Only The Good Ones!

Whether this is your home…………………………………..or this one is your home,

you expect a Service Technician to respect your property!

You’re not expecting debris left behind or your home damaged!

One of the biggest fears a homeowner has when needing a Service Technician for their plumbing, air conditioning, heating, electrical or pool heater service is how that Technician going to treat my home! We all know of a friend or family member who had a Service Technician in their home and they damaged the home or left a big mess when they left. Fear not any longer!

Each of our Technicians is vetted prior to hiring. We carefully check their driving records, their previous employment, a thorough background check and several interviews before they can become part of our team. We then have them travel with a Senior Technician so they understand the way we respect a customer’s property, how we expect the job to be done right the first time, and how we treat each customer with the courtesy and respect they deserve! To insure that this continues we have on-going customer service training and roll playing regularly! Each customer concern is taken seriously. If a Technician does not treat a customer with respect, or respect the customer’s home or can seem to satisfy our customers, we first discuss it with them and if the behavior continues, they become someone else’s employee!

If you ever have an issue with one of our Technicians, please contact our Customer Care Department and express your concern. We want you to be a fully satisfied lifetime customer!

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Check out our website for more information and money saving coupons or contact us today if you have questions.

It’s a good time of year to have our trained experienced air conditioning Technicians solve your cooling problems whether you live on Grosse Ilse, in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Melvindale, Wyandotte, or Lincoln Park.

Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com.

Home Service Corporation serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs since 1980.

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Hug Your Plumber Day continued……

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.” — Albert Einstein, The Reporter, 18 November 1954 April 25^th, 2014 is “Hug Your Plumber Day”. Hopefully you have read part 1 of this article. If you haven’t, please read it. As science advanced and scientists, doctors and other health officials recognized that polluted water and human waste was a major cause of many of the epidemic diseases of the dark ages, they pushed for solutions to protect people. With the growth of cities, the outhouse had to go since there was not enough space to have them and have the tight living conditions of cities. The Romans brought the idea of piping water to their cities and towns in huge quantities through gravity from mountain streams where the water was cleaner and safer. Within the cities at the end of the eighteen century and the beginning of the nineteenth century piped water systems were again used. But this time they pumped water from lakes and rivers and had little dependence on gravity. Plumbers installed this piping and the piping within homes to provide clean water to homes and businesses. It was a learning time and advances in devices and installations that further protected the water supply each of us use today. These advances came through trial and error and many were the direct result of the ingenuity of your plumber. These include air gaps between a faucet outlet and the rim of a sink, valve design inside a toilet that prevents the waste water being sucked up into the drinking water system, faucets that reduce the possibility of scalding from extremely hot water, relief valves on water heaters to prevent explosions along with dozens of others. All skillfully installed and calibrated by your plumber. On the drain side of the system, your plumber has installed the piping to carry away waste water and human waste. He has sized the piping to be sure the waste is safely and efficiently carried away. He installs vents so the system will work properly. He installs the piping which connects to the plants that process the waste and safely returns the water back into our ecology. Your plumber installs traps and systems so smells from the waste are not found in today’s homes and businesses. Rarely do we even notice how effective these systems operate. Countries with modern plumbing systems are free from those diseases born of polluted water or human waste. Today’s plumber has spent at least three years as an apprentice and often has an associate’s degree from a local college. Your plumber is a highly trained, highly educated craftsman. Remember to give him or her a hug (or at least a handshake) next time you see your plumber. It’s a good time of year to have our trained experienced plumbers solve your plumbing problems whether you live on Grosse Ilse, in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Melvindale, or Oak Park. Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com. Home Service Corporation serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs since 1980. Related Posts 21 Things to ask a contractor! Myth or Fact? 11 Summer Dollar Savers

Hug Your Plumber Day, part 1 :)

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”
— Albert Einstein, The Reporter, 18 November 1954

 

April 25th, 2014 is “Hug Your Plumber Day”. Some history to better understand the contribution plumbers make to our lives today.
During the middle Ages, in castles the toilet was called a garderobe and it was simply a vertical shaft with a stone seat at the top. A hole in the bottom let everything just drop into a pit or the moat. Obviously there was smell and diseases from the mess. You had to be careful you weren’t walking underneath it when someone was on the “toilet” and take care not to fall into the moat. In the summer time the smell would have been terrible. Some Monks built stone or wooden lavatories over rivers. At Portchester Castle in the 12th century monks built stone chutes leading to the sea. When the tide went in and out it would flush away the sewage. During this period, wealthy people might use rags to wipe their behinds. Ordinary people often used a plant called common mullein or woolly mullein. In fact, people used to store clothes in the garderobes as the smells kept moths away that might otherwise eat holes in them. This is where the word wardrobe comes from.

