Hi, My name is Julian Holden and I’ve known Ray for about two years. Ray came on a marketing course I run at City Lit and since them we’ve met to discuss his website on a few occasions. I’ve been encouraging him to write a blog so that prospective clients can see what a nice and knowledgeable guy he is. Unfortunately he is too busy doing what he does best to often find time for this so I’ve stolen the keys to the website to do him a favour.
I was having problems with my central heating boiler and, as I knew Ray, and as as he seemed honest to me, I asked if he’d come over and look at this. He was initially reluctant, he is in North London and I’m in Southwest London and he’d rather work locally but I convinced him that it was clear that I needed a new boiler, mine was last replaced in 2001 and leaked continually, and that as another plumber had told me that all our radiators and plumbing would also need to be replaced it would probably be worth his while.
Ray turned up on time and poked around the system for a while. He decided that the radiators and existing plumbing were probably OK – and that we could replace anything that leaked as we went. He gave a me a quote for a new boiler, which included all the other parts and materials required and encouraged me to go and check prices for the boiler online so we could see that he wasn’t marking up the price.
I was a power flushing cynic. The very idea that it was worth paying a sum of several hundred pounds to have an engineer wash warm water through your plumbing to dislodge old bits of rubbish, mainly rust, sounded like the ultimate con trick to me. It was clear though that this needed to be done for the warranty on the new boiler to be valid. I am cynic no more. The amount of rubbish that washed out of our system impressed even Ray, who was happily taking pictures of the filthy filters of his power flush machine, and who came back the following day to give it another go as he suspected his machine hadn’t caught it all.
Ultimately all is fine. We have a new boiler, that heats both hot water and the central heating much better than the old and which is so quiet you need to look at the control panel to tell if its on, really hot radiators, a remote thermostat so we don’t need to go to the boiler to change the temperature, a permanent magnetic filter to catch any remaining bits of rust in the system, We’ve kept our existing radiators, but with new valves, and a couple of other tidied up bits of plumbing that I’m not sure were on the estimate but which offended Ray’s professional eye so he did them anyway.
Ray’s estimate was 40% lower than the other one I had. He ended doing did more work than was costed in getting the old radiators sorted out but charged me the estimated cost. I’m quite frankly amazed.
More about Ray. He is a pleasant and reliable chap, he turns up on time, works tidily, cleans up behind him and takes his rubbish away. I really cannot recommend this guy highly enough. If you can get him to work for you I’m sure you will be delighted with his service.