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Good Answer Tom, But Show Your Work!

When I was in school I really liked math. Unlike philosophy, or literature where you had interpretations of the readings, math had one answer. There was not a debate about whether or not 7+6= 13, only the explaining of how we got the answer. I received assignments back regularly with red ink stating "show your work". I thought , "Why?". It either is or it isn't correct. In showing my work, I could learn from errors made and the teacher would be assured that the correct answer was derived from my own thinking. This would allow me the apply this in future, tougher, calculations.

Water related damages and repairIn business I find something very similar happening. I find myself sharing how my work is done, why I is necessary, or how this can be prevented in reoccuring in the future. If a client calls me to fix a situation at their property, I want to go fix it and bill the owners - period! That is clean and efficient. The job is complete, well done, and no wasted time spent.

Long-term this is not best for business. A certain amount of trust must come before a client will be a repeat customer. So I perfer to go overboard with the details, sometimes to the point that the owner may say "Tom we don't need to know all that, just fix it." The details given to the owner or manager can come in countless ways. Photos and video of the problem, hand-drawn explanations, on-site explanations, research is similar problems, and on and on... But the details are important.

If the owner or manger can understand the problem, they are more willing to solve it. They may see a dark spot on the ceiling. "Can't we just prime and paint over it?", is a common answer to such situations. But they need to understand that a slow drain leak caused by undo stress on the pipe that is causing dripping and causing mold in the drywall, and should be addressed. This sort of thing happens all the time. It would be hard to justify charging $800 to make this dark spot go away without all the necessary information. At that point it is up to the owner or manager to decide what to do.

Once that trust is built, now the client will call you. You are trusted and will be the starting point for the repair.

And the best customer is the repeat customer!

Looking For A Local Contractor?

How do you go about finding a contractor in your local area? This doesn't just apply to contractor searches, it can be the dry cleaner, pizza, mechanic, and any other search target. Where do you start? Word-of-mouth is the most trusted - someone who has used this service before recommends them to you.


The internet has made it very convenient to do research from our home, office, and mobile phone. If you are in need of a local service, many start with a Google search. Google will list local search results at the top of the list. A great beginning but do I believe they are the best company for me? Further research may be needed. Sites like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Google Places, can pick up local businesses in your area.

The idea of finding a contractor (or dry cleaner, pizza,etc.) on the internet is becoming more and more common. Finding sources of searching for what we are looking for becomes more and more important. This takes getting use to, we have to try it.

I love to hear from you about how and where you find local services in your area.

Happy searching!

Placerville Contractor Reaches #2 Ranking on Bing Local

For the longest time, Tromler Construction did not exist in the Bing Local Ranking for General Contractors in Placerville. We filled out all the necessary infomation but waited a very long time for Bing to list us. When they did, you had to dig real deep to find Tromler Construction - I first found it at #78. I'm not sure how all the analytics work but today we are at #2 in the rankings.

With a little luck maybe we can reach the #1 ranking on Bing, as we did in Google Local and Yahoo Local.

Need a General Contractor in the Placerville, Sacramento, Ca area?

Apartment Fence Repair In Sacramento, Ca

If you are an apartment manager working hard to rent those vacant units, this may make a lot of sense to you.

How your apartment community looks has a lot to do with your ability to rent your vacant units. This may mean the landscape maintenance, the condition of the paint on the buildings, or tenant personal items hanging from the balcony - this list can go on and on. Right now it is tough enough trying to get people to come to your property to look at it, don't let the appearance of the property kill the sale before you get a chance to show the benefits of living in your community.

What if your office was located next to an existing fence that looked like this? Is it possible that the potential tenant may not believe it when you say that your community is well maintained.

This same fence may be repaired or replaced to change how the visitor sees your community. Maybe just a quick clean up and paint will do the trick. These changes may not sell the property but it certainly couldn't hurt.

A good first impression makes all the difference in filling those vacant units. Maintain the appearance of your property and better quality tenants will fill those open units.

Sacramento General Contractor

General Contractor's Quick Response To Voice Mail Message

There are many things that take place in an apartment community to get a unit ready to rent once someone moves out. No manager likes there unit to sit empty for very long, so getting it turned around and "rent ready" is an on-going task. We often get calls from apartment managers to help do some things to get the place ready. The calls that we get vary from the minor fixes, to the major rehabs. Recently, we got a call from a community in Cameron Park to do some painting and things. The call went to voice mail, but we quickly got the job done for them.

Here is a short video of that call.

Sacramento Contractor

Cameron Park Contractor's 12 Second Vinyl Door Install Video Gets Hits

I'm not real sure how or why it has happened but I have a real short video that has been seen over 700 times. I don't even think that I have posted it anywhere. I shot the video to test the lighting in the area, uploaded it to YouTube just to see how long it would take, pretty much forgot about it until seeing how many times it has been viewed. Here is that video, all 12 seconds of it. Can you figure out what why all the views?



I will sit here as a baffled general contractor wondering if I should install another vinyl sliding door and make another video here in Cameron Park, Ca.