The typical peasant family of the aptly-named Dark Ages lived in a one-room, dirt-floor hovel, with a hole in the thatched roof to let out the smoke of the central fire not a castle. The floor was strewn with hay or rushes, easy havens for lice and vermin. Garbage accumulated within. If they were lucky, the family had a chamber pot, though more likely they relieved themselves in the corner of the hovel or in the mire and muck outside. Water was too precious to use for anything except drinking and cooking, so people rarely bathed. Heck, they barely changed clothes from one season to another, wearing the same set every day, perhaps piling on more rags for warmth.

These are the conditions which spawned the infamous Black Plague, killing an estimated one third of the European population. Although poor plumbing was not the only cause, the plague serves as the most striking example of misery caused by poor sanitation in general.

The first of several waves hit England in 1348, caused by flea bites spread by insects that Lived on host black rats. They, in turn, fed on the garbage and excrement of the masses. London became largely deserted. The King and Queen and other rich people fled to the countryside leaving the poor suffering in the cities.
Panic, death and despair followed the abandonment of farms and towns. William of Dene, a monk of Rochester in Kent, England wrote, “Men and women carried their own children on their shoulders to the church and threw them into a common pit. From these pits such an appalling stench was given off that scarcely anyone dared to walk beside the cemeteries, so marked a deficiency of labors and workmen that more than a third of the land in the whole realm was left to.” So bad was the “Black Death,” the Great Fire of London in 1666 can be viewed as a blessing in disguise. Though it killed thousands of people, the holocaust also consumed garbage, muck and black rats, effectively ending the plague.
We’ll continue part 2 in our next post. In the meantime, it’s a good time of year to have our trained experienced plumbers solve your plumbing problems whether you live on Grosse Ilse, in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Melvindale, or Oak Park.

Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com.

Home Service Corporation serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs since 1980.

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Pro or What-to-be?

A toolbox full of tools does not make a Professional

With the slower economy over the past several years, many jobs have been eliminated with the unemployed or under employed looking for additional sources of income. Additionally teachers, firemen, and policemen have had schedules that allow them to have a second career. Some believe that they have the skills of a professional and decide they can be as effective as a professional in a repair or installation project. To be perfectly frank, they often can do many of the simpler tasks a professional Plumber, Air Conditioning/Heating Technician, or Electrician can do. But then again, we have followed behind many “simple” tasks that have been totally messed up by a handyman.

I am always amazed how a parent will look out for the safety of their children in many ways but look to save a buck and jeopardize the safety of their family in other ways. Most parents wouldn’t think of buying a black-market car seat for their small child. They wouldn’t consider a cheap bike helmet for their son or daughter. They wouldn’t buy milk or fruit that was not pasteurized or free of pesticides. They don’t shop for the cheapest tutor or coach. Yet when they have someone make a repair to a faucet that could scald a child, a heating system that uses natural gas as the fuel, or a circuit that needs to be properly grounded, they will have someone with little or no experience do the work just to save a dollar.

So what makes the difference between a handyman and a professional?

·        The definition of a professional from Merriam-Webster dictionary is: “relating to a job that requires special education, training, or skill”.

·        The definition of a Handyman from Merriam-Webster dictionary is: “a person (especially a man) who is skillful at doing small jobs (such as household repairs)”.

That’s quite a difference. Each of these trades requires hours of classroom training, years of working with a master, testing and ongoing training. The time frame to become a master in these trades is at least 5 years of work and study. Many have associates degrees or full bachelor degrees in business and construction. Their experiences of working in hundreds of homes similar to yours help them quickly and effectively diagnose the problem and often offer a variety of solutions. They back their work and will solve the issue to your satisfaction.

As Glenn Haege, The Master Handyman, often says, ”The best tool in your tool box is often your checkbook, call the professional.”

We have professionals ready to meet your needs Call us today to be assured of a successful outcome.

Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com.

Home Service Corporation serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs since 1980.

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What’s Behind the Washing Machine?

Am I in Trouble Now?

