Jeff Marsh from Calgary

Ron of Living Waters has been tending to our lawn and gardens and helping out my mother-in-law with her snow shovelling for a good number of years now and I couldn't be happier with the quality of his work and the level of service that he provides. As far as snow removal goes, Ron is always out promptly after a snowfall and in the case of prolonged storms comes by regularly during the course of the accumulation. Unlike other snow removal companies who simply focus on removing of snow from the surfaces which they are compensated to clear, Ron never loses sight of the bigger picture of true end goal of keeping the sidewalks clear and passable. As such, even when there is no new snow, Ron will stop by to ensure that no slippery spots in need of sanding have developped as a result of the melt-freeze of the snowbanks. With regards to lawn and garden care, that they are always in meticulous condition demonstrates the extent to which Ron thrives on this work and takes great pride in what he does. Although I know that Living Waters will work on the pay-per-service model on which almost every other provider uses exclusively, for us he provides a complete care solution for the entire growing season whereby for a flat monthly fee he provides everything our lawn and gardens need. Rather than being simply cut on a schedule the lawn is cut whenever it needs a trim, weeds are removed from the garden as the pop up and no need to worry about scheduling less frequent services such as fertilization, aeration, and power raking as Ron simply takes care of them when they are best performed to keep everything in top form. In addition to this routine maintenance, Ron is always available to quote and undertake additional services such as irrigation repair and enhancement, arbour care, and other landscaping projects. If you are looking for expert assistance with the outdoor aspects of your home, the number for Living Waters is the only one that you need to call!

Talk about awesome all around - that's Cuvers! I had two new side discharge A/C compressors installed and wanted to get them covered up before winter. The local upholstery shops wanted exhorbitant prices and had huge lead times which got me looking online for a fabricator elsewhere in Canada and I came across Cuvers. A really well developed quoting process allowed me to easily and precisely submit my custom specifications to them and their response was quick and professional. Both the price and the lead time (including shipping across the country!) were half of the most competetive estimate I was able to get locally. Hence I decided to give them a shot and felt safe sending them a hassle free payment via PayPal. Before I knew it the covers were here and they are very well made with attention to every detail. They came very nicely packaged and Cuvers even threw in a complimentary canvass storage bag for each that I had no idea was coming. A really nice touch. The next time I need a cover fabricated Cuvers will be the first and only destination!

Throughout the entire process of building my new home, Bob Zimmerman of Glacier Drywall is the most consummate professional I have dealt with. Bob provides a detailed quote and is very upfront about everything. However, you would be well advised to heed the line in Bob's quote that reads: "In other words, if it isn't stated here that it is included, it isn't included!" Bob has a very well developped business model and his precise scope of work keeps your cost exactly where it should be. That being said however, Bob and his team are willing to do whatever it takes to get the best possible job done - you just have to be prepared to pay Glacier out at their very reasonable T&M rate for anything that falls outside the expected scope of work. As things invariably do come up in any construction project, you should budget a few extra dollars to take care of them. In my case, we knew going in that there were going to be more of these than normal - and there were - but the extra charges to get the job as perfect as it possible could be were still came in at only 2% of the original quote. As far as getting the actual work done, the entire Glacier team is hardworking, courteous, and professional. However it is that Doug, who is Bob's right-hand man and crew chief, is both talented at his trade and takes great pride in his work which makes Glacier's services exceptional. As an example, he makes sure that everything is done properly even if it means undoing and redoing the work of a less experienced member of the team who has overlooked something. Also, despite having a young family at home he clearly dotes on, his concientious nature saw him working well into the evening on numerous occassions after the rest of the crew had left for the day to make sure every detail no matter how small had been taken care of be it aspects of the job that requires his years of experience or more mundane yet equally important things such as ensuring that the site was left clean. Between Bob's attention to detail in scoping out the project and Doug taking ownership to get the job done right, you're in good hands with Glacier Drywall Systems Inc.!

