Exploring the Unexpected Path to Plumbing Mastery: A Conversation with Daniel Mitchell and Channing Overby

Welcome back to this week's episode of the Plumb Delusional Podcast, proudly sponsored by Mitchell's Plum and Pots on the Spot at Bovable Restrooms in Lafayette, Georgia. Today, we delve into the intriguing journey of Channing Overby, a lead technician and tech guru at Mitchell's Plumbing, who shares his unexpected path into the plumbing industry.

Channing, who originally set out to become a teacher, found his calling in the trades after realizing the dynamic challenges it offered. His story is a testament to how life’s unpredictable turns can lead to fulfilling careers. From his early days at Mitchell's, Channing has become an indispensable part of the team, especially when technology intersects with plumbing.

Daniel Mitchell, owner of Mitchell's Plumbing, recounts how Channing was thrust into a leadership role following an unexpected event, which honed his skills and resilience. Channing shares his experiences of overcoming challenges, emphasizing the importance of being adaptable and continually improving in a job that demands both technical expertise and problem-solving skills.

Throughout the podcast, they discuss the evolving world of plumbing, highlighting the critical role plumbers play in maintaining public health and safety. They also explore innovative technologies like smart home water systems, which offer homeowners unprecedented control over their plumbing, showcasing the industry's move towards more sustainable and efficient solutions.

Channing's journey reflects a broader narrative about the value of trades and the misconceptions surrounding them. His insights offer encouragement to those considering a career in plumbing, demonstrating that it’s not just about fixing leaks, but about ensuring communities have access to safe, reliable water systems.

Join us in this enlightening episode as we uncover the layers of the plumbing profession and celebrate the unsung heroes who keep our everyday lives flowing smoothly. Remember, behind every faucet and fixture, there’s a skilled plumber ensuring everything works seamlessly.

Welcome to Plumb Delusional, the podcast where Daniel Mitchell, owner of Mitchell's Plumbing in Lafayette, Georgia, takes you on a journey through the pipes and problems of modern plumbing.

Each episode dives into the nitty-gritty of the plumbing world—addressing common issues, uncovering surprising myths, and sharing memorable stories from decades of experience in the trade.

https://www.mitchellsplumbingga.com/
Phone: (706) 523-3201
Address: 206 N Duke St, LaFayette, GA 30728

Transcript

Hey guys, welcome back to Plum Delusional Podcast this week. We're brought to you by Mitchell's Plum and the Pots on the Spot at Bovable Restrooms down in Lafayette, Georgia. I'm Daniel Mitchell, and this is Channing Over. Be with me today. He's gonna be joining me for the podcast. He is my son-in-law and one of my lead techs. He's also our technician on all things technology guru down at the shop. If it's got any kind of computer to do with it, we turn it over to Channing because he's got the patience and the know-how to do it. Channing, do you wanna introduce yourself? Yeah, my name is Channing. Look at that, I'm the son-in-law. I'm married to my beautiful wife, Caitlin. That's Daniel's daughter. I've been with the company at Mitchell's for about two and a half years now. And like I said, if it has anything to do with technology, I'm the one to stick with it. I have the patience to stick around and wait a second and fully develop how it's operating, what it's working with, and how we can break that down to a serviceable thing, for sure. Definitely, definitely. Now, let's touch on this. Now, before you decided to come down and go to work for us, you was going to college. I spent four years in college, two different colleges. I originally was gonna be a teacher. That's what I wanted to do. And then I just kinda started looking over things and I decided I wanted to do things a little differently. I'd looked at the trades before I went to college and I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do entirely. And it took a little bit of time, a little bit of life to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it and sustainability and how you're gonna provide for a family as you're moving on through things in life. The opportunity appeared when I didn't know it should have. And I just kinda was winging it at first and I didn't know if this was what I wanted to do. And I slowly fell in love with it. And I learned that there's development there. There's a job where you constantly have to use your brain. You're not just sitting there mindlessly all the time, just bored out of your mind, not knowing what the next big thing's gonna be. Every day we run into something where we know we're gonna have a challenge. And that's the best part about it. But I think the best part about this job over time has been you find yourself constantly improving. There's always room to improve, learn from, not necessarily mistakes, but hey, I did it this way and I can do it this way. And it's definitely a job where it doesn't get its credit. I feel like it most times. That's the one thing I feel like a lot of people undermine how much brain power it can take to do a job. Like the knowledge you have that is required to do this job. Yeah, and you kinda got thrust into it not long after you went to work for us. That was when I had my real bad rec in October of the 1st of 2022. Two. Yeah. And you kinda got a little bit of training and then it was just kinda, well, I was in the half of the office was gone. The boss was gone or one of the bosses was gone. So you was stuck with a couple of helpers and you and my dad, I think. And I think that kinda, you kinda got your steel tempered by fire, as they say. You ever seen a movie where John Lane throws the little boy in the river and that's how you're gonna swim? That's kinda what happened, but I'm upset about it. It's just, there you go, you got thrown into it, but it's a good thing because I've always been able to think on my feet and that's something you have to have with this job. You can't just be unable to think on your feet. I mean, things happen that are unexpected and you have to be fluid for sure. And that's something that helped a lot with it. But I'm kinda glad it happened the way it did because it forced me to become more self-reliant rather than just sitting on my behind the entire time waiting for someone else to tell me what to do. It was hard. It wasn't easy. There were days, you know, you