2nd opinion over plumbing work / process of choosing a plumber

dada44

hi there,

very grateful to have this forum - it's a nice place to learn and give knowledge

my parents are recently redoing a lot of work, particularly with their underfloor heating. Their idea is that you find a good plumber through a recommendation, talk to him about the work, and if he can do it, hire him. They are more comfortable with getting a recommendation off someone than calling out 2 or 3 plumbers from yellow pages, getting a quotation from them for work, and generally judging how they might fair from their short meeting. I personally feel that calling random plumbers out may be useful - to get more than one opinion especially.

I talked to the plumber about what he was doing, over the phone. However, most of it went over my head - (part of me wonder's if that was his intention). It would be interesting to get another plumbers point of view. So my question is this

1. is it normal or ever done to get a 2nd plumber for their point of view, on work that is already going on, or about to finish. Just so you have the peace of mind that this was the right thing to do, or at least know what the alternatives could be.

2. what is your normal process for calling out tradesmen? Are you happy just finding one, or a few, from yellow pages, calling each of them out for a quotation/ to assess their knowledge, and then making a decision? (is this sort of call out usually charged?)

Or do you normally only go for ppl who have been recommended to you ?

many thanks

Meepster

I always go for either people who I know already, or people who have been recommended by another tradesman.

Although it does help I work in the trade, so know pretty much someone for everything that could need doing.

As far as I'm concerned, you can't get a better recommendation than from a family member or close friend...

fluffpot

I think it's rare to get a second opinions... but if you did do this you;d need to pay plumber 2 for his/her time and make sure they didn't meet plumber 1!