Ron in Woodstock

One Sunday last winter, I was locked out of my house. (Tip: It doesn't matter who else you're with has a key. Bring your own.) I got in touch with Al in the evening after getting to a friend's place. I met up with him at my house the next morning. Al was very personable, and on time. Since it was winter, the lock on the house didn't really want to unlock, so he busted out every tool he had available to him to get me back in. Once he got to work, it wasn't long before I was back in my house!

Two summers ago, we had the crew from Atchison install an air conditioner in our house. We went with them, since it was a pretty good price in comparison with other contractors in the area. We bought a Payne air conditioner, since that was the one on sale. It's a division of Carrier, which is nice. Payne air conditioners had mixed reviews, but it's been running like a champ for the summers that we've had so far. The installation is out of the way, and looks good and solid. I'm glad that we went with Atchison.

When our furnace broke, we took the opportunity to get some of the government grants for installing and energy saving furnace. In order to get the grants, we needed an audit to show that we did in fact increaase the efficiency of our home. Mark W from F2 was selected to come out and do the audit. He was quite thorough, taking a few days to do many of the tests. After the audits, he gave us additional options and recommendations about how we could increase the efficiency of our home, as well as take advantage of other government grants, both at the municipal and provincial levels.

The cedars forming the hedge in our backyard were getting overgrown, so we called in these guys to trim them a bit. When they were first done, it was actually kind of unsightly, since we could see the area of the trunk that they had cut through, but now that the smaller branches have grown over that, it looks fine. However, our neighbour on the other side tried to do it himself, and it didn't turn out anywhere near as well. Sometimes you just need to have professionals do the job.

My brother and I installed a deck this summer. They helped us optimize the deck design by eliminating a couple redundant posts, and saving us some money. When the plans changed, they came back pretty quickly to set the additional posts. The posts were straight with minimal drift from where they were supposed to be. Glad these guys were there. The dirt under the lawn was all clay and bricks.

I rented an post hole auger this summer to drill some holes for a shed. Mr Miller was extremely helpful, explaining exactly how to use the equipment, and giving us tips on how to get the best results. He even helped us get the equipment to the van, as well as out of the van when we brought it back the next day. The price was great too!

A few years ago, our furance stopped working properly. This was a problem that had occured before, so we knew what to replace. Rick's was able to get us the part that we needed in a decent time (which was good, since it was getting cold outside). However, when the part was replaced, the CO detector was soon set off, and we had to shut everything down in the middle of the night. We called Rick's up again as soon as we could. Not only did they take back the part at full price, while we waited for the new furance to come in, they also provided us with some pretty heavy duty electrical heaters so we could at least stay in our home for that time. My only minor concern is that the new intake and exhaust piping that needed to be run to bring the house into code compliance is a little ugly.

The roof in our house was starting to show its age at 20+ years old. There were minor leaks in a few places, and water damage was starting to form on some of the drywall. We saw that these guys were doing a lot of the other houses in the neighbourhood and checked out some of their work. The price was fairly reasonable, and the work was done incredibly fast. So far the roof hasn't leaked again, and I see they're still doing brisk business in the neighbourhood, so they must be doing something right.