go home with a headache, but I'm glad it happened the way it did for sure. Well, now don't talk about my daughter like that going home with a headache. That's not my fault. You married all over. Oh, Lord, okay. No, just kidding. But the good thing about what you did experience there is you did get a lot of on-job training there and I think it made you into a better technician as far as being able to be, you know, to deal with the unexpected. You know, how many days a week do we come in and we have a plan? And then that plan goes way off the rails because of emergencies, because of something we're not expecting, you know. I mean, I know when I first started, I tried to go home at night and think, all right, so if we have this lined up tomorrow, how's that gonna happen? How am I gonna be able to, I stopped trying to do it because you want a small game plan, for sure, but trying to overcomplicate it, you're gonna have something that, if you're fixing someone else's mistake on the service side of stuff, and you're looking through it and you expect it to be one way, well, I learned to not have expectations when I go to these jobs because when you're getting ready for your jobs, you can't pack for a job and say, it's gonna be like this. You have to pack for four different scenarios and then even then, there's a fifth scenario that shows up that you may not have actually been prepared for at the time. It's a struggle from day to day. There's some days you get over there and handy Andy has been on site and you go, okay, it made my job a lot harder today, but it's not a bad thing. It's just, that's what I told you about. It makes you have to be fluid and that's the good thing about it, for sure. Yeah, that's what I see and I think one of my favorite quotes to give to y'all is don't get tunnel vision, because we'll go out and we'll be hunting a water leak or we'll be hunting a hammering sound or we'll be hunting a pressure problem or a pop off on a water heater is a perfect example. Water heater pop off nine times out of 10. What's the first thing you're gonna check on a pop off on a water heater rather than just change the pop off? You're gonna check for pressure to make sure that there's a reason and I mean, their temperature and pressure and either you need to check the thermostats and make sure that they're not bugging out and scalding the customer or you need to make sure that there's not 120 pounds like the other day. I mean, we went up on site, she had leaks all over her water heater hoses, we check them out and the seals are blown because she has 130 pounds on the house. I mean, that's just not what you need and I don't know what you want. And so that was, it wasn't just a simple, hey, let's change this out, whatever. I mean, you have to diagnose everything for sure. Yeah, that's what I say about not get tunnel vision because a lot of times we can be looking, we can be looking for the problem in the wrong spot. I mean, I can't think of an example right off top of my head. Leaks are usually the biggest thing. You start looking for a leak 20 feet from where it actually started. Water has the tendency to follow the least path of resistance is what I like to say. So if you've got a leak on a, if you've got water in a house, you've got that water come from somewhere. If it's out somewhere from, there's not a line or something close to it, you need to go to the closest line. More than likely something there is leaking. And then, or like the other day, another example is the other day we went out on a sewer smell. And it was not a sewer smell. They had had multiple people out. They had had multiple detection devices. And I'm talking about the one on the mountain, the new house, not the one in Chikamara. The one, it was brand new house, thought they had left a line opening the, you had been there a couple of times. Had done a whole methane test on the house. I mean, it was a dead mouse. Right. I mean, it's, that's twice we've had dead animals, but I mean, that's the thing. It's sometimes it's, you walk in a house, and you don't smell anything, and you do those tests, you know, it's the wax ring. Or sometimes you don't smell anything, and you do your entire investigation, and you walk away telling the customer, hey, we've done everything we can check. There's nothing that we can find here. And then you come back the third time, and you find the dead rat finally, because it's starting to smell again. Right. I mean, it's, I mean, the other day we had the dead rat under the cabinets. Yeah, but it-- The whole rat nest. I mean, well, we walked in the house, and a sewer smell, I mean, I've been doing it long enough. You walk in, it doesn't really bother you anymore, but you know that smell, and we walked in the house, it didn't smell anything. It just smelled like something had expired. And through a lot of investigation, we found it. I mean, it's just the part of the job that some people don't realize we have is we run into more than just water, or just a sewer smell. Yeah, and on that job particularly, we as professionals, we try to see our resolution to the end, and they actually called a pest control person. They come up, couldn't find anything, said they couldn't see anything. So we actually wound up cutting the back of the cabin out, running our camera in there, and finding this expired gopher. It was a big, pretty good size, and nest behind the cabinets, because it had that pocket behind the cabinets. Well, we kinda had an idea what it was, because we had smelled it before. Like you said, sewers got a different smell than a rancid rotting carcass. I say sewers got a more musky smell, and then a rotting carcass. Now I have seen people, and if you're not careful, propane, gas, and natural gas smell a lot like a dead rat. So that's what I get. When they say, if they call me and say, "Hey, I smell a dead rat," we try to get out there, because we figure it might be gas. Which thankfully, that's what we were searching for, but they didn't have gas in the house. That was obviously, we were glad it wasn't anything super dangerous to them. I mean, but that is one of those smells that when you walk in the house, it doesn't just make your nose twitch a little bit. You walk outside for a second, get a fresh breath air, and then you go back in to do the job, because it's not great. But there's a lot more to the job than just silly things like that. I mean, we go out and we're able to help medical facilities. We're able to, I mean, the vineyard, we take care of the vineyards, the assisted living properties we take care of. I mean, it's more than just, hey, my toilet's leaking. Hey, I've