Two people, one van,
and a phone that gets answered.
Tri-County Plumbing is Ron, who does the work, and Cassie, who runs everything that is not the work. That is the entire company. It is smaller than the competition on purpose.
THE ARITHMETIC OF A SMALL SHOP
Why the van is not getting bigger.
There is a well worn path in this trade. You get good at the work, you get busy, you hire a second person, then a third. Somewhere around the fourth truck you stop being a plumber and start being a person who manages plumbers. Around the sixth, you need a dispatcher. Around the tenth, somebody suggests a sales process, and the technician arrives at the customer's kitchen table with a tablet and three packages to present.
None of that is villainous. It is just what happens to a business that grows, and somebody has to pay for the overhead it creates. That somebody is the person with water on their floor.
Ron went the other way. One van, one plumber, and a rate low enough to publish because there is no dispatcher, no fleet, no commission structure and no sales training to fund. When you book Tri-County, you get the person whose name is on the paperwork, and he will still be the one who turns up if you call again in three years.
The trade off, stated honestly. One van means we cannot be in four places at once. On a busy week, a non urgent job might be a few days out. If you want somebody in the next ninety minutes for a dripping faucet, a larger company is genuinely the better choice, and we will say so.
RON
The one under the sink
Ron does every job that goes out under this name. He quotes it, he does it, and if something is not right afterwards he is the one who comes back. There is no layer between you and the person holding the wrench.
His working day is 7 to 5, Monday to Friday. He takes four booked jobs on a Saturday and keeps the rest of the weekend clear for emergencies, which is why Saturday has to be booked in advance and Sunday cannot be booked at all. That is not a scheduling quirk, it is a deliberate decision about being available when things actually go wrong.
He would rather tell you a job is not worth doing than sell it to you. There is no commission in this business, so there is nothing in it for him either way.
CASSIE
The one who picks up
Cassie answers the phone, books the work, orders the parts and chases everything Ron does not have time to think about while he is under a house. When you call this number, you get her, not a call center and not an on hold queue.
She is also the reason this website exists in the form it does. She spent weeks trying to build one herself with a website builder, ran into a wall, and had a very clear idea of what it needed to do: show the real schedule, take a real booking, make the emergency number one tap away, and be honest about the rate before anybody picks up the phone.
If you have a question the site does not answer, ask her. She would rather spend five minutes on the phone than have somebody book the wrong thing.
WHAT WE ACTUALLY PROMISE
Five things, all of them checkable.
Not values. Not a mission. Five specific commitments you can hold us to, and complain about if we miss.
You know the price before we start
The hourly rate is on this website. The estimate for your specific job is given before any work begins. If the job changes, we stop and tell you before continuing.
The person who quotes it does it
There is nobody else. You will not be handed to a technician who was not part of the conversation you had.
We tell you when not to spend money
If a repair is the right answer instead of a replacement, that is what you will be told, even though the replacement pays better. If the job is not ours, we will say who to call instead.
You pay when it is finished
No deposit, no card on file, no financing presented at your kitchen table. The work gets done, then you pay for it.
Labor is guaranteed for twelve months
If something we did fails inside a year, we come back and there is no charge for it. Parts carry the manufacturer's warranty and we will tell you what that is before it goes in.
The phone gets answered
Seven days, including Sunday, including the middle of the night. Not by an answering service that takes a message.
LICENSING, INSURANCE AND THE BORING PART
Check us. Then check the next one.
California licenses contractors through the CSLB, and you can look up any license number on their website in about thirty seconds. It will show you whether the license is active, what classifications it covers, whether there is a bond in place, and whether there are complaints against it.
Do it for us. Then do it for whoever else you are considering. It is the single most useful thirty seconds available to a homeowner and almost nobody spends it.
- License number is on the footer of every page of this site
- Bonded and carrying liability insurance, certificate available on request
- Permits pulled for water heaters and gas work, as California requires
- Work inspected where an inspection is required
Anyone quoting a job over $500 in California should be licensed. If somebody offers you a cash price on the condition that no permit is pulled, the saving is not a saving. It is a problem deferred to whenever you sell the house.
Rather see how we work than read about it?
Book the free consultation. Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation, and you will know quickly enough whether we are the right people.