I hired Ideal Insulation this spring to take care of all of the insulation for a new home that I am building for my family. The job is now complete and while I must confess that I am very happy with the end result, I have to say that overall my interaction with Ideal throughout the process was less than "ideal". Specifically, the insulation process involved blowing JM Spyder into the exterior walls, spray foaming joist-ends and other difficult spots, hanging poly and sealing openings to effect the vapour barrier, soundproofing interior walls with bat insulation, blowing loose fill into the attic, and covering exposed spray-foam with a thermal barrier. Under Ideal's business model each of these tasks is performed by different crew which are scheduled and managed independently from each other. Although there were a few instances of unprofessional conduct with which I took exception, the main source of my dissatisfaction was a lack of scheduling, coordination, and communication regarding these autonomous crews. The process got off to a poor start on the day before work was to commence. Despite having spoken to Lee in the office earlier that day and clearly communicating that access to the site was to be coordinated through me, I was summoned to the site in the afternoon by an intrusion detection alarm to find that a supervisor had been sent to check out the job site and upon finding it unoccupied and locked up proceeded to go around the house trying windows and doors until he found one that happened to be ajar. The supervisor was suitably apologetic and professional but clearly my access instructions had not been passed along to him. For the first day of work, I was told that the JM Spyder crew would arrive onsite at 8am. Due to a scheduling conflict that morning and asked if the start time could be pushed out until 9am but was told that they needed to start at 8am to get a full day in. This seemed a reasonable enough request and as such I re-arranged my schedule to be there for 8. Needless to say that I was less than impressed when the crew did not arrive until 9am without reason for their late arrival. At this point though, things started to look up. The JM Spyder crew was a team of young energetic men who were polite, respectful, and did their job efficiently yet with care and attention to detail. I feel that they did an excellent job and having observed it's application, believe JM Spyder to be an exceptional product (offered pretty much exclusively by Ideal in Calgary) that I would encourage others to consider instead of either bat, cellulose, or spray foam for exterior wall insulation. The second day coordination was again an issue. Despite that the supervisor's unannounced intrusion two days before had occasioned another discussion with Lee regarding access procedures and on the first day, Ideal personnel were given security codes to allow them to let themselves into the site, I was again summoned to site at 7h45 by an intrusion alarm that this time turned out to be a third party supplier hired by Ideal to deliver material attempting to physically force a sliding patio door. My call to Lee while enroute to site in response to the alarm was not answered with concern or apology but simply a terse demand that I provide the supplier with immediate access to make the delivery or Ideal would have to discontinue the job. Turns out that JM Spyder crew who had access to the site arrived 5 minutes after me anyhow. At the end of the second day, the team lead of the JM Spyder crew told me that they'd be back in the morning and get their portion of the job finished up by the end of the day. However when they hadn't arrived by mid-morning I called Lee only to be told, as usual without apology that the crew had been sent elsewhere and wouldn't return until the following week. When I inquired as to scheduling for the other crews, I was told that a spray-foam crew would be onsite the next day (Saturday) and a poly crew would be there on Monday. An hour later, I got a call from a spray-foam supervisor saying that the spray-foam crew would be there in 30minutes. In one way though this was an improvement - at least someone actually called prior to the crew's arrival! Although the spray crew got the job done they weren't the most respectful or professional. In doing the initial walk around with them, I offered to drill out some pilot holes in the subfloor to help them check there fill levels in some tight spots. The team lead assured me that they didn't need them but that they would let me know if that changed and they would like them