got my sewer backing up. A lot of people, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't get the credit it needs with the job. It's too many people, even guys I knew in college, we're still friends. Well, you mess with poop all day. No, I don't actually. I do a lot more than that. That's of everyone who's a plumber does a lot more than that. And they just, it's dumbed down. And I feel like it just, it doesn't get the respect it requires, because at first I had the same, just ideas, it's a gross job. Why would you do that, child? That's what, I mean, maybe once a week, you might have a sewer job, the rest of the job's un-service work wise. I mean, it's water, it's a leaky toilet. It is, but there's more to it there, on the service side at least. And y'all see more sewer than the guys that do the new house plan for us. I mean, the guys that do all of our new rough ends, they never see sewer. Even when they get them roughed in, if they have any kind of trouble, like yesterday we had a set of apartments that got roughed in and tied onto a bad tap. And the tap was, it wasn't our fault, but we had to go down there and get it. Well, the service techs get to go back to the, so they go back to the stuff like that, and they went back and could find out it was 137 feet from the town, which it puts it out in, would be the municipalities problem, but it's on the back alley, so that one's still up in the air there. I feel like we're not done, I feel like we're not done with that one, but. I mean, well, that's the thing too, is with this job, you have the service side, you have the new side, and you need to know both, but it's also respectively, it's great to have people who are specialized in both, because the other day, we were working for a large business, it's been a couple months ago, and they were having sewer problems. They had just built the building, and went out there and we eventually got there, they're the problem solved, but he told me, he's like, "Hey, I've done this for 30, 40 years." And I don't do service, I have no clue, I have no idea what you guys are about to do. And I mean, they've just been doing all the commercial work, and he said, "I don't do service, I have no clue how you're supposed to inspect this." And which kinda surprised me, but because we do everything out here. But it was just, he's like, "I only do new construction." I said, "I'm gonna rely on you guys, whatever you tell me, we're gonna respect it and we're gonna roll with it." And that's, it was a little eye opening right there, because you would expect for someone to have been doing it that long, you might think they would know about it. But he told me, he was, "I honestly have no idea, you're gonna be teaching me something today." And so it was, it was... Well, that's another thing, and y'all do, and I've said this before, I expect a pretty high level of professionalism out of y'all, and I do try to train y'all with a well-rounded arsenal of technical advancements, to be able to address a problem at any level. That's why I like a lot, that's why when I got back and I was doing good, I let you go on the new construction, plumbing new construction. You done a lot of vent systems, and you learned about vent systems. Well, your new construction time, you use now because not, when you go in to do some service work, you're not only got your service experience in your tool belt, you've got that new plumbing in your tool belt. That way you can go in and say, "Well, I know if I was plumbing this, I would've put a combination here, a 45 here, and then come up in the wall here. So I'm gonna look over here to see if they put a clean out in, or if there's an access point here, stuff like that, or you kind of understand where people put their valves, where they're going, how they feed their water, to buildings and stuff like that." So that in turn transfers to time saved for our customers. So that gives our customers a job that would take some companies or some technicians that ain't as well trained two hours, we can get it down to an hour because we can bypass some of the preliminary, I butchered that word, preliminary. So, strategic troubleshooting. Well, that's the thing is, I've been working with Seth for the past few months and he's been learning a lot and he's really, really picking up. But he was talking to me about, well, how do you know that? And I was like, "Well, it's from the new construction side of stuff." It's almost like you have X-ray vision at that point. You're like, "This should be this way if they did it to the codes." Which, those could be headaches, but they're there for a reason. That's what helps us understand this stuff. I was like, "It should be like this." We get there, it was like that. And that's something, but that's the same thing too as you can't necessarily get tunnel vision on it because if you do and someone's been by there and, "Hey, my son, my son tried to help me out." Well, you're somewhat doing a bad thing, but we need to do this a different way. We need to rerun this because it's not gonna stop until then. And then you go in there, you rerun everything. Instead of just trying to do a little patchwork here and there, you spend less time, maybe a little more in material, but overall, they're not calling somebody out every three or four months because of the knowledge you have from the new construction side, you can repair it in that way too, to get them to the highest quality top standards. Right, right. And then I know we talked about the technical stuff on the side and you've touched on the fact that it just hasn't been... People think of plumbers, they think of a guy with a plunger. They're just logging toilets, stuff like that. But you've learned and you've been able to educate some of your friends. It's not that way, really. I mean, like you said, we work on the medical facilities. We've got to have our stuff in order. We've got to know exactly how to purge the pipes, cleanse these systems we're working on because we can actually take a life by not doing our job proper. And it just... And I say it all the time, anybody can be a plumber on the internet. But when you're out there and you're running pipe and water systems and med gas and stuff in these medical facilities, it's a different world. And I think you realize, I'm pretty laid back, but when we go in them situations, I get pretty tense because I feel the pressure because I feel like I've got to keep an eye on everybody to... I'll check it eight times before we'll leave. Just stuff like that, because like I said, it can take a life. And that's not just your everyday plumbing stuff. And