in getting the equipment installed. It has been a couple of weeks now, and everything works perfectly. No "glitches." I am pretty picky about how a job looks when it is done, partly because I feel it probably also reflects the quality of the technical aspects of the project. I must say, it looks perfect and works perfect. There is some discussion about Precision's higher prices, but they were not that much higher than the other bids we got, and Precision's high quality equipment and workmanship are definitely worth paying a little bit more for. When I think back on all the horror stories I've heard about construction/remodel jobs, I'm happy to say: PRECISION DID A SUPERIOR JOB ALL THE WAY AROUND! WE COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE HAD A BETTER EXPERIENCE!

Things went very well. They're great. They're pricey, but good. We had a 30-year-old boiler that they replaced. They really were perfect.

They are very good. They come when I call, they clean up after themselves, and they know what they are doing. They are the top of the line so they are a little expensive.

Very pleasant and professional, but they were unable to identify the source of the problem after three visits.

My existing furnace heat exchanger had corroded to the point where carbon monoxide was detectable in the house. We replaced the entire furnace with a new high efficiency model. They gave an easy-to-understand quote. After we selected them, they had the furnace out the next day and replaced everything within a day. They were clean and professional. They also made it very easy to claim the utility rebate that was available to purchasers of high-efficency furances by providing the forms and an addressed envelope to the claim center.

The team was very friendly and professional. Todd the company representative was always available for my calls and questions. Precision uses top-notch equipment in their installations and has a great warranty.

The team was very friendly and professional. Todd the company representative was always available for my calls and questions. Precision uses top-notch equipment in their installations and has a great warranty.

I have used them twice recently. It was really easy to get them on the phone. They were able to promptly get someone here to address the issue. The technician was very able to figure out what was going on, and go over what needed to happen. He gave me my options and costs. I felt confident with my choices. They were able to get parts very quickly. One time they had the parts in their truck, and the other time they were able to get it on the next business day. The technician was very nice and did a good job. Their prices are a little high, but I go ahead with them because I appreciate the quality of their work.

I'm not sure how I found them, probably the yellow pages. They are quick to respond. I have been satisfied with the quality of their service. The technician has been knowledgeable and easy to work with. I haven't compared prices.

They were a bit expensive, but the quality was well worth it. They were extremely responsive. The tech even wore booties to walk in my home, even though it was not necessary. I would recommend them to others.

It went wonderful. They were here on time and did the job in a timely manner. They stuck with the quote they gave me and I had no complaints. They were very polite and professional.