I was glad to see the nice write-up last week accorded to Aaron Mielke and his company, Plumbrite.

Back in February we noticed water seeping from a joint in the middle of our concrete driveway paving. Initially I had thought that it was from a neighbor’s irrigation. Investigation, though, proved that not to be the case. It turned out that the leak was in the water line from the meter at the street to our home service lines.

I called a plumber with a lot of trucks around which had recently spent many days at another neighbor’s house. They sent out a guy for “leak detection.” After some time the guy said that he couldn’t pinpoint the source under the driveway. He recommended trenching the side of the driveway back to the garage, then run piping up and over the inside of the garage to the side of the home. The price, $7,900 plus cosmetics. His company charged me $320 for the valueless visit, to be excused if I took the bait. No thanks.

Through a neighborhood website where another household had used him for the same problem, we heard of Plumbrite. Aaron dropped by, suggesting a remedy without any trenching. There was no hemming and hawing or hedging. He was confident. The price was $6,100. There was no charge for the estimate. I hired him.

At the prescribed time, he showed up with his crew. The job was done perfectly in a day without any of the physical and visual trauma to the surrounding land and structures for $1,700 less than what Brand X had quoted. I highly recommend Plumbrite.