DeWolfe Contracting, Inc.

Ninety-five years and 168 permits - that is the shape of DeWolfe Contracting's history, and almost none of it is customer reviews. The Worcester plumbing and heating shop on West Boylston Street traces its start to 1931 and describes itself on BuildZoom as a fourth-generation, OSHA-certified company; Gary DeWolfe is listed there as owner, and Luke DeWolfe as treasurer on its BBB page. What there is to go on is permit history. BuildZoom counts 168 permitted projects, roughly 60 of them in the last three years, weighted toward plumbing and new construction, with a typical permit valued near $6,500. Its 2025 work reached well past Worcester - Framingham, Falmouth, Woods Hole, Sterling, Holden and Jefferson. BuildZoom's own score of 110 puts the company in the top 4% of Massachusetts contractors on that site's scale. What customers have written is another story: one review, from January 2009, in which a homeowner said they had worked with the company for 15 years and recommended it. Nothing since. Its BBB page is an A+, accredited since 2022, with no reviews or complaints published there. Licensing is where to slow down. Between them, BBB and BuildZoom list more than a dozen numbers - plumber, sheet metal, home improvement contractor, construction supervisor, pipefitter - and the two sites do not agree. BuildZoom records a Pipefitter Master licence (PM-298683) as at one point cancelled, and a Newton plumbing contractor licence (#1693) the same way, while BBB lists 1693-PL-C as running to 5/1/2028. They also split on #18919: BBB says it expires in 2028, BuildZoom last saw a 2016 expiry. None of this is a state-registry verification - these are directory records, and on a multi-trade company they routinely mix the firm's own registrations with the personal licences of the people who qualify them. The sites even place the business differently, BBB at 211 Shrewsbury St in West Boylston and BuildZoom and HomeAdvisor at 859 W Boylston St in Worcester, though all three print the same phone number. Worth a call if you want a plumbing and heating outfit with a long permit trail and the 24-hour emergency service both BBB and HomeAdvisor list. Before booking, ask which licence covers your specific job, get the current number, and check it yourself with the state board. And go in expecting to judge them on permit history and references rather than public reviews, because there have effectively been none since 2009.