I guess we get into a lot of that where some companies just focus on your everyday service and stuff like that. We're probably one of the most intense plumbing companies that I have ever been around personally, because I've worked out and about when I was younger, I worked out about up in Chattanooga around our line and stuff like that. And we actually do a little of everything. I mean, you might be running... You might be stopping a kitchen sink in the morning and running a reverse osmosis system in a medical facility that afternoon, or repairing one, or working on a tankless-renialed water heater, or putting in a cellular controlled, a cell phone controlled valve. Sometimes I know it's a lot for us, but you guys handle it great. You have to have a code of many colors. I mean, that's kind of what it is. You can't just say, "Hey, here's my one thing." You kind of have to be a jack of all trades with how we do stuff at least. I mean, now if you have a drain cleaning company, you need to know a couple things, and that's awesome. And they're there, and they do their jobs, and they're great at their jobs. But when you do something where we handle every situation possible, then you have to know everything. You have to stay up on your technology. You have to stay up on what's the best thing for your customer. I mean, and I'll touch on it, because we have them here, but a lot of people are moving to more of a smart home aspect. They want to be in control, because too many times over the years, they've seen the uncontrollable. They've seen you go off to vacation, and your house is flooded. And now you have an insurance quote. Now you have to have half your house rebuilt, and now half your savings is gone. Well, there's things where you don't have to worry about it. The Moen flow is newer, but it's one of the coolest, I mean, the advancements you have. All it is is a simple shutoff valve, but it is linked through a cell phone app. And you can do it, turn it manually. You can turn it off with your phone. Once you have it, it connects to your wifi. They work great. But it allows you to see the flow inside your house. It'll tell you the water temperature. It'll tell you the water pressure. So you can set these before or after a pressure regulator. I think they max out at like 110. So if you have more than 110 pounds from the street, you need to put them after, but they're great. We've put quite a few of these in, and every time someone puts them in, and we come back to them, they'll pull off their cell phone. They'll show me, "Hey man, this has been doing this." And it caught that mile and mile. I had left my hydrant on the other day. It was just barely dripping, and it told my phone, "You have a small leak." I went around the house checking everything out, and I found it. And the app itself is actually pretty neat with these, because this dial here, when you just press it, you hear a motor turn, and it turns it off. It kills everything into the house. But because it works off wifi, and because it works off the way the app is, once it's connected to the internet, as long as you have cell phone service, you can be, we were in the Chattanooga area, but you could be in North Dakota, and you forgot to turn it off before you got home, then you know what, I need to turn that off. Something just doesn't feel right. Click a button, it's there, safety's there. But they're not the only company doing it. I mean, they're just companies, I don't even know if you've heard of them, it's YoLink. I don't know if you've, I've mentioned them. Well yeah, you've talked to me about them. I mean, I'm not, I leave that kind of aspect up to you. I know you put one in the other day that goes outside. Is that the YoLink? Yeah, they do everything from leak sensors. So you can put them underneath your shutoff valves under your sink, because those leak all the time. And you can put them under your sink, and if it starts a leak, it'll, you know, the water droplets will hit it, and it'll tell your phone, hey, kitchen sink has a leak. Or you can have where he had the motorized shutoff valve at the street, so he doesn't have to walk all the way down to this quarter mile driveway to turn it off. It's, it uses like a 900 gigahertz bandwidth, which is a strong, strong connectivity rate. And so what you can do there is hit that, it'll connect to your wifi, and as long as it has that network there, you're good to go. They make everything from the actual badger meters that the city installed. You can trade those out, and they are motorized, they have their little transponder on top, and you can control them from the city meter. It'll tell your meter readings, it'll tell you your usage, it'll tell you everything, and they're not that expensive. Not when you think about what it could be. Well, especially with things costing like they are right now. I mean, everybody's wanting to monitor, I've said it on one of the other podcasts, they want to monitor their water consumption, they want to monitor their fuel consumption. You know, it's not a bad idea. Knowledge is power. I mean, that's what everybody says in knowledge, and it's not as much power as knowledge is just useful to be able to mediate your usage and stuff like that. Now on that one, you put it to the meter out there, I've been meaning to ask you this, what power is it? So it is battery powered, because we just had to put on the adapters, get it in the main line, and then that's it. It's battery powered, but the thing he had, if I'm not wrong, I think it had like a solar on it. So once you actually have to have it outside of the box, and it will protect his sleeve, and then you set it up there, and then it gets its power that way. Yeah, I figured solar was, because we're seeing more and more solar stuff. Which, I mean, when I say they're not expensive, like the moments they can run, because they have all their different sizes, from like half inch to two inch, which the yellow link stuff is as well, it runs, these run from like 400 to like eight, $900 up. The yellow link stuff has been, I mean, the meter sits, and it has a motorized meter, a motorized shut off valve, I mean, they're $600, but you get all these extra there, and they're made out of stainless steel, they're more of a commercial grade product, they have their consumer grade and their commercial grade. But they're great products, I mean, it's at least from what we've heard from our customers so far, I've not heard anything negative. And I like the fact that, I like to be in control, I like to know there's something I can prevent, if they're, and that's what these allow. I mean, and that's nice