drilled. A few hours later, loud banging in the area that they were working was determined to be the crew smashing at the subfloor with a hammer to create the afore mentioned holes which were larger than the pilot holes would have needed to be and proved more difficult and costly to repair (at my expense) afterwards. The spray-foam crew's second day of work fell on Saturday and as such they were the only ones present on site. At the end of the day I stopped by to check on the progress half an hour after the crew left for the day to find the lockbox on the front door broken and left sitting beside the door. The door was locked but the key from the lockbox was sitting right beside it. I immediately phoned the spray-foam crew lead (no answer and call not returned) followed by the spray-foam supervisor who said he'd check with the crew and call me back. He got back to me to say that the crew had left the site properly locked up despite the damage to the lockbox being was such that it had to be inflicted while it was in the open position. The most likely explanation was that it was simply accidentally dropped but Ideal never assumed any responsibility for either the causing the damage or leaving the site insecure. Somehow during the spray foam insulation process a previously tightly sealed boiler exhaust vent was dislodged with the leak being discovered and reported to Ideal within hours of the spray foam crew having finished the work. All of the insulation in that cavity had to be removed to repair the vent, and although Ideal waived the fee to re-insulated it they did not take any responsibility for the repair which cost several hundred dollars. There were also deficiencies in the spray-foam application. To Ideal's credit a supervisor was showed up to inspect the work (without being asked but also without providing notice that he was coming so it was only happenstance that I ran into him) and had the crew return to address the deficiencies that he found as well as concerns I had raised including cleaning a significant amount of overspray throughout the house. The vapour barrier was sub-contracted out as piece work and while I have nothing bad to say about the gentleman who did the work, based on this experience I will never allow another piece worker to perform work on my house. Simply as a result of the architectural design of the house, there were significantly more openings to be cut out and caulked than would be encountered on a typical job and thus required more time to complete than was allowed under the sub-contract. The piece worker did the best job he could and allocated as much additional time as he was able before having to move on but it still resulted in a job that was not thoroughly and diligently done. As a result, I was required to spend several hours auditing the work and compiling a list of deficiencies most of which Ideal agreed to address. Although it only would have taken a minimal amount of time and effort to fully seal the vapour barrier there were some openings (such as holes drilled in window headers for power blind cabling) that they said were not part of their standard scope and thus refused to do. This required me to go out and buy insulation products to complete the work myself. Nevertheless, Leonard, the employee who was sent out to address the deficiencies was phenomenal. He was polite, professional, always provided advance notice of his visits, arrived when he said he would and did what he said he would. Perhaps Ideal should promote him to head up scheduling and coordination! Once drywall had been installed on the second floor ceiling it took more than one phone call to get a loose fill crew dispatched to insulate the attic and then several more phone calls to get a last crew out to spray a thermal barrier on exposed spray foam. In one instance the thermal crew drove down the back alley and was greeted by my foreman who happened to be in the backyard. He told them to pull around front and come on in. They never arrived around front and when I called in to inquire I was told that the crew reported other work was being done onsite that prevented them doing the job. As my foreman was the only one onsite that day, that was not the case. The thermal crew finally arrived after I received a phone call one day from Ideal's accounts receivable representative inquiring as to when the invoice would be paid. Upon explaining that I would pay the invoice as soon as the job had actually been completed, I received a call back from the scheduling coordinator within 10 minutes and the job was completed the next day.

