Beware the illegals, the "by the hour" chargers, and the amateurs !
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We provide our customers a full, final price for the solutions which we commit to.
Beware of those who charge hourly rates, because too often they do this because they are unsure of themselves, they don't know how long it will take, your job could very well BE THEIR FIRST ATTEMPT at pump work, even though they claim otherwise. More and more of our new customers have come forward to share unfortunate situations where they were charged excessive amounts by contractors who "multiplied" their actual hours on site to "take them to the cleaners".
On the other hand, we have the know how and decades of experience to be able to quote a full, fixed, final price right after our diagnosis.
Pump systems are comprised of multiple components and it is necessary to have a healthy, operating pump in order to diagnose other portions of the system (sometimes pump systems can have more than one problem, as in multiple problems).
We never use "hourly rates" to game and piecemeal our customers.
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So, this is not the first time we have run across disasters like this by illegals and amateurs:
On 09-02-23 we were called out to a property on Westlake Dr. in West Lake Hills of Austin.
The gentleman explained had just had over $60,000 of new landscaping installed, it was starting to "burn up" from lack of water - - and suddenly he had no water coming from a "shared" lake pump system.
2 or 3 years ago I had already worked on this ancient lake pump system, it was shared by 2 properties, however, the next door neighbor had called out a crew of illegals to work over the irrigation system the day before and they also put their hands on the lake pump system.
The one customer with me only noticed that now his irrigation system was without lakewater. We hiked down the hill to the dock on the lake and started surveying the damage:
1) The illegals cut the pump wiring and then used wire nuts to splice it back (you never use wire nuts as they are not waterproof and soon enough the system will fail).
2) They had completely undone the work I completed successfully years ago, installing another control box and connecting to the <too small> electrical wire for this 3 HP pump - - which will stress it with high amperage and shorten it's life - - if it ran at all. These illegals typically are un-educated, have never attended pump school, know nothing about electrical resistance measurements, cannot read English and do not follow the pump manufacturers charts.
3) We could no longer get electrical power to the pump right at the dock where I had configured it some years ago, so we marched back up the hill to the top to investigate. We discovered the illegals had completely "wired around" the existing pump pressure switch. I went over to the other property sprinkler irrigation controller and studied their work. What I discovered were the illegals had re-wired the system to activate only from the other properties irrigation controller - - completely cutting out the customer at my side.
4) Furthermore, they way they designed it there was absolutely no safety "pressure relief" or "moderation" for smaller zones in the irrigation system - - so when I activated the system on zone 1 and studied the pressure gauge it blasted above 80 psi, I rushed over and turned the system off before we some piping failed, but we found some time later an underground pipe had apparently already burst from hours earlier when the illegals were there, we noticed a large silent leak about 15 feet away coming out of a plastic valve box.
Moral of the story: You get what you pay for.
As infamous oil well firefighter Red Adair used to say:
“If you think it’s expensive to deal with a professional - - wait till you deal with an amateur”