to have and give your customers the peace of mind, because if we go off on a trip, I'll turn the water off at the meter, because I don't want anything to happen to my house, I've heard the horror stories, and there's so much more than just a shut off valve in all those situations, I mean. The good thing about that one is that you do, we all know, I mean, when she ain't got kids yet, and I'm hoping you get me some grandkids pretty soon, so one day, yeah. But anyway, you get ready for vacation, you're trying to get everything loaded, you're trying to get the kids in the car, you try to think of it, you've got a list, turn the coffee pots off, make sure the hard drivers, or not the current orange run plug, stoves off, dog fed, stuff like that, lights are out, or lights are on that you want on, so you get down the road and you go, man, I wished I'd have turned the water off. But with the convenience of this mold and flow, and this is one of the reasons we used them, we actually had them come in and kind of tell us about them, and there may be some other products, we're not by us but just one product, this is just the one we're most familiar with. If there's another company out there that wants to come give us a demo, and we'll look at it, and if they want to sponsor our podcast, we'd be loved to get you on here. But anyway, that's selfless pun there. And then anyway, you get down the road and you say, hey, I forgot to turn the water off, I had too much going on, the great thing about it, you get on the out, and you turn your water off right there, it turns it off, you gotta worry about it till you get back, you go enjoy your vacation, you come back, that boy you phone out, when you pull up the driveway, turn your water back on. They're not hard to operate, they make them user friendly, I mean if you know how to open up your cell phone to Facebook, you can use one of these, I mean, it's nice to have that there, I mean, at least when I started, I knew nothing, I had nothing in my brain about plumbing. I knew we had water and we had sewer and that is it. But you moved to-- And the boss was ass-obated, right? A little bit. But I didn't even know we had tankless water heaters, I mean, I always knew growing up, we had the water heater in the house, and you took a 10 minute shower because everyone had to get a shower, and you didn't waste all hot water. Well, first time I saw one, I was looking at what alien contraption it was on the, they're really easy to understand once you start to work through them, and get to educate on them a little bit, but. Now I know you had some experience with water heaters, because when I first met you, you lived in that house up there in La Fayette, and you had to change your water heater element all the time, because you all had two teenage boys living in there, and then y'all was coming and going, and your grandmother and your mother lived there with you, so y'all needed a tankless up there that wasn't-- Just the bow, I mean, and we stressed out that water heater, and we worked it, for sure. But it's nice to know that even though upfront for a customer, it's gonna be more expensive. It's gonna be more expensive, so don't think that you're gonna go to your local hardware store, or your big box store, and say, hey, I'm gonna get a new water heater, I wanna install it myself. It's gonna be the same price. They're normally about, I mean, what is the normal, they were in about 700, 800-- Oh, on what? On like a 40 gallon, like a seven-- 40 gallon water heater with six year warranty is gonna run you about $579 at Home Depot or Lowe's. Okay, so you're around the 600 figure then. Well, say you wanted to upgrade to size, and say, you're under $1,000, but you go to a tankless, you're in anywhere from, I mean, what, 15 to 2,500? Yeah, they start around 12, 1250, and go up, especially depending on the size. Tankless water heaters are based on flow rates. Like, you know, like, if you've got a one bathroom house, you've got a shower, it runs, you know, probably 1.6 or two gallons a minute. Your toilet flushes, it runs 1.5 gallons a minute. You've got a hot and cold vanity faucet. It runs probably, you know, 0.5 or one gallon a minute. So right there, you've got, you know, three, four, that's four gallons a minute. You base this water heater on what it takes to run everything in your house at one time. So you've got a kitchen faucet, it's gonna be a gallon per minute. So you're at five gallons per minute. All right, one bathroom house, you get a five gallon per minute water heater. You don't wanna go with the bare minimum. It's like, you know, it's like, it's like insurance coverage. You don't wanna go with the bare minimum on insurance coverage because of the fact that you wanna be able to cover it good and get it done. So you gonna go with a six gallon per minute water heater. That's for a one bathroom. You go to the two bathroom, I mean, you're double that. You're close to 12 gallon per minute, which you're not gonna open every high turn at the same time, every time. Everybody's not gonna be in the bathroom. And then I was counting the commodes. So commodes don't use hot water. So you take the commodes out, you just figure on, you figure on your hot water usage the best you can. And then you oversize it by one gallon or so. We like to use Renai. We're Renai pros. You've done a lot of Renai rebuilds. This is a Renai condensating unit right here with a copper heat exchanger. This is one of the older ones. Now they've got stainless steel heat exchangers, which makes them better. This is upside down just because we couldn't get to stand the other way. Water comes in here, runs around here. Fire comes in this chamber, heats the water when you need it. It's essentially a large radiator. But I mean, they're simple, but they're great. I mean, the fact that we are to a point where we can have as a luxury, it's a luxury thing. It's not an every, you know, every day, not everyone needs one, but some people, if they want one, they have a large family, they have get togethers all the time, businesses. I mean, you want that there. And even at the clinics we work at, they have a lot of tankless units because of the demand that they require. And even on their, you know, this is a residential heat exchanger, but even on their commercial units, you run into where we do our studies to make sure that everything's fine, but we've never had any problems out of them. You've never had, we're just not getting enough. I mean, even if you have one that's nine gallons a minute, 10 gallons a minute, I mean, for a large house, I mean, there's been some of the very large houses