Well, that certainly was a lot of rain. We saw a lot of tragic circumstances in the last month, but at least one of them was averted by a sump pump!! Yes, some sump pumps can do the job.

I got a phone call from my office manager one day to tell me that my customer had no power to their house, in the middle of that first 10 inch rainfall. And how did she know this?? The SUMP PUMP notification ..read more

Hey, it’s blowing my own horn a bit, but I recieved a nice testimonial from a customer I’ve had for 30 or so years and I wanted to share it.

This is from Rona from Cambridge:

“Dennis Foley has helped me renovate a small Queen Anne house in North Cambridge over the past thirty years.  He has installed garbage disposals and dishwashers; he has gutted and rebuilt the kitchen, two bathrooms, and assorted other rooms; he has replaced hot water tanks and ..read more

We’ve been doing a lot of complete bathroom renovations the last few months, so I wanted to write about what it is we are doing.

First there’s the issue of protection. We live in an area where most of the houses are old, and have been remodeled at least once, so there can be a lot of layers of bathroom to remove. And remove we do. We take it all, right down to the studs and subfloor, or floor joists. If ..read more

Many people have seen my email tag and asked about The Denny Club.

This is what it is and how it works!

The Denny Club is really a service shopping club. By being a memeber, you save many times the cost of membership every time we perform service to the mechanical systems in your home. Dennys Club members do not pay our normal $49.00 Disapatch and Diagnostic fee. They pay only $130.00 for emergency service, which is 1/2 off the normal $260.00 ..read more

A close friend of mine recently had quite a tragedy. Her washing machine was connected with the old rubber hoses, the kind that comes with the machines. These hoses were probably installed with the machine, over ten year old I would guess. Well, in the middle of the night, one of the hoses burst. Her laundry is in a closet on the first floor of her house in a closet in her 1/2 bath. The water shot out of that ..read more

Have you seen, or do you have,  the flexible gas piping (CSST) that some plumbers are installing now? It looks like metal electrical cable, covered by yellow plastic. I can’t say that we’ve never used it, but it has to be a really unusual installation for me to choose it over steel pipe. I don’t like it and wouldn’t choose it for my own house. Sure it’s easy to run, although it’s expensive and the fittings are expensive, and the ..read more

This is a complicated thing to write about. Oh, there’s the usual stuff that you should expect from all the contractors that perform any type of service for you:

Be on time, or at least communicate if things change. We all know they can.

Be polite, not too loud, respectful of your home.

Clean up and take away any trash.

Do what you said you would, when you said you’d do it.

These are not complicated, and when I first went into business for myself ..read more

Do you buy bottled water?  I’m looking for you!  Bottled water is such  a waste of money and time. Who knew that the big soft drink companies would get rich selling water from faucets. If you look at a lot of the bottled water labels you’ll see PWS listed as the source. That stands for Public Water Supply. In other words, a faucet!! The only difference between you and them, is they have a water filter. If you buy just ..read more

We’ve had a lot of questions over the years about turning down your heat, both daily and when you go away.

Does turning the thermostat down save money? The short answer is yes.   The flow of heat from the house to the outside is proportional to difference between the temperature inside the house and the temperature of the air outside. if you allow the house to cool down,  that difference is made smaller and therefore the heat flow to the outside ..read more

This may not be just a plumbing issue, but before you go out and buy a condominium, or if you already own one, here are a few of our stories about condo living. Caveat emptor!!

Let me tell you a few stories.

We went to look at a leaking waste pipe in  the basement of one condo, it was a converted two family house, so there were only two units. The leak was in an old cast iron drain that served both ..read more