Dr. Energy Saver Central Maryland

The short version of our review is this: Dan is a nice guy, and he talks a good game, but in our view both his and his team's performance failed repeatedly to live up to that talk. This turned what was to be a one-day job into about five separate visits from them, with everything eventually getting completed correctly. The time and energy consumed, however, were absolutely staggering - in terms of communicating with Dan regarding the omissions after each visit, taking time off work to be home for each return visit to correct the deficiencies, agreeing to accept a discount in exchange for doing some of the labor ourselves, and getting other professionals to come remedy the issues that arose along the way. And after that experience, we hesitate to recommend Dr. Energy Saver for a job of any complexity.

The longer version of the story as we see it starts with us seeking a company to improve the insulation in our attic. Dan quoted us a better price than another company, and sold us on the virtues of air sealing. We added sealing of the spaces between our floor joists in the basement. His company had a few concerning negative reviews, but it sounded like a simple enough job and Dan seemed to have a rational explanation for those negative reviews, so we decided to go with him. The job became decidedly less simple, though, when we asked him about adding sound insulation to interior bedroom and bathroom walls. It sounded a little invasive, cutting into our walls every 16 inches, but Dan seemed enthusiastic about the additional work and we liked the idea of having better sound privacy in our home. We sent him a sketch of the floor plan with the relevant walls highlighted, and he quoted us a price that we accepted. The full job--attic, basement, and interior walls--was to be done in a day. We would provide the paint to touch up the walls where they cut holes, but they would do the actual painting.

We had our first hiccup when Dan and his crew showed up to do the work on 12/19/2019. Dan claimed that he had not agreed to paint and that they would get it "paint ready." Thankfully, we had it in writing in the email in which he had quoted our price. Dan yielded, and we agreed to him returning the next day to finish what was shaping up to be a longer job than originally planned.

The next day, his crew returned to finish the job. And when they left that day, we thought that was the end of the project. In reality, the experience had only just begun. Some wall segments had been missed. Most of them were in less obvious places like closets that one could understand being less obvious, but the entire wall between two bathrooms had been skipped. All of this was clearly marked on the original diagram, and Dan gave us no argument when we asked him to fill the spots. We also called his attention to some spots that had been missed in the basement, and Dan gave us no argument - he even found some more missed spots that we hadn't noticed. He agreed that they should have been filled. We had also discovered that an electrical outlet in our bathroom had stopped working. Dan said the right things about this too. A disabled electrical outlet was a new one for them, but every now and then they would do something like knock down a poorly attached lighting fixture. It wasn't a common occurrence and it generally wasn't really their fault, he implied, but they would "own it" and make it right. And when it cost $125 for an electrician to come correct the problem (a neutral wire in the attic that must have gotten snagged during their work), sure enough, he deducted that cost from our final payment without argument.

But that third visit wasn't the end of it. One might have thought, given the way things had gone up to that point, that they might have wanted to do a walk-through with us to ensure that all the work had been done before they left. But instead Dan's crew disappeared quite quickly when they decided they were done. (And Chuck was, to say the least, not the warmest person to interact with.) They couldn't paint that day, since the spackle had to dry, but the impression was that everything else was done. It turned out that a few of the spots we had discussed in the basement still hadn't been filled. And wall areas hadn't been sanded smooth in all spots before painting. (We knew, of course, that they wouldn't be perfect, but some spots seemed hardly to have been sanded at all.) Dan came to personally finish the job this time. He seemed puzzled that the crew had missed spots in the basement that we'd explicitly discussed with him, but he very politely thanked us for our patience and did the job himself. He indicated that in hindsight it had been a mistake to agree to paint, and that even "paint ready" was a phrase he should perhaps stop using. He offered us $375 to handle the remaining sanding and painting ourselves, which we accepted, and Dan finished the basement work. It turned out to be a lot of work doing so much sanding and painting all over the house, but it had become obvious at that point that we really didn't want them to finish that part of the job any more than they wanted to do it.

And if that had been the end of the story, then we might not have felt compelled to write this review. Mistakes happen. There had been an awful lot of mistakes, but Dan really had worked to try to make them right. Alas, this was not the end of the story.

