Protech Consulting & Engineering

ProTech took my call on a Friday early evening (I was expecting an answering machine — was thrilled that they picked up the phone after 5pm on a Friday!) and had a tech out to test on Monday morning. They really came through in a pinch. I highly recommend them for air quality testing. I experienced great customer service.

If you pay them $ 450 to come out and take your samples, they charge you $ 20/​ea for lab testing. But, if you bring the sample to them the lab testing price doubles to $ 40. Beware, you think that piece of tile is one sample, but it’s not, they will dissect it and charge you a testing fee for every layer they can turn it into. So that 1 piece of tile is now 4 samples @ $ 40/​ea. What a racquet. Also if you bring the sample in yourself don’t ask them any questions about the lab report they send you because you didn’t pay them a «consulting fee» therefore they aren’t obligated to explain anything about the report to you. The phone receptionist will tell you this in her usual brusque manner and refuse to pass your call on to anyone else. Which brings me to my final point, the receptionist, she needs some major customer service training.

I found Protech because they were recommended by a company that does asbestos removal. Of the 3 companies I contacted, Protech came in with the best bid to do an asbestos survey for a building that is to be torn down. They were prompt with the bid, professional, and able to schedule a surveyor to come out just a few days later. Emmanuel arrived on time, a little early in fact, and was very friendly and explained everything that he would be doing and how things worked.
After I got the survey results, I started contacting contractors to remove the asbestos. A couple of the contractors wanted clarification on exactly which walls had asbestos and called Protech. Emmanuel came back out to meet me and marked the walls that were drywall, the material specified in the survey, was still friendly and I didn’t get charged for him to come back out.
The admin at Protech can be a little short but is efficient and responsive. Overall all though I would definitely use them again and recommend them to anyone who needs to get asbestos testing.

Quick turnaround. Dropped off a sample of our popcorn ceiling at 11:30am on Friday, got results back via email on Tuesday morning. It’s a little ways off the main restaurant shopping/​eating strip on Main St. and the office almost looks like a warehouse, but who cares? In and out of there in 5 minutes. Almost forgot to mention: Price is still $ 40.

I needed to get the popcorn ceiling tested for asbestos at our rental in the east bay. Just calling around to find someone to do this was frustrating and took forever… and when I would find a place, they’d only do commercial or large scale stuff, and super expensive, too. This place, on Main St. in Redwood City, will either come to your place for $ 350 and run multiple tests OR you can bring in a sample (of anything) and they’ll test it for asbestos for $ 40. They were helpful and had a pretty quick turnaround, especially considerring this was right during the holidays. They faxed and mailed me the result (negative, Phew). Don’t know if I’ll need to use them again (hopefully not!) but its nice to know if I do, I’ll go straight to them.