There are a lot of scary things we must do in life. Some of these include going to the dentist, getting a shot, starting a new job, or having a stranger in the house! When you call for service on your furnace or air conditioning system, you may be calling a stranger to come into your home. Day in and day out there is an article, a television sting, a report on customers being taken advantage of by poorly trained, unethical heating, air conditioning, plumbing or electrical service technicians. Before you have a company into your home you always want to find out some keep things about the company and the Technician that is coming out.

Here are some of the things you should check on:

• Does the company have liability and workers comp insurance
• What are their customers saying about them
• Have they been in business for a number of years
• Do they list an address for their place of business
• What do your friends or neighbors say about the company
• What does the web say about them
• Are their trucks well marked
• Do the Technicians go through drug testing and background checks
• Can I get information about the Technician coming to my home before hand

That last item brings up some interesting facts that you should know. Plumbers and Electricians are licensed by the State of Michigan and are required to have a journeyman’s level of expertise for most work but there is no classification for a Journeyman Heating or Air Conditioning Technician. The leaders within the industry recognized this and set up the North American Technician Excellence (NATE) program.

NATE is a testing program which requires a Technician to have a substantial amount of classroom and field experience to become certified in an area of the heating and air conditioning industry. There are about a dozen different classifications in which a Technician can become certified. The certification is only good for five years then the Technician must retest or have at least 60 hours of approved training. This is to assure the Technician is competent in the newer technologies since the changes have been coming rapidly in these fields. The need for higher efficiency furnaces and air conditioning equipment,  the greater need for indoor air quality measures, the protection of the environment from refrigerants, and the use of electronic controls within the equipment and system controls has made the simple heating and cooling of a home far more complicated than just 10 years ago.

So you want to be sure the Technician coming to your home to service your heating or air conditioning system or installing a new system has the NATE certification. We provide information about the Technicians we are sending to your home in a variety of ways. Our Customer Service Department can provide that over the telephone. We can email information to you before the Technician arrives. We also have information about our Technicians on our website for you to review. We are constantly training our Technicians and upgrading their customer service and technical skills so you don’t need to be scared of who is coming into your home.

Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com. Home Service Corporation serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs since 1980.

Need a Plumber or Heating Contractor?

Over the years we have seen so many bids lost to the low bidder. It was a plumbing repair or a duct cleaning or a furnace replacement. The buyer was so focused on price that they did not qualify the bidders for their job. Then the homeowner got burner. We have seen this time and time again.

So what was the homeowner supposed to check into before buying? Here is a list you can use on your next service need or replacement need:

1. Could you show me your liability and workman’s comp insurance. If not you may pay later!
2. Could you show me your proper state and federal licenses and certifications?
3. Can I have a copy of the permit you are obtaining for the work?
4. What training do your Technicians have?
5. Do your Technicians have a criminal background or drug tests prior to hiring?
6. What is the quality of the materials that will be used?
7. What do other customers say about this contractor?
8. What’s your experience and that of your employees?
9. What is the financial status of the contractor? Do the trucks look clean and in good working order? Will they be there for you in the future for warranty work?
10. Who is standing behind the quoted warranty?
11. Why should I feel safe with your Technician in your home?
12. What do you and your Technicians do to protect your health and property?
13. Are the Technicians trained in the safest work practices?
14. Do you have 24/7 service if something goes wrong?
15. Have you given me choices so I can choose the solution that I believe fits my needs?
16. Do you have a street address if I need to find you?
17. Can I get a planned maintenance program on my home comfort system?
18. How are you an active part of our community?
19. Who will remove the debris and cleanup the work area after the job is complete?
20. Are you and your Technicians familiar with my plumbing and heating systems?
21. Is your office in or very near to my community?

When these questions are overlooked, the homeowner pays. Television programs like “Holmes on Homes” and investigative programs often highlight the consequences to homeowners who fail to check the contractors they hire. Many of the questions bring items to light that the low bidder cuts to save costs. The cuts affect quality, safety, and warranty for the homeowner. As the old commercial used to state, “You can pay now or you can pay later!” Legitimate contractors expenses are greater to provide you with safety, quality, and warranty on their repairs and installations.

We are always willing to share all the above information with you. Contact us for more information or visit our website at www.HomeServiceCorp.com.

Home Service Corporation

Celebrating our 32^nd year serving our Michigan customers Heating & Air Conditioning , Plumbing and Electrical needs.