Cal Plumbing & heating INC

Cal and his team completed two projects for us: 1, a full replacement of our HVAC system 8 months ago just after we purchased the house and 2, full home repipe of water lines. I waited on the review to go through both heating and cooling needs for the house. What they came into with the house was a home that had been neglected and outdated. What they left was a beautifully crafted HVAC system that exceeds our expectations. The plumbing was high quality and gives us peace of mind we won't have to worry about a Slab Leak. Everything they did was top notch and when we had questions during the installation and questions after we moved in, they were very responsive. I highly recommend Cal Plumbing and Heating.

We have found our local and go-to plumber in Vista, CA! Great experience working with Cal Plumbing and Heating INC and we will be calling them for all of our plumbing needs. Honest owner and workers. Fair pricing. We hired Cal to perform work on our water and sewer connections at our house. David came first to do a camera inspection, and he was helpful and informative. We will be requesting his return to perform a cleaning of our system. Afterward, Arturo and Luis completed the work pertaining to the sewer and water connections. It was a lot of work and they were able to finish everything in one day. Both plumbers were very knowledgeable, extremely helpful, and genuinely concerned that we were going to be happy with the work. We are very happy! We did have trouble getting in contact with Cal at one point, but he remedied that quickly by scheduling our work to be completed early the next day so it was a non-issue. All in all, outstanding owner and workers at this company. We are grateful for them and the quality of work they completed. Thank you, Cal, Arturo, Luis, and David! Por cierto, también son bilingües. Hire these guys and you will be happy with your plumbing too 🙂

This is going to be a two part review of Cal Plumbing and Heating. The first part is a short, quick recommendation while Part 2 explains, in depth, the rationale behind Part 1. Part 1: Cal Plumbing & Heating was extremely punctual, professional, and cost effective on two separate occasions. The owner personally came and worked on my furnace fixing it in short order. When I had to subsequently replace the unit, his employee was equally efficient and professional. My experience with other companies was not good (see part 2), so I was extra cautious with Cal. He delivered and I cannot recommend his company more highly. Part 2: When our furnace originally started blowing only cold air, we contacted a company via Angie’s for service. They came the next day, identified the problem and told us the part would take 10 days and the repair would cost $650. We waited, with only a space heater for warmth, until they returned to install the part ten days later. This technician, different than the original one, seemed uncertain about what he was doing, spending a great deal of time on his phone asking questions about the install. After more than an hour, he told us that he was going to have to take both the old and new parts back to the shop for troubleshooting. Hearing nothing the next day, my wife called later in the afternoon to find out when we might have heat. She was told that they were quite busy and wouldn’t get to troubleshooting until the following week and it would be okay if “she found someone else”. That is when we called Cal Plumbing and Heating. The owner himself arrived the next morning, assessed the problem, and said the missing part, which our first company still had at their shop, had likely “fried the motherboard”. Now we needed two parts! He said he had them both at his shop and could put them in that afternoon for $250. We enthusiastically agreed. That evening we had heat for the first time in 12 days. The next morning, however, the furnace once again provided only cold air. A call to Cal had a replacement company, Cal was vacationing for the Christmas holidays, at our door the following morning. Yet another part had gone bad, this time to the tune of $450. The new company fixed it, but expressed concern over the gas valve, just about the only original part remaining, and suggested we replace it to reduce the delay in the heat cycle. We declined and enjoyed heat for the rest of the day and into the next. Alas, the furnace once again stopped producing heat. We chose to wait until Cal returned from his vacation to address this new issue. When he arrived, he confirmed that the gas valve was creating problems and needed to be replaced. At this point, he counseled us that the heat exchanger also had significant build-up/corrosion. He said it could last another two years, but might only last two months, and suggested it might be a good time to replace the 38 year-old furnace. While it was almost ten times the original repair, we agreed to having him install a new, modern, efficient unit in two days time. He arrived with a second technician, well within the target time range we had arranged, and immediately got to work. The tech worked a little over an hour to remove the old unit and install the new, making adaptations to the duct work in the process, while cleaning as he went. Cal returned at the end of the install to ensure all worked as promised and answer any questions we might have about warranty’s or unit function. We couldn’t be happier with our new furnace and the service we received from Cal Plumbing and Heating. Had Cal returned after the furnace failed a second time, I believe we would have had the discussion about replacing the unit at that time rather than later, but that was a decision influenced by a lack of heat during the holidays.