HEB Custom Mechanical Plumbing

Lawrence M.

I hired Harold Burton to do plumbing work on my parent's bathroom remodel. The work was done clean, efficiently and done on time. I contemplated not doing the finishing work, so i could admire the beautiful work that would have been covered with sheetrock. A stellar job, I highly recommend HEB!
Lawrence M
Orinda, CA

Alison H.

Harold was recommended to me by my charming general contractor Andrew of Blue Dog. I hired him on a time and materials basis because I know how hard it is to accurately bid a renovation in an old Victorian and Harold has since admitted that he would've seriously underbid this job. I have already paid him over $60,000 to plumb the house and add a radiant system and we're not even done yet.

He came on the job not quite at the beginning but certainly early enough to design much of the mechanical room to his liking. I already had a 2 loop manifold for the small (500 sq') apt. and asked him to use it. Instead he installed an absurdly overbuilt, quite loud, and expensive 4 loop system in my modest apt and I now have a useless manifold for which I cannot recoup my money.

I designed the laundry room so that the sink sits next to the washer because as anyone who has ever had a washer not drain knows, that is where the sink belongs. It was clearly drawn this way on the plans. I pointed out to Harold that he had reversed the washer and dryer and he tried to convince me to change my plans even though the cast iron sink drain was already in place.

He pulled his pex through the slab on the other side of that laundry wall right up behind the dryer vent so that I will forever be fighting those tubes when I clean the vent. Harold had the whole mechanical room to choose from and he chose a spectacularly bad spot.

He also ignored the time and effort I went to when designing my bathroom upstairs. I went to some effort and expense to make sure the wainscoting in the bathroom stopped just under the lip of the sink. It's a small detail but those small details are what distinguish a well designed room from a cheap and easy job. Harold couldn't be bothered with the obvious design, didn't bother to ask, and simply chopped right into my beautiful wainscoting and ruining it in the process. And since he won't pay to replace it and I no longer have the money to fix his mistakes, I will be looking at his wood butchery for many years to come. When I asked him why he did this without asking, he said it was so he could mount the sink flush with the wall. But the sink is mounted on its cabinet and that cabinet could easily be shimmed the 3/8"" needed. It's just another excuse from a contractor unwilling to build anything but what he feels like building instead of what he's been hired to build

Instead of working on Saturday (as promised on Saturday morning) he shows up at 6pm on Sunday and works to midnight in the room next to my bedroom without any explanation

3 times I have paid for materials that he did not order. He has kept as much as $10,000 of mine for a year even mentioning storage fees at one point

I tried to work with him when he had a big job elsewhere being patient until he could return to my relatively small job. I know what it's like being a small contractor so (I am afraid I am learning that I am too) sympathetic. But a few weeks turned into many months and then he had health problems (luckily he's doing much better health wise now) but that's when I started tracking down the $10,000 of materials I had supposedly already paid for. That is the only reason I learned that he had never even ordered the materials. And when I pointed out to him that this is not a proper way to run a business, he simply challenged me to a law suit saying we'd both lose money to lawyers so why bother.

His incredible delays have cost me many more thousands of dollars than I owe him, many more thousands of dollars than I have and that I dearly need now that I am closing in on the finish.

I need an occupancy permit so that I can get a tenant so that I can start receiving the income that this job was supposed to start generating months (and many mortgage payments) ago. I can't get one without Harold finishing the radiant which he won't do until I pay him a very tiny fraction of the $60,000+ I have already paid him for a job he would've lost his shirt on had he bid it

Oh, and he's holding the rest of the materials hostage even though, of course,I have already paid for them

I have caught him in several lies and when I put it to him that he had three distinctly different reasons for why the manifolds I had prepaid for were not on my job, he simply dismissed it saying that everyone manipulates

I know there are honest contractors out there. I just wish I had found them

He took an inherently stressful situation and rather cynically and willfully made it far more stressful than it needed to be, far more costly than it needed to be, and he did that when he himself benefited from the goodwill of others

2.26.15 The radiant is up and running and it is loud. I can hear those unnecessarily beefy re-circulation pumps all over the house. They are in their own room in the basement and I can hear them all the way up on the third floor. This is a really bad choice on Harold's part

He and Andrew are thick as thieves

There is more but I'm out of space