If you need top notch masonry for a less than straightforward stone work job, then Brent and his boys at Bear Stone are who you want! After noticing some impressive stone work on a house in our neighborhood a couple of years ago, we tracked down Bear Stone through its owner to inquire about his availability to do the masonry for a new home that was in the planning stages. He was up for the task and worked with us first through a general contractor and then directly with me when I took over the project myself. There were various aspects of the design that were unusual and required quite a bit of innovative thinking to come up with an effective solution but Brent was always up to the challenge approaching it with a positive can do attitude and in every case delivering perfect results. Over the course of the project, several of his crews worked on the job and all were professional, courteous and talented with his right-hand man Al deserving special mention. The masonry is now completed and although it has been a long road to get it there, Bear Stone's craftmanship is truly spectacular and pretty much exclusively defines the exterior of the home.

Operating in a less than glamorous yet highly competitive industry typically structured with rigid pricing and hightly standardized product offerings, Ryan Beagle operating All Haul Waste Mgmt stands out by providing exceptional customer service and taking the time to understand his customer's needs. I inherited one of All Haul's bins on my construction site upon firing my general contractor and taking over the project myself a year and a half ago. Unlike other subcontractors who were extremely anxious about getting paid, Ryan waited very patiently while I worked through the legalities of getting him paid for past services. The change of management on the project result in less progress and therefore less garbage generated over a longer period of time. After a few months of being patient about this, Ryan professionally pointed out the problem that this provided for his bottom line (especially during the 2013 floods when bins were in high demand) but understood my desire to retain a bin onsite on an ongoing basis. As such he devised a customized pricing model that fairly compensates him for use of his bins while still providing me with cost effective, competitively priced service. If you are needing waste management services, I would encourage you to give Ryan @ All Haul Waste Mgmt a call!

Needed some metal mesh to be used for a chimney screen to be powder coated prior to installation. Despite not having an appointment, I was greeted and served right away upon entering their shop. The receptionist answered my questions and brought a manager out to answer those that she couldn't. They quoted a reasonable price for the work right then and there and promised a turn-around within a couple of days. I ended up rushing back in the next day with a couple of brackets that had been forgotten but also needed to be powder coated. Despite having already started work on my order they added the brackets onto the order without batting an eye and my order was still ready when promised. The powder coat finish was flawless and an exact match to the colour chosen. Next time I need powder coating done, Calgary Powder Coating Inc will be my first and only choice!

Needing a concrete coring service to bore out a couple of 3" holes in a foundation, I contacted Accelerated expecting to book an appointment a couple of weeks out. When Matthew told me he could be there in the next couple of days, I had to beg off as I wasn't ready for him. I called him back in the evening a week or so later expecting to leave a message but was pleasantly surprised when Matthew answered and got me booked in within 1 business day. He arrived at the jobsite at the agreed upon time, was professional and courteous, did a great job, cleaned up thoroughly, and charged a reasonable price for the job. Next time I need concrete coring or cutting, Accelerated will be my first and only call.

Going to use these guys? Do your homework first. They were a recommendation from a friend so I didn't but I should have. Had them come out to relocate a couple of bath fan exhaust vents that weren't close enough to the bathrooms that they were serving. The crew arrived as scheduled and after going up on the roof to inspect the job we agreed upon a price and they started work. As I do with all contractors, I pulled a WCB clearance on them and it failed. I immediately headed out to discuss this with the owner Darcy who it should be noted was napping in his truck out front while his crew was up on the roof doing the job. He assured me that it must be an administrative issue (which was believable as it was close to WCB year end) and that he would clear it up for sure the next day (This was a Sunday and the WCB was closed so nothing further could be done at the time). This was simply not true about this as the WCB subsequently sent me a demand letter indicating that he was in arrears with them for a substantial amount of premiums. To the best of my knowledge he has not settled up with the WCB and as I made the mistake of trusting him and paying him without obtaining a clearance I am now liable for his premiums associated with my job. Another roofer has subsequently been up on the roof to deal with another problem (that I had asked Darcy about but he failed to identify the cause of) and confirmed that although adequate, the work his crew did was not particularly great.

Justin, the owner of Rockyview Roofing, succeed where many others failed. When I first noticed a substantial amount of snow in my attic in January 2012, I successively talked to another roofer, a home inspector, and finally a roofing inspector (this one costing big $) with none of them providing me with any good suggestion of the cause muchless how to fix it. When the snow came was back inside again late this winter, I decided to come poking around on HomeStars and found Rockview Roofing and all of its great reviews. Justin was prompt and professional about coming out to site and immediately identified that the original roofer had used exhaust vents above my unvented soffits instead of the intakes that should have been used. As he doesn't regularly use the models installed on my roof he went out of his way to contact the manufacturer to determine if there was a retrofit kit available for these vents or another solution that they could suggest. There wasn't and they couldn't so Justin gave me a very reasonable price to come and change out all of the vents to intakes the he recommended and while he was up there doing the work also undertook a bunch of other minor repairs to bolster the overall integrity of the roof.

