Contractor Expectations 5 of 10 : 10 Reasons to Hire a Smalll Local Contractor

Before I ever started Pacific Insulation, I did an experiment. I called eight insulation companies in Spokane and pretended to be a homeowner who needed help. Five of them never answered. Two quoted me a price over the phone without ever seeing my attic. One — just one — actually scheduled an appointment to come look.

That was the moment this business started. Not because I had a better truck or a better blower. Because I realized most people never get a good experience with a contractor, and they'd stopped expecting one.

If you're deciding between a big regional outfit and a small local company for insulation, mold, or asbestos work, here's what I'd want you to know.

Your house is the most important place your family has

Most people buy insulation or mold remediation once, maybe twice in their entire life. It's not a repeat purchase. It's a stranger coming into the place where your kids grow up, where the holidays happen, where you sleep. That deserves more than a sales rep reading from a script.

A small local contractor knows this because we live it too. Our kids go to the same schools. We drive past your house on the way to Costco. When we do work in your attic, we're going to see you again — at the Y, at the grocery store, at a Chiefs game. That accountability doesn't exist when the company is headquartered three states away.

You talk to the person who's responsible

Call a national franchise and you'll get a call center, then a salesperson, then a crew you've never met, then a billing department if something goes wrong. Nobody in that chain owns the outcome.

Call a small company and you get the owner, or someone the owner trusts enough to put their name behind. When I tell a customer "we'll be there Tuesday at 8," it's my reputation on the line, not a corporate policy. Being a good contractor in Spokane comes down to one thing: you do what you say you're going to do.

Nobody's trying to hit a quota in your attic

Big companies run on volume. Crews are measured on how many jobs they close in a day, which means there's constant pressure to finish fast and move on — or to upsell you something you don't need to make the numbers work.

I tell my crew there's no "in the green" or "in the red" on a job. It takes as long as it takes to make the customer happy. If we get up there and the job is bigger than we thought, we fix it right. If it's smaller than we thought, you pay less. That math only works when the person doing the work isn't being squeezed from above.

Local contractors know local houses

Spokane and Coeur d'Alene homes have their own quirks. Post-war ranches with vermiculite in the attic. 1970s split-levels with no air sealing at all. Bathroom fans that were vented straight into the attic and have been growing mold on the roof sheathing for twenty years. Ice dams from our freeze-thaw winters.

A crew that's been in a thousand attics in this climate recognizes these problems on sight. A crew trained on a national curriculum in a different climate may not. That matters when the difference is between fixing the moisture source and just spraying something on the mold and calling it done.

The money stays here

When you hire local, your dollars pay for a crew member's mortgage in Spokane Valley, materials from a supplier in town, and a sponsorship banner at a Little League field. The same money spent with a national chain leaves the region by the end of the week. It's not the main reason to hire local, but it's a real one.

Licensed, insured, and easy to check up on

"Small" should never mean "unlicensed." Any contractor you hire — local or not — should hand you their state license number without being asked, carry liability insurance and workers' comp, and have a track record you can look at. Ours is right on our website and our trucks: WA Lic. #PACIFIL886KH and ID Lic. #RCE-47538, with 135+ five-star reviews on Google from people whose attics we've actually been in.

If a contractor can't show you those things, the size of the company doesn't matter. Walk away.

What to ask before you hire anyone

Whether it's us or someone else, ask these:

• Will someone come look at the job before quoting it? If they price it over the phone, they're guessing.
• Who's actually going to be in my house? Employees or subcontractors? Will the person who quoted it be involved?
• What are you doing about the cause, not just the symptom? For mold especially — treatment without fixing the moisture is a temporary fix.
• What product are you using, and is it labeled for that use? Ask for the EPA registration number. A good contractor will be glad you asked.
• Can I see your license and insurance?

The bottom line

The big companies aren't evil. They're just built for volume, and your home isn't a volume job. It's the one place that has to be done right, by someone who'll still be around next year if you have a question.

That's what we set out to change back in 2012, one attic at a time.

If you're in Spokane or Coeur d'Alene and want to see what that actually looks like, give us a call at (509) 351-2811. A real person will answer.

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