Barter Plumbing and Heating

Fifty-one Google reviews, every one five stars — Barter Plumbing and Heating is a one-person Malden operation run by Earl Barter, handling both plumbing and home heating: furnaces, boilers, and the water heaters that always seem to fail at 6 a.m. In a 2025 review, one customer put it simply — he serves the Malden and nearby community — and the record backs that up with jobs across Malden, Melrose and the surrounding towns going back to 2021. The recurring theme is speed under pressure. In a 2022 review, a homeowner described her furnace dying overnight with a toddler at home — Earl picked up, heard the situation, and was there in 15 minutes. In a 2024 review, a customer described a tenant's unsafe dryer disconnect that left a gas line exposed; Earl capped it and secured the hangers within the week. A 2025 review recounted him pulling a permit and coordinating a DPW water shutoff to replace an out-of-code water line, and along the way catching a gas-heater exhaust gap and excess PEX tubing a previous plumber had left behind. That pattern of catching another contractor's mistakes isn't a one-off: a separate 2022 review describes him finding a defunct boiler that had been wired incorrectly by someone else. Pricing comes up often too, across years of reviews — customers repeatedly call his rates fair or lower than other plumbers quoted, and more than one says he undercharged for the work. This year's reviews read the same as those from four years ago: responsive, communicative, and willing to work a complicated older house without cutting corners. The one wrinkle in an otherwise consistent file is a 2022 review that mentioned early miscommunication scheduling a faucet repair — the same reviewer said the job itself gave them nothing to complain about. There's little to flag before calling beyond the obvious: this is a busy one-person shop, so scheduling can depend on how backed up things are, though the record suggests emergencies get squeezed in. For anything from a leaking faucet to a boiler on the fritz in the Malden area, the history here is about as consistent as they come.