that we've done up on the mountain and they have one unit and they're like, no, my family was over the extra part of the house is being used. There were showers going the whole entire time. And that made it worked great. That's been my favorite investment I've made for the house so far. That being said, these work better than the electric units, for sure. Oh yeah. The electric units never cheap out on that kind of stuff either. You can find them online for $500. You're gonna get a $500 water heater. That's just how it works. And you might not get a good use out of that because we went back and changed some of those $500 water heaters within a year. They, it's the demand, because you had to add an extra panel to get one with the, especially the correct flow rates. But even with the demand that that requires when people have set them up the right way, we've seen multiple houses where it causes fixtures to flick with the lights whenever they're running. And it just, it's not a viable option at the moment. Now they do use the quartz radiators on the inside. I don't know if that helps anything. You know, they'll get some of those electronic ones to use like infrared and quartz heating. With a solid grain. Yeah. That that's been the better unit that I've seen. We, we've got one of those in and it's, it's just, it's done good, but we put the one in that was 14K that was ready for the house. We had to go back and put the 18K in to be able to run it, which they warranted it because it wasn't heating well, but they, those infrared seemed to do better. But we just done that house in Roswell, where y'all went back and put a, the condensing heat, the heat pump water heater, because the tankless electric was pulled, he was, it was dimming his lights in his whole house. That's what he told me. We were there when it was running. His wife was upstairs and we were doing some work and we actually, the basement lights where everything was at it was pulling, just faded out really bad and then came back once, once the unit, but every time it kicked on, everything in the house just died and came back. And that's not something you'd want in your house. I mean, so it's something that's not everyone's going to know about and that's something that we can definitely provide to a customer. Like, hey, from experience, we know, like don't, don't think we're here to hurt your bank account. A lot of people think that we're here to do that. And we're here to provide the most to you because we don't want you to have anything negative happen after we leave. We want the best outcome possible 24, seven, 365. And if you don't, then we want to know what's, what, where can we learn from that? What's, what's, what's happening? We definitely want you to call us back because we want five star reviews. All the time. But our five star work, you gotta have a five star reviews. Right. And yeah, but that's the thing is we might be a family-based company, but that's what's important. I think a lot of people don't realize it is because there's more drive to do better than those scenarios. It's not where you have a company, well, oh, they're, they're based out of a big city and they have 80 vehicles. That's awesome. I'm great that they're able to, it's great that they're able to do that, but what standard is there? You know, is it, is it higher? Is it less? Is it, you know, are they getting the same amount of concentration on their training? Are they, you know, are they getting that one to one time or are they putting them on a 45 day program, kicking them out the door and hoping they know everything? Well, I feel like some of those big companies are just meant to, I feel like there's just a common expectancy that you're not gonna get top quality service from one of those companies. I, you know, I think some of the big name box stores that send out technicians, they know they're not gonna get, you know, so they, that's why they, you know, that's why they can do that. You know, we've been, we've been right there at 206 North Duke Street in Lafayette, Georgia since 2000. And I think we bought that bill. We started over on Cherokee Street. Well, we started it, we started out of the back of my mom and dad's house when dad started. Then we moved to Cherokee Street and had a office over there in the back of one of mom's restaurants. And then we moved from there over there. We bought the 5,000 square foot warehouse we're in now. We wanna think in 2013 is what I'm thinking. And we moved in over there. No, it was 1993. It was 93? 93, 96, 96, 97, something like that. I was just, I was still in high school. Okay. Cause Lord mercy, I'm dating myself. Okay, I'm 44, be 45 January 8th. So I'm gonna be 45, 45 is the new 20. Just to let everybody know. I mean, that's what I work on. All my fitness as you can tell, you know, latest tire styles, 45 is the new 20. Especially if you're a plumber, no. But anyway, and that night, it was 96 or 97. That's what it was. And we moved over there. So we've been in Lafayette since 1976. And everybody, if you go anywhere in Lafayette and talk about Mitchell's plumbing, more than likely somebody's gonna say, "Yeah, I know the, I know how to get a hold of them." Stuff like that. I'm not gonna put out work that I can't be proud of. And I think I stay on y'all about that all the time. I think that's why I hold y'all to a higher standard. The thing is, at least that's how I see it, on the standards there is, at least growing up in the South, your name is everything. Your name, how people view you, it's everything. And if I'm out there representing someone else's name, someone else's, you know, even though we're family, I don't have the same last name as you people. They see me on the street, they see my ID, they're not gonna go, "Hey, they're related." You know, they're not going to, unless they know. And with that being said, if I walk in someone's door, and I look a fool, and I act like I was not raised correctly, and I just leave something just looking terrible or make it worse, they're gonna think, "Well, what are they doing? Why are they..." And you don't want that for your customers. Do you want your doctor to come in in a pair of basketball shorts, a wife beater t-shirt, and a pair of, you know, unlaced boots? I mean, are you gonna have a good, are you gonna have a, you look at him, are you gonna have confidence in him? No. And you don't want your plumber coming in looking like that, neither. You don't want him coming in and talking, you know, just any kind of way. We, you know, we do a lot of training on how to do house entrances, you know, the way we knock, the way we wear our booties so