Check the Mass Hole - a modern search engine for approved Massachusetts plumbing products

Questions?

Commonly Asked Questions

What was the disclaimer again?

Disclaimer: ChecktheMassHole.com is a home-grown project that seeks to improve the searchability of Massachusetts approved plumbing products. The information provided within this site is periodically updated with the official mass approved database. This site aims to be useful to contractors, home owners, architects, plumbers, bathroom designers, and others in the plumbing industry working on Massachusetts projects. This site is NOT the official site for checking Massachusetts approved plumbing nor is it affliated with that site or the Massachusetts public office. If you have doubts or concerns about the data on this site, please use the official site. By continuing to use this site, you agree that you have read this disclaimer and you accept the consequences for how you use the data on this site.

What is the motivation behind the site?

This site was created out of our personal need to find Mass approved plumbing during our own renovation. My girlfriend and I were finding a number of tubs and vanities on Houzz or Wayfair and had to consistently check if it was mass approved/mass coded/mass certified. Out of frustration with the user experience with the official site, I created a prototype of this app to help us efficiently verify whether a specific plumbing product is mass-approved or not.

How did you come up with this name?

You can thank my girlfriend's sister for this great idea. We think it is a funny way to express the purpose of the site while expressing our frustration that plumbing has to be mass-approved in Massachusetts.

How does this database compare to the official database?

This database was updated on July 23, 2019. It is missing roughly 150 products due a bug with the official website that I cannot get around. If you discover a product that is reported on the official site and not on this one, please send an email to hello@checkthemasshole.com.

What guarantees that this site will stay up?

There is no promise on the availability or performance of this site. Ultimately, it costs money to keep it running and as long as I can keep it going for a reasonable rate and enough people find it useful, I will try my best to keep it up. It is currently on a lower tier, so performance is not optimal, but hey, it's working and is quite performant after the initial search.

What information are you collecting about me?

This site integrates with Google Analytics to measure how often it is visited and to capture key interaction events. The information is completely anonymized and is used to improve the site. If this concerns you, you can get a browser ad-blocker like uBlock to block sharing this information from this site and others like it.

What if I have additional questions?

Great! You can send an email to hello@checkthemasshole.com and I will respond as soon as I can.

What if I have a feature suggestion?

I would love to hear it. No promised on implementing it though. You can send your ideas to hello@checkthemasshole.com.

What if I discover a bug?

You can report it! Shoot me an email describing the issue to ohno@checkthemasshole.com. It is most helpful if you include your browser information, what you expected, and what you experienced instead.