A F White Excavating Co

We got a visit from Mr. White and an assist from RooterMan of Framingham. The first task was mapping out the pipe (actually two pipes exiting the house and joined in the front). Coupling Mr. White's expertise and the tools of RooterMan we discovered the actual spot of the blockage. Let me emphasize the care and exactness because we wanted to dig once on a path hundreds of feet long and avoid the water and gas lines in the process. The spot was exact and after digging and carefully avoiding the water and gas lines which were over at about one feet up and to either side by a foot each. The hole was dug with no damage to either and found a break in the sewer line exactly. Once the problem was found it became critical because the pipe released the nasty water that was blocked up. It took two days to rectify because the water needed to be pumped out and allowed to completely drain. We were without the ability to use the drain and managed. This is when Mr. White was moving fast to restore the usage of the drain. He was clearly sympathetic that it get at least temporarily fixed asap which is what he did. We now have a cleanout directly above the repaired pipe with a manhole. This is necessary because we will need to keep tree roots that have entered pipe joints further down the line. The basic flooding problem is finally fixed at a reasonable cost. One note about the original laying of this drain system. It appears that the pipe was broken because it was laid directly on a large rock. This was the cause of the break. Drain pipes must be laid in sand. Mr. White has fixed the problem by chipping and removing the rock under the break and laid the repair section on sand. Mr. White is careful and knowledgeable and we highly recommend his polite reasonable services.

We had experienced ruts and peaks in our 19 year old driveway within a couple of years of installation. We also noticed some water coming up under the lollycolunm in our garage which is in front of the driveway. Hence, we thought we had a problem with water drainage from the back of our house to the front. I tried to dig a french drain myself but only got down one foot to discover clay. That's when we decided to have a professional look at the problem. We called a number of them but were far an away impressed with Allen during the estimate. He was kind and patient and seemed to have a plethora of knowledge and background regarding digging and ground composition. Facing an uphill battle digging by myself, we decided to have Alan install a french drain from behind 1/2 of our house (where we determined the problem water was), down the driveway and into the storm drain (under the street). He helped us with the permit. He was the ONLY excavator that the City would allow to tie our drain into the city's storm drain system. In digging around the house, Alan had to dig around our incoming electric lines, phone line and verizon FIOS (big orange conduit). The FIOS was not a problem as I knew generally where it was and it was ORANGE. The power lines were a little more problematic as we didn't know precisely where they were. Mind you this french drain went down ~ 5' so we were bound to hit something important if we weren't careful. Alan had his helper dig by hand till he found the electric lines. But what was really impressive was that when digging with his backhoe, he discovered our phone line AND DIDN'T BREAK IT. AMAZING!!! Mind you, the phone line was a small average size wire not in any conduit! And he still left it in tact. At the time we didn't think that we needed it because we had FIOS but what we didn't know is that Verizon had not totally converted us over to 100% digital so at the time, we were getting our phone from that line. The drain took longer then estimated because he ran into ledge rock and had to work around that. He also believes in doing the job right the 1st time even if it takes longer than he expected. He didn't rush because he was against a deadline. His priority was doing the best job he could. The base coat for the driveway may have taken slightly longer but that was for the same reason which is fine with us. He also tried do as little damage to the ground with that big machine, laying down plywood for it to go over but whatever was disturbed, he fixed and made right. He re sculpted the part of ground that the machine went on, seeded it and put alfalfa on it to keep the seeds from blowing away. New year, new lawn. No problems. BTW, our driveway is still perfect (although someone else did the paving). Alan promised that if he did the base coat for the driveway, we would have not problems. We considered having the pavers(which Alan recommended and did a great job too!!!) do the whole driveway but felt that our water problem was so severe that we wanted to hedge our bets and use Alan's expertise for the driveway base coat as well. 2 years later ... no ruts, divots or dips ... the driveway is beautifully smooth!