Precise Plumbing & Heating

Two people, twenty-five years, and a paper trail of permits: Precise Plumbing & Heating is Mark D. Pearl's Haverhill shop, a sole proprietorship the Better Business Bureau says started in 2001 and still runs with two employees. The work is bread-and-butter plumbing and heating for houses and small commercial buildings — boilers and water heaters, kitchen and bathroom fixture swaps, gas piping — for both new construction and older homes. Building permit records collected by BuildZoom put 34 permitted jobs behind the name, seven of them in the last three years, at a typical permit value around $3,500. That is the profile of a small outfit doing steady, modest jobs rather than gut renovations, and the permits stretch across the Merrimack Valley into Merrimac, Groveland, West Newbury, Methuen and Danvers. Its BBB page is an A+, and the bureau lists no complaints or government actions against it. BuildZoom scores it 97, in the top fifth of Massachusetts contractors, and shows a Massachusetts Master Plumber license, #12466, as active — though BuildZoom itself notes it has not re-checked that record since January 2010, so treat it as the directory's claim and confirm the current status with the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters. The same page also carries an inactive New Hampshire mechanical license, worth knowing if your job is over the border. What is missing is customers' own words: no reviews on BBB, BuildZoom or anywhere else on file. The permit history is real evidence that the work gets done and inspected, but it tells you nothing about scheduling, communication, or how a problem gets handled. A sensible call for a straightforward plumbing or heating job in the Haverhill area — ask for two or three recent references and confirm the license and insurance yourself before booking.