we don't get the floor dirty, you know, the way we present ourselves, the way we, you know, if we don't, if we're gonna, if we've got to access another part of the house, we always get permission, you know, there's sometimes it will need to go look for a valve, but we don't just go off in the house looking for a valve. You know, we'd let the homeowner know that we're going to look for the valve or something like that. Because, you know, if you've got confidence in your technician or in your plumbing company, it's easier to trust them. And I feel like a relationship built like that saves the homeowner. And it also gives us a easier way to be able to recommend stuff like tankless water heaters, we was on the tankless water heaters, is we know the reason we tell you, you know, you need to buy this water heater because it's a little bit more, it's not the price. We're not making no commission on nothing. We don't pay commissions down at Mitchell's Plumbing. You know, we're telling you out of, like he said, experience, we see better, you know, results out of this water heater here. You know, tankless gas water heaters are great in this area. Electric water heaters in this area, they're not there yet. I don't think we've got the power grid to support them. I mean, and stuff like that. I know they make the heat pump water heaters. That's a big thing that's coming into the area. I think those are pretty good for around here. They save power, they, you know, they use the heat pump to help heat the water. And I think that's gonna be a good thing. I know there's water heaters that, they're geothermal water heaters. That's the kind that they dig down in the ground and they've got, you know, and that's, they do good around here because we've got such warm soil temperatures, you know, stuff like that. But right now, tankless is the, we see the trend trending toward tankless. And right now the stainless steel heat exchangers, the ease of parts to be able to work on them, and the, customer service, that's what we look at. The most important thing to me with the Renize is the warranty. This is the most detrimental part of the entire unit and they carry a 10 year warranty on them. So there's that. But even when you get the warranty, I've seen it from time to time where the older style had the copper, it didn't have the heating efficiency in there. That's why they moved to the stainless steel. Everything, everything flows a little bit better. I've seen them take the numbers on the unit, say, hey, we don't make that anymore, but we have the new one, we'll send it to you and you get the upgrade. And they cover parts, all you have to cover is labor. And I mean, it's a process rebuilding one, but you can get it done in two or three hours normally. Well, the bad thing, I will say the only catch to that is they don't pay for the labor. They don't. To change the heat exchanger, you've got to take the unit off the wall, take it completely uninstall it and completely disassemble it down to just about every bolt and screw in it. There's like 200 screws. Right, that's one thing we've had to send you to school on and everything is to take these things apart and put them back together efficiently, timely and safely because you're working with gas, water and everything in these units. You have to put new gaskets on them. They send you the whole kit, but I mean, it's not something just anybody can do and that's where you have to get that certification at and you have to be able to say, hey, we offer that standard above. Anybody can know about them, they can know how they work. But can they do it properly? Right, yeah, anybody can change a set of brakes on a car. I mean, well, not anybody, but anybody can go at it. But will this car stop? That's what you got to know. Anybody can take this water heater apart, but can you get it back together and make it heat and heat efficiently and heat correctly? That's one thing that the training that we do and the technology that we keep in our office, I mean, that's what we've worked on all week is upgrading our technology in our office to be able to be able to connect and more productivity with our techs out in the field. I think I've heard y'all say it all the time. And I tell y'all all the time, if there's a tool, if there's a class, if there's anything that y'all think that would make us better, bring it to my attention. I mean, 90% of the time, I think I listened to it, it's here again, it's out. It's that 10% of the time that I'm running around and complaining and I'm only a 10% butthole. We might focus on it a little too much because no one likes to be in trouble, but that's the thing though, it does happen that way. It does happen with the 10% where you have, hey man, we need to tighten up on this. But the rest of it, it is. It is, I need to know. But as long as I know, I don't care. I just need to know. Because we may come across something that you, I didn't even know that was there. I mean, it offers availability for education throughout the trade on multiple fronts. I mean, hey, we saw this today. We learned about this. This customer had this they wanted installed. It's how we learn about stuff and how we progress. Right, and then back to having the right tools and stuff, we have to have special screwdrivers to take this thing apart. When we done that class, they give us that screwdriver. We got this long screwdriver and we're like, why would you need that long screwdriver? But you take one apart and you realize why you need that long screwdriver. And if you lose that long screwdriver, you got to go buy another one because you got to have that long screwdriver. Because there's screws in that system that's got to have that long screwdriver. I mean, when it comes down to it, I mean, everyone knows about it, but you have the advancements of the press systems with everything, with the gas, with the expansion. That's what we use. I know everyone has their own difference, but things that speed up the job and they make them better. But at the same time, you have those advancements that allow it to be safer in the long run. I mean, I know Vigo, they have their new stuff. Yeah. There's all the times we run into issues where it's like, hey, they got galvanized in here. There's not threads. We're going to have to put a mechanical fitting in or go back and find threads. This is still good pipe, right? This fitting rusted out. We can clip into it, we can press into it, we can run things and get them where they're going in the right direction and save the customer money, not having to have maybe an entire water line ran. And they don't have that kind of