After we finished sanding and painting and thought we were finally done kicking up dust on this project, we went to change our HVAC filters. And that's when we discovered that a large amount of insulation had been blown into a return air duct. We had explicitly asked Dan if it was safe to fill a particular wall segment near our air return, and he'd said yes. Exhausted, we contacted Dan again. And to his credit, he apologized, sent his team to suck up what they could and seal any gaps, and said to let him know what it cost to get the HVAC system cleaned. Heartened that Dan was continuing to take responsibility, we scheduled a cleaning with a company that quoted us $700. Having never had an HVAC cleaning before, we had little concept of what it was supposed to cost, but thankfully we touched base with Dan before the work happened. Dan told us that sounded awfully high, so we contacted another duct cleaner. Sure enough, that cleaner quoted us $400 so we cancelled with the first company, scheduled the second to come do the job, and informed Dan on 2/3/2020 of the new price.

On 2/6, we emailed him again, confirming that the cleaning had been performed and requesting $400 reimbursement. We again received no response. On 2/18, we emailed him again:

"We wanted to follow up on our last email. Will you need anything else from us for the reimbursement? Let us know. Thanks"

On 2/19, he replied:

"Yes, let's split it. After all we did significantly discount it already."

We replied on 2/23:

"The previous discount was primarily for non-completion of the sanding and painting work, with some acknowledgment of time lost accommodating an excessive number of visits to finish the job. This is for a separate loss to have remediation work done on our HVAC system. What reimbursement amount would you suggest is appropriate?"

On 3/3, having received no response, we emailed him again:

"We wanted to follow up from our previous email. Considering the other reasons for the discount you gave us earlier, what do you propose for the HVAC reimbursement? Thanks - talk to you soon."

On 3/14, having still received no response, we emailed yet again:

"We have not yet received a response to our last two emails. If we do not hear from you in the coming days, we will ask the Revdex.com to facilitate communication on this matter. Thanks for your help with this."

Those seemed to be the magic words. Dan responded same day:

"Sorry I had directed my office to send a check to you don't know what happened. I'll check on it Monday."

On 3/19, a month and a half after our first request for reimbursement of cleaning costs, we received a check in the mail for $200 - half the amount that we had requested. (It was dated 3/16 and postmarked 3/17.) We emailed Dan and he responded same day:

"We received a check for $200 in the mail today. As [name] indicated in previous emails, we are requesting a total of $400 to cover the cost of the HVAC cleaning. The previous discounts you referenced were specifically for non-completion of the sanding and painting work and for reimbursement of the cost of an electrician to correct the disabled electrical outlets as a result of the attic work. We request reimbursement for the remaining $200."

"We discounted a lot and loosely. Plus the attic had a loose wire it was nothing that anyone wouldn't have done, we inherited that. Is it splitting it fair enough?"

His argument was not absurd, but after a months-long waste of time and energy it was frustrating to see Dan backtrack on his original smooth talk of owning the problems and making them right simply because his team caused one more problem than originally thought. We'd thought the remedy for those two previous issues had been a done deal, and his consistent resolution to make things right had seemed to be his redeeming virtue through all of this. Still, we considered his proposal, and tried to reach a middle ground on 3/21:

"Would you do another $100 toward the HVAC cleaning? I appreciate your cooperation on the earlier reimbursements, but it really was a lot of effort redoing/finishing the sanding and painting ourselves. And this entire endeavor has taken a tremendous amount of time and energy for what was supposed to be a one-day project that would be over and done with three months ago."

Having not received a response, we emailed him again on 4/4:

"Dan, Would you kindly respond to my previous email? Thanks"

As of 5/10, we have not received a response.

We hope that this whole experience was just an incredible fluke, and we appreciate that mistakes will happen occasionally in even the best of operations, but we have to base our review on the experience that we had. We invite the reader to consider it as just one data point among the others available. If we had just gotten them to blow insulation into our attic and air seal, we would likely have had little to complain about. The price was quite competitive, but the experience was a months-long waste of time and energy. In the end, the savings just wasn't worth the aggravation or the time we had to take off work to deal with it. And here's hoping there was no permanent damage to our air handler. We'll call the experience three stars, since they generally corrected - or at least partially reimbursed us for correction of - the defects in the end. But too many things went wrong for us to be comfortable recommending Dr. Energy Saver for a job of any complexity. We think Dan talks a better game than he actually plays.

