B. Brazil Plumbing & Heating

B. Brazil Plumbing & Heating has pulled 102 permits — 14 of them in the last three years — and the descriptions read like a working plumber's diary: drainage and venting for a five-bathroom house in Danvers, gas lines to a stove, fireplace, two furnaces and a water heater, a boiler installed and tested in Beverly, and in August 2022, roughing a basement bathroom on Tide Winds Trail in Marblehead. Brian Brazil runs it as a sole proprietorship out of Lowell with three employees, trading since 2010 — sixteen years, a figure BBB and Angi state identically. The work spreads well beyond the Merrimack Valley: Malden, Methuen, Burlington, Wellesley, Fitchburg and the North Shore towns. A fair amount of it is commercial, including a Burlington job running 15 toilets, 3 urinals and 7 sinks, though BBB describes the business as taking both residential and commercial projects. Written accounts from customers are scarce, and they pull in opposite directions. In April 2011 an Angi customer described a $1,300 sump pump and french drain, and praised the estimates offered for different scenarios and the pump installed in a single day. Then in December 2023, a one-star Google reviewer described a toilet replacement where the appointment slipped a week with no phone call, and said the old toilet was still sitting in their backyard three weeks after the company had been paid in full. Google's own average sits at 3.7 across 3 ratings. Two things worth pinning down before booking. No state licence number appears on any source: BuildZoom's "no active license" alert rests entirely on a City of Newton HVAC/mechanical registration that expired in May 2022 — a municipal registration in a city where none of the sampled permits were pulled, not the plumbing and gas-fitting licence the Board of State Examiners issues. Ask for that number and check it with the board directly. And given the December 2023 account, agree in writing who removes the old fixture and when. For everyday plumbing and gas work — water heaters, boilers, bathroom rough-ins — there is a long and current permit trail behind him, which is more than most rows this size can show. Angi's page also states "Se habla español".