Carlos Casares is an installer.
To know more about him, check this page:
Two lessons learned from my experience with Carlos (who does great work, by the way, let it be known this is not to trash him) are:
ONE: He's someone who even explained to me early on, "he can't really come make the trip to our place unless there's enough work to warrant it" - meaning if he won't be picking up a check at the end of the job, he's not coming. This is fine as long as the customer fully understands it. The problem is that when his work fails, he's not coming back to fix it, despite his promises to do so. Not unless there's another check to pick up.
TWO: Christy's Red Hot Blue Glue MUST be allowed to cure for 24 hours. Also, it's even recommended that it be primed before use on PVC pipes. Carlos used it alone (rather than the traditional and reliable purple-primer + clear-cement) to on our schedule 40 PVC irrigation pipes. Then he "went to lunch" to allow it to cure for "an hour or more" and then tested it a full pressure. (see video Nokiero18@hotmail.com Carlos Casares for the results). PVC pipe repair MUST be allowed to cure for at least 24 hours per the instructions on the can for full strength.
If you look at the above web page (in the link) and the video, you may wonder, who ended up fixing the pipe?
ANSWER: I did it myself. First of all, I went to Dixieline and was convinced that it would be okay to go ahead and use Christy's Red Hot Blue Glue again. Zach's reason was that "we had another situation where the repair guy used Christy's and then 'went to lunch for 2 hours'. The pipe failed. However, since then, the guy has used Christy's but allowed it to cure for 24 hours, and has not had a problem since."
So I purchased another can of Christy's (which by the way, was what Carlos wanted to use again for the repair. I told him I wanted Purple Primer and Clear Cement. He said "okay" but never showed up).
However after reading the label carefully, and seeing that "primer is still recommended" I said "WHY would I use Christy's when I really should prime it anyway?" and returned the Christy's to Dixieline and replaced it with the standard purple primer (one can) and clear cement (second can).
Then I did the repair one at a time (pipe popped off in two places) allowing each end 24 hours to cure.
So far so good!
A PVC pipe repair is supposed to form a permanent bond that cannot be pulled apart.
Carlos Casares practice of "using Christy's then going to lunch for an hour" resulted in the catastrophic failure depicted in the above links.
So there we are!
I LOVE Carlos for his fine work installing the Pressure Reducer, the Water Tank, the Expansion Tank, and the Reverse Osmosis filter system.
I LIKE Carlos for his above-average but not perfect painting job on the bedrooms (the reason we met him in the first place, through Angi).
However I'm not so fond of Carlos for his shoddy work on the irrigation box valve PVC pipe connections, which failed after exactly one month and caused a flood in my neighbor's yard and kept our landcaping "dry" for 19 days (we tried to hand-water and hose-water best we could).
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