Acting as my own general contractor in the construction of a new home for our family, I was fortunate enough to be given Tony of Best Doors Inc.'s contact information by one of my neighbors with respect to installation of an overhead garage door. Unlike other garage door company franchises with who hand you off from person to person at every stage from initial contact to estimate to installation, with Best Doors Inc. Tony looked after the job at every step along the way. He was onsite to provide a quote within a few days of my initial contact and clearly presented the options and his recommendations. He went out of his way to investigate a particular feature I was interested in, provided local addresses where I could go and look at product, and in general was very patient until I was ready to proceed with an order. The door was a custom order and despite a logistics problem with the supplier he still had to door here and installed within the time originally promised. During the installation he took the time required to do the job properly and carefully making sure to ask my preference on small but important installation details (ie keypad placements etc). At the end of the day, we ended up with a higher quality door and opener at a better price than proposed by his competitors delivered with exceptional customer service that you just don't find very often in Calgary these days!

Before I get into the details, let me say that based on my experience with Cooper Roofing, I consider them to be a highly reputable organization that provides excellent customer service and does high quality work. A roofing inspection revealed that the flat roof segments on my Calgary home had been improperly constructed and required remediation. Being a both a repair and a relatively small job I was having trouble finding a contractor in Calgary both interested in and competent to take on the job. Hence when I saw a Red Deer based Cooper Roofing Ltd crew working on the flat roof of a commercial building in my neighborhood I stopped to talk to them. The crew foreman was friendly and after taking the time to listen to my story gave me a company card and said to give the office a call as he figured that they would be able to help me. Arrangements were made for an estimator to stop by and have a look the next time he was in the Calgary area. After a few calls back and forth, I received a quote and upon accepting it was put in touch with Chad Cooper to finalize the arrangments. I have to say that I was extremely impressed with Chad in that as the Commercial Division Manager he could have easily considered my small residential repair to be inconsequential from the overall perspective of his business but he didn't. He took the time (and I'm sure that it was more time than it was worth to him) to go over all aspects of the repair with me to ensure that it would proceed seemlessly. And it indeed did. The repair crew arrived on the day and time arranged. They were friendly yet professional, worked diligently and cleaned up completely after they were done. Although capping the repaired roof could have been completed immediately with some assumptions and estimates to finish up the job from Cooper's perspective, Chad suggested that it would be better done once installation of the exterior trim had been completed. So rather than just keep going and be done with my little job, Cooper simply billed me for the work done to date and patiently (despite delays with the other contractor) waited for the exterior trim to be finished. Once it was finally ready, one of their capping specialists, Darcy, was dispatched from Red Deer to accurately measure it up for the cap and then returned a couple of weeks later once that cap had been fabricated to finish the job. He too was extremely helpful, professional, and diligent in his work. Cooper Roofing Ltd is clearly an organization that really does cares about its customers and takes pride in its work and I recommend considering them for your next roofing project!

Our family is in the process of building a new home and I wanted a home inspector who was willing to come around periodically to make sure that it was being built right. Although there are lots of home inspectors out there willing to do the quick post sale inspection, there were very few who were both able and willing to supervise the construction of a new home from the ground up. Dennis isn't only eminently qualified for the task but has enthusiastically embraced it. He's always available on short notice to stop by whenever something doesn't look right. And, if there is a question that he doesn't know the answer to he doesn't hesitate to call upon his large network of experts to get it for me. At the end of the day, Dennis is generous with his time yet reasonable in his billings and I'd strongly recommend him if you are looking for home inspection services.

I was introduced to Larry & Kathy back in the late 90's after another heating and air conditioning company installed a new furnace for me and did a bad job of it. Not only did they come in and fix up the installation but they got the manufacturer involved on my behalf to help defer some the additional cost I was facing because of the first contractor's poor workmanship. Since then I've used them for all my plumbing, heating and air conditioning needs which has included more than one new furnaces and hot water solutions in residences that I have subsequently moved to as well as more mundane plumbing requirements such as leaky toilets and faucets. Although a relatively small operation, they have knowledgable friendly technicians who take pride in doing the job right. Their prices are reasonable and whether you are a long time customer or just found them in the yellow pages, they will take the time to understand your needs and do their darndest to provide you with the best possible level of service.