Superior Plus Energy Services

I have never been treated so badly by a company and the employees in my adult life. I signed up for oil deliveries, with Superior Energy, I was told that the tank had to be inspected prior to delivery. A service technician named Joe, showed up to inspect the tank. He had no business card and left no information. I was asked to fix the plastic of the oil gauge which had a crack, I agreed to do so. Then a re inspection in 2 days. The attitude was like I was a criminal due to the cracked gauge. Just downright nasty and condescending. I almost canceled then.
Unfortunately, my furnace then broke, a valve broke and flooded water all over the basement, I called to have a technician come out. A large burly nasty man arrived in the afternoon, would not get out of his van because he heard my dogs barking ( the dogs were in the house). He did not come to the door, or introduce himself, I went out to the van to greet him and escorted him to the basement. It was soon apparent that he did not want to do the work. "I don't know why they sent me I have to be somewhere at 330pm. This furnace is a mess. You need to clean this up" I was not sure what he meant as the water was leaking from the furnace that I asked him to fix. He then left the basement and said he was calling his company. I waited he did not return. I went outside he was sitting in his van, started yelling across the lawn for me to "come over there" He insisted that I sign a sheet that said I would clean up the basement before he worked on the furnace. There is not much in my basement, just a few things no mold or dead animals. His comment was I don't have to breath that in, not sure what he meant except the water from the furnace. He was horrified that my elderly (20 +) cat was in basement. It is unclear to me why a person would accept jobs in homes if you are afraid of animals. I asked him to leave my property, he was loud, rude and brass.

We are very happy with Superior Plus Energy and the work they performed in our house. We moved into our new house over the summer. It has a propane fireplace insert, but the previous owners were renting their propane tank so we had to get a new one. We are members of the Citizen's Oil Co-op to receive better pricing on our heating oil. They also have relationships with propane companies, and referred us to Superior.



Superior came to our house and recommended a location for the propane tank in our yard (noting that the old location the previous owners used was probably illegal!). Because of the new location, we had to dig a ditch in the yard back to the house. We opted to do this part ourselves to save some money. We also dug a ditch to our gas grill so that we could have a permanent hookup. The total ditch length was about 20 feet and I estimate that we saved about $500 doing this work ourselves. Once the propane line was to our house, the technician (Brian) connected our fireplace and made sure it was working well. He went above and beyond by cleaning the faux logs and recommending some embers to improve the flame ambiance. He also provided us with safety information about propane, which was helpful since we've never had it before. By his recommendation we ended up buying a plug-in propane detector that we installed about 10 feet from the fireplace (this unit: http://amzn.com/B0017Z5DZO).



Two weeks later, on Thanksgiving, our hot water heater died. The unit was an oil fired traditional tank water heater that was 17 years old. We received multiple quotes from different contractors for replacing the unit as-is, and also for propane-based systems. In the end, we decided to switch to propane and install a condensing tankless water heater through Superior. They had the best price on the install from the three contractors we talked to, and they also had some other benefits. First, they offered 24 months of 0% financing to spread the payments. Second, they are listed as a qualified installer by Rinnai. Third, they were familiar with our propane install since they had just installed it. This ended up being critical...



It turned out that Superior had installed a high pressure propane system in our house with small diameter piping, with regulators to step down to low pressure, where required. The other two contractors we talked to didn't know how to work with high pressure systems. They both claimed that we would have to rip it out and start anew with a low pressure system, and much larger piping. After Superior explained this to me, and I confirmed it's viability with my own research and the town building inspector, I asked the other contractors to revise their proposals. One contractor acknowledged that this was a suitable approach, and dropped his price by nearly $1,000! The other did not and we didn't discuss it further. In the end I was very pleased with how professional Superior was while I tried to figure this all out. I was essentially questioning their work in hindsight, but they never complained.



The system that they installed was a Rinnai Ultra RUC98i. This is a condensing tankless system that is 96% efficient and 199,000 BTUs. Their install was quick and professional. I had pre-read the installation manual for this unit and they covered everything explained within. I wanted to make sure that the install was perfect as I've heard that Rinnai (and other companies) are very particular when it comes to honoring their warranties. The system has worked great so far and we're very happy with it.



I plan to do more business with Superior (and propane in general) in the future. We have a 17 year old electric stove that is showing it's age. Once we pay off the water heater we plan to get a new propane stove, which will require piping to be run to the location, and a NG to LP conversion for whatever stove we buy.