Local Plumber Ed Roupe Snaps Photos Of Ralph Scott's Notes

Seeing Ed's name posted on the forum made me want to take a few minutes to write my thoughts about Roupe's Plumbing and Heating.

Three winters ago on one one of those 20 below zero night, my wife and I woke up to no heat in our bedroom and an out of commission boiler. We had been living in our house in Fletcher for several years and never had a need for a plumber. We had always had our boiler serviced by our propane company. That winter we had switched propane companies and I called them up and they explained that they didn't have their own technicians, but they gave me the name of the company they recommend for all of their installation and service requests. I call up this company and they send someone over pretty quickly. The guy comes in declares that I have frozen pipes under my bedroom and my boiler is not worth repairing. He tells me what I need is a whole new system, and that it will be about $6000. I tell him I will think about it and he goes away. I will also say this was not the owner of this particular plumbing and heating company and my neighbors do use this company and they really like the service they have gotten from them. To me, the guy that came to my house that day just wanted to sell me a new system.

Something didn't really seem right to me and I definitely wanted a second opinion before I bought a whole new boiler. I open up the Fletcher Phone Book and I see the number for Roupe's Plumbing and Heating. I give them a call and Ed is over at my house within the hour. I open the door to my house and Ed comes barreling into my house in a panic; like fixing my heating problem before more pipes freeze is the most urgent problem imaginable. In reality, he probably just wanted to resolve my problem quickly so he could get to the 2 or 3 other "no heat" calls that he already had lined up by 9am that morning. While Ed is beginning to diagnose the system, I am explaining to him that he is the second guy out to the house that morning and the last guy told me to buy a new system. This gets Ed into a small rage as he tells me there is no need to replace my boiler. He tells me that even though the boiler is a little over 10 years old, I still have many more years of service from it. So we go about solving problem #1, the frozen pipes. We find the two frozen spots and get the ice melted, but still no heat. He then determines that the circulator pump is dead, so he replaces that. Every time he fixes a problem, a new one emerges. Everytime Ed thinks he's getting out of there, there is something else to be fixed. He closed and open valves that have not been touched in years and they start leaking, so he is replacing valves, etc... He ended up being there for 3 hours or more when he was only expecting it to be a few minutes dealing with the frozen pipe.

It was immediately apparent to me that day, that Ed is not someone looking to rip anyone off. He is only looking to resolve your problems in simplest most economical way he can. As long as Ed Roupe is in business in our area, he is getting all of my plumbing and heating business. I highly recommend him.

A couple of days after this incident, I was telling a friend of mine over in Cambridge the story. I only got through the first half of the story with the first company, when he tells me I should give his friend Ed Roupe a call... I told him that is exactly what I did.