If there’s one thing that every homeowner knows, it’s that having a quality plumber is a necessity when things go wrong with the pipes in your home. However, finding the right plumbing expert isn’t as simple as searching “plumber near me in Normal, IL” when a plumbing issue presents itself.
For one thing, you’re not going to have time to enter “plumber near me in my area” and actually take a deep dive into the results when you’ve got a gushing faucet flooding your bathroom. You’ve got to know what to look for in a plumber before you need someone to come to your house. If you take the time to plan ahead, you can make sure you’ve got the right person for the job available before you have a serious emergency. Here are a few things you can do to choose a qualified plumbing expert!
Discuss with Family, Friends, and Neighbors
The internet has made it easier than ever for someone to find “plumber near me in my hometown” without ever getting up from their computer. However, the best way to find a reliable plumber is still the old-fashioned way of talking with someone you trust and getting their thoughts on someone they used for the job.
When you talk about your plumbing needs with your friends, family and neighbors, you’ll get a genuine, honest review of whom they used and what they liked about them. Internet reviews can be a helpful start to your search, but the thing about interviews is that you don’t know the person who’s actually writing their opinion. They could be telling the full truth, but they could also be coming off a rough day that colored their opinion of their plumber’s visit. Unfortunately, you’d have no way to know the difference.
Talking to your friends, family and neighbors is different. They know you well and you know them, so you should be able to trust them to give you good information about their experience. These people that you see regularly want you to have a good experience with any “plumber near me in the neighborhood” that you hire, so they’ll tell you if something seemed off about a plumbing choice they made, or if someone did exceptional work at their house. Once you get a good picture of whom you might be working with, you’re well on your way to hiring the right plumber for the job.
Check Their Qualifications
Starting a plumbing business isn’t a hard thing to do. Nor is making sure that your business will come up in the search engines when someone looks for “plumber near me in Illinois.” However, there’s no way to fake the qualifications that come with a reputable plumbing company.
That means making sure that they’re licensed to perform work in the Land of Lincoln and that they carry appropriate insurance for their work. Working with only licensed plumbers ensures that your plumbing company is qualified to do the work you need and isn’t going to bail on you in the middle of a job. In order to get your plumbing license in Illinois, any prospective plumber must pay a fee and take classes to show they’re staying up on the latest requirements of plumbing. That takes commitment, which is exactly what you want to see from any “plumber near me in Normal, IL“.
You’ll also want to make sure you’re working with a plumber who carries proper insurance. Any plumber who’s been in the business for longer than a few weeks understands that sometimes, things have to get worse before they can get better. In the plumbing world, plumbers often have to create a new problem in order to solve the original one. For example, your home might have a burst pipe behind the wall that’s causing water to pool in a troublesome spot. In order to get to the pipe and replace it correctly, a plumber might have to break the wall and create a hole in order to access the pipe.
If you searched for an “insured plumber near me in Illinois”, you won’t have any worries. Plumbing insurance takes care of any expenses that the plumber might have caused in order to repair the damage in your home. But if you worked with an uninsured plumber, you’re on the hook to repair any structures that might have been damaged or destroyed to fix your plumbing issue.
Hire Them for a Non-Urgent Job
One of the best ways to check if the “plumber near me in my hometown” that you discovered does good work is to put them to the test. The best way to do that is with a non-urgent job, such as remodeling your bathroom or installing a dishwasher. This gives you the chance to examine the plumbing team in action and for you to ask questions in a non-stressful situation.
Obviously, this won’t be quite the same as if you need to hire them to repair a burst pipe and you have water gushing through your home. But by choosing them for a non-urgent job, you can get a sense of how they work and what kind of quality their work is. When you search for a plumber, the work they do on a less urgent job indicates what kind of work they’ll do when you’re in a tight spot. It also gives you a chance to test the quality of their work without putting anything at risk. If there’s an issue with installing the dishwasher, you can always fix their mistakes. When it’s a burst pipe, shoddy plumbing work is disastrous.
At Covenant Plumbing, we know how critical it is to do the job right the first time. Whether you’re just searching for “plumber near me in Normal, IL” or you’ve been a client for years, we strive to provide quality work each and every time. Contact our team today for all your plumbing needs!
