Any business, regardless of what service they provide, has it’s good and it’s bad servicemen and women. One bad experience should definitely not dictate the industry, but for some homeowners experiences, sadly, it does in their eyes. For instance, one bad auto mechanic experience might make someone feel poorly about all auto mechanics. This shouldn’t be the case, it was just one time, but there are realities that might lead to the belief that the service industry is full of scams.
Franchise owned service companies and leak detection providers operate under a corporate umbrella. Some are operated by family owned businesses that looked to join a conglomerate type business for the aid in marketing or operations management and others are simply people who had an interest in owning a business and they opted for a franchise. they could have bought a McDonalds or a 7-11, but they may have opted for a leak detection service company. The big difference is that a family owned service company are likely “pool guys” or “plumbers” and have had years of experience right in your immediate neighborhood, and now they have a shiny new corporate logo. The general buyer of a franchise on the other hand, is likely trained by the franchise to perform a wide range of services, and they in turn hire people and train them. Those people might be lacking in any experience in pool service, and ultimately will just reiterate what they learned from someone who reiterated it to them. That’s not great.
A customer called us telling of how she had two estimates on her pool after receiving to visits from two franchise owned service companies. ironically, both were from the same franchise brand, just operating on different sides of town, and they gave her two completely different explanations of what the pool was doing – both were completely wrong.
Size doesn’t matter, we can accurately find leaks on any pool.
This leak detection was performed on the 4 Seasons Hotel Pool and Spa
in Thousand Oaks.
Service provider one told her that the entire plumbing system was compromised due to ground shifting and the leaking pipes weren’t repairable and had to be replaced at a very high cost. this led her to call the other company.
The other company told her that the piping was fine but the returns in the pool were all word, leaking and needed replacement, including the drains t the bottom of the pool. They offered her the option to cut out the drain and replace it with a new one. Costly, extensive and unnecessary. This is when we got the call.
Now, when we arrived on the pool, one of the first things we noticed was a previous structural crack repair near the bottom of the pool. We ran the equipment and saw bubbling as air was coming back into the pump. This immediately told us there was likely a leak in the skimmer line, and we were in fact correct on that. However, it was the only line in the pool showing any kind of leak, and was an easy repair without a lot of invasive digging. The company that recommended an entire pipe replacement was very wrong. What we did find, however, was that neither of the company checked to see if the previous repair on the structural crack was leaking, and it was. Just a small section of the crack showed to be leaking, but to fix this, the entire 5 feet of crack was repaired using Torque Lock Structural Staples, permanently repairing the damage and ensuring it would never leak again.
In the end, we were able to assure the customer that the entire industry isn’t a sam, but that she was right to make several calls to actual pool companies to find out what the issues in her pool were. You should do the same. Get a leak detection performed by a licensed and qualified leak detection company, like CalTech Pools, and make your decision for repair based on facts about your pool.
In Los Angeles, call 818-436-2953 to schedule a leak detection today and get your repairs done right. Call CalTech Pools today.