Crawl space encapsulation Issues.
I had my crawl space encapsulated by Dr. Energy Saver in February of 2019. However my floors were still extremely cold and air was seeping in from somewhere. Ive been trying to get this resolved since December 2019. It's wasn't until I did a google review that Dan H reached out. Dan scheduled someone to come out on December 23rd after waiting all day my mom informed me that the employee was a no show. I never received a phone call from Dan or the company to inform me that the employee couldn't make it I had to call him. He apologized and ensured someone would be out on Christmas Eve. The guy shows up on Christmas Eve in his personal vehicle with no tools or products to do repairs he informed me he caulked a few places and he left. I informed Dan again that the issue had not been resolved and that my floor was still cold and air was coming from somewhere. He has yet to communicate with me to resolve this issue and I am using a kerosene heater to warm up my space.

Very satisfied!

Great work!

I had them do some work Dec 2017. I desired a full-house foam insulation, or at least on the first floor where it would have kept the living, dining, bedroom and kitchen more comfortable in the cold winter months.

The salesman (Shane L) who came to assess my needs did an entire energy audit and convinced me that I was losing a lot of heat through gaps in my upper-level ceilings, walls and joists. I asked if it would be better to insulate the very walls around the rooms that had the actual thermostat in it. They replied that I would see a significant rise in comfort level with what they recommended. I even asked if my heating bill would be cut as high as 50%, and I was told "it's possible".

So, accepting their expertise, I went with their recommendation instead of my gut on this.

January 2018 was a particularly cold month, and the resulting gas/electric bill was huge (about $350). I was stunned, thinking I would get at least SOME savings. So I called them, and Dr. Dan told me to give it a few months, as the installation needed time to "settle". Odd, considering I was told the results are instantaneous. I was also offered "a real good deal" to insulate the rest of the house.

I have one little access space in the attic that I use for storage, with panels nailed to the joists to create a floor and a ceiling to create the space. Instead of removing the panels first, they just attached the insulation directly on the panels! I lost 4" of height for storage as a result.

As for the ceiling, they cut a hole in the ceiling to give them access to blow in the insulation in the rest of the roof and the walls on the top floor. The patch job is certainly not paint ready, I'll just say that.

On one cold day, I could feel the top of the walls in the one room upstairs was cold, but got warmer as you moved down the wall. So I'm thinking the stuff they put in the walls fell down inside. I also recall they had difficulty using the machine that applied the blown-in insulation.

As of this writing, it is now April 2018, and have been very disappointed. The two rooms where all the insulation was done is warmer, but I expected more. Much more, and have not seen any savings in my heating bill.

So, I reached out to Dan Hope back in April 20 2018, as this was the response:

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Tom,

I am sorry you feel that way and that your house still has some cold spots. Can we come back and do a scan and see what we can see? I never tell anyone that insulation settles and your review makes us seem like bad people. We are not bad or do we want to "take" anyone. You called me in January after one of the coldest January's on record...100 + years. And your energy bill was the same as it was the year before. People were dealing with $1000 or even a few customers had $1900 heating bills that month.
If the wall you are talking about feels warmer and cold in different areas then it sounds like we should come back and fix it.
Don't get swayed by national average for spray foam. We don't live in an average area and you have to look at what that job is. Is it new construction? Is it closed cell or open cell? 2lb foam? Is there an ignition barrier included in that? There has to be for spray foam.
We did not start this company to not make people's house more comfortable and to save energy bill. I can come over and take a look. Let's review you energy bills and check the usage. Are you available next week?

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So, they came out and reviewed everything. This is what they tried to do to resolve the issues:

1. Repatch the ceiling to be more "paint ready".
2. Offered to fill the walls in the living and bedroom with cellulose insulation.

They came out in May, only to find out the hose to install the cellulose wouldn't fit in the narrow space, so they couldn't do the job.

I called them as to what they could do, and (believe it or not) their suggestion was to offer to pay to relocate the thermostat so that it wouldn't come on as often. What a joke. In other words, keep the heat off to save money (I'm kind of doing that now).

---update (as of Oct 2018)

After a few emails back a forth, I haven't heard anything to resolve the issues.

You would think for the $4,400 spent (after all discounts and paying cash), I would have gotten MUCH improved results. My home is pretty small (about 1,287 sq ft (3 levels)). I was clearly mislead on the promises made by Dr. Energy Saver.

Dr. Energy Saver gave me an estimate for wall installation. After checking out the problem the sales person suggested a different solution which would fix the problem better and cost less. Dr. Energy Saver is the first honest company I have dealt with in a long time