As it turns out Companies House has given Mike’s Plumbing and heating services limited a compulsory strike off. Not good for Cowboys.

Update 21/03/2018

It would turn out Mr Michael Anthony McNamara – born Mar 1976 aka Mikey appears to have left me a little gift. Following a recent annual service the front control panel metal hinges have been torn away, along with remnants of sand and cement in the main system!

Why? I can only speculate, it would have taken quite a bit of force to break the metal brackets which makes me believe it was malicious – colour me shocked. The sand and cemet found in the system was clear laziness from the knee-jerk Gas-Safe response. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine who was the cause.

A quick check at Companies House shows our boy Michael was out of luck in 2016! A long time before I even spoke to him. I’ll go on a wild guess and assume he is still operational wearing his very best snake skin boots

Original post

As a British man I do love a little bit of self deprecating irony, so you can imagine
what I thought when I read Mikey’s Plumbing and Heating website (which as the time of writing is still online)

Mikey’s Plumbing (aka Michael Anthony Mcnamara) clearly appreciates irony . His company is now dissolved, and their gas safe (233352) numbers revoked

This particular chap demonstrates you shouldn’t always believe everything you read. He was recommended by LoveMoney, a moderately large consumer news and review website.

Before I go any further. I seriously dissuade anyone to use CheckATrade or RatedPeople. All the issues I’ve had have consistently been related to these two intermediaries.  

When I first moved into my property the GCH system was rather ancient. In the 1990’s Baxi units were the voguel. If you are not familiar with that era, most boilers consisted of a gas fired conventional boiler and an electric cylinder.  The Baxi did an excellent job over those years, however by today’s standards it was quite inefficient and desperately needed a change.

Following months of searches and quotes. Michael Anthony Mcnamara of Mikey’s Plumbing and Heating Services Limited reassured me he could update my boiler with a quality Worcester.

 

I asked them to remove all redundant piping once the old equipment had been removed. Sadly Michael Anthony Mcnamara, like most of the Cowboys I’ve delt with were very reassuring (this is becoming a protip… avoid any emotion). So ahead I went.

Mike and his band of merry men worked surprisingly quickly. They’d pretty much replaced the entire system in about 3-4 hours. Oh except they’d forgotten to install the Thermostatic valves I’d paid for  (we’ll come back to this). Funnily enough friends of mine have now told me this was clearly rushed.

Before Mike’s departure he was good enough to give me a run in on the system. Initially it was all looking good. Unfortunately for him, I decided to hedge my bets by booking a (free) Gas Safe engineer to arrive around the time he’d finished….

The Gas Safe engineer immediately condemned the boiler! It violated both Gas Safe and planning. 

I called Mike and he was literally furious I’d arranged for a Gas Safe engineer to review his work. He came up with all kinds of reasons why his cowboy work was entirely acceptable. Unfortunately for him he had to fix his incompetence or lose his license.

This is pretty bad right? Nope. It can get worse.

I was in the final stages of planning a stag do which was leaving the following day. Guess what I woke up to?

 

Oh yes. The pipe I’d asked him to cut out, he’d left in some weird loop. What did I get? Water pouring through my ceiling an hour before I leave for the airport.

 

Those pipes I asked Mike to remove. Yeah, they breached with the new pressure. Just a few hours before I left.

So how did this nightmare end? Once again my friend came out and cut out the leaking pipework, and sealed everything appropriately. This left me with a rather large decorating bill.

However, just like the other cowboys. It would appear his antics caught up with him. Allegedly he, and the rest of his crew lost Gas Safe and his company is now dissolved.

I suppose I wont get my two boiler services now? Probably for the best, I doubt they sell pipe-cleaners these days.

What’s even more amusing (if you aren’t me). They failed so badly at the job, rushed it so much they couldn’t even be bothered to bleed the radiators and install the thermostatic vales the right way around. I discovered this a few months after in the winter. Thankful I’m not an idiot and it was a simple fix.

tl;dr Record everything tradesmen do. Get everything in writing. Check and report them to their associated alliances and accreditations

Here’s a few key pieces of public information you should be ware of:

Michael McNamara, 38 Louise White House Hazellville Road London N19 3LU United Kingdom