money. They're like, I just need it fixed. And then it's an old grandmother who just really needs some help right now. She's down on her luck and you're there and that advancement allows you to reach new heights and new grounds, I mean, for sure. Yeah. And that's another thing, you know, because I say this and I harp on it, I don't mean to get on it and harp on it. We don't pay the commissions. So we're not there trying to make the grandma spend another $500. So you make your paycheck that week. You know, my guys, I think I pay competitively. I think I have stuff like, you know, the benefits and stuff. I do what I can, but you know, we add the pro press or the press gun. And if you're able to press that fitting on and get out of there in 30 minutes, it saves the client money. Yeah, we have to charge a certain amount to be able to overcome a, you know, to make a profit to be a viable company. That's just part of it. You know, the press is a good example because that press that you carry on your truck is a $6,000 machine. I mean, the heads to do the mega press, the gas, that's another $1,400 worth of add-ons to that. And then that don't even count the boxes of the VEGA mega press fittings that you've got on there. But in a situation where you need that stuff, it's a very viable, quick, efficient, safe option to fix a gas leak or a water leak, ill and copper, or, you know, like you said, we use the expansion pegs. Expansion pegs, it's an apex. We like it, we like the expansion just because we're set up to do the expansion. Which, I mean, some people, they worry about the expansion fittings, or they worry about the press fittings, or they worry, these are multi-billion dollar companies putting this stuff out. They don't not do their research. They do what they have to do. They make sure it's there. They make sure it's definitely going to be something that when they put it out, your customer or your, you know, consumer is not gonna have a problem. And if we've done new gas with all thread or new gas with all, I've had more leaks off of threaded fittings than with the press fittings. Because, oh hey, we didn't get that a quarter turn tight enough. Put the press on there, you press it. Do your prep work correctly. It's there, it's done, it's safe. And there, what, 50, 60 year rating on the fittings? I mean-- Well, and back to the threaded. And a lot of times it's not, I didn't get it tight enough. A lot of times we see poor quality in the fittings because they're trying to get the fittings, those, you know, they're wanting those threaded fittings to be as cheap as they can. I know when I go and buy a Mega Press fitting, I'm going to have to pay more for it because it's bag to bag. Vika puts it in a bag. They've got a quality control behind it. You've got a good fitting. So you know that fitting's gonna come out of that bag. It's gonna be quality. You don't have to worry about the threads being, we've seen, how many times have you seen an L or a T or something have caught, you know, off center or off straight threads, you know, gotten the machine weird or had a sand pit in it or something like that. The good thing about the Vega Press Fitness, they are stainless steel drawn. I mean, they don't, they ain't got no, they ain't molded. So-- The only time I've ever seen an issue with these fittings is where the pipe itself has like, some abnormality in it. It's old and that press squeezes the pipe and it doesn't, the pipe doesn't have the structure it used to and then there's fractures in the pipe. That's it. I mean, it's normally not a fitting issue. It's a, hey, this needs to be replaced thing, you know. And let's just be honest, if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen to Channing. Channing always finds those anomalies in every situation. I mean, I get frustrated with you. I've tried to get off of that because I used to just think it was you. Now it's just your aura. You go out to do it, you found that. I know exactly what pipe you're talking about. You're talking about that copper pipe on that osmosis system that was deteriorated when you had press it, it would crack. I thought it was the fittings at first. I call him, I was freaking out. I was like, I've never seen this happen. We've done it four or five times, it keeps happening. And I'm like, you're doing something wrong, man. You're doing something wrong. Just cut it up higher or something, man. And come to find out, he brought me a piece of it. Every time it cracked, it went through some kind of, I would say it went through electrolysis. Probably. And it turned, and it got some brittle that it was doing it. So we went up there and changed it out and got it done. But I mean, it does happen to you. It's like, there's a lot of time you went out to do that. You can come out and you retched and touched the valve and it blowed off. I mean, the CPVC. I mean, you are the guy that we send out to check the longevity of any job we do. You've got that good mojo on you. You can come in, you can find the flaw in any job. I don't know if it's good. I don't know what I would call it. (Laughing) Unlucky, I don't know, but it does happen. And that's the thing though, that's part my mojo has done on the job. It's kept me on my feet. It's kept me fluid. Nah, I'm sorry. You sit there and it's like, all right, cool. We're gonna do this. That didn't work the way it was supposed to work. And you have to game planning it. Okay, give me five minutes. And then you get back up there and then it works better now. Can you, it's, it may be a longer process, maybe, but it's just, that's part of the job. And I've had, I don't know if it, how much time we got left? We got clean. Okay. I've had more customers recently come up and say, hey, my son has, he's getting closer to graduating high school, but he doesn't know what he wants to do. He's talking about plumbing. He's talking about being an electrician. He's talking about going to college. What do you think? And I have both aspects of it. I went to college and there's nothing wrong with college. Everyone's, you know, my wife's a nurse. She went to college. It's normal. But I tell them, don't shy away from it immediately. At first you're going to walk in the door and you're going to get not the exact pay you might think, cause you hear what everyone, you know, they make X amount of dollars. Well, that's when you've learned and you have the availability to make that much money. You don't just walk in the door without any knowledge, but there's going to be the long nights. There's going to be this, but if you put everything you have into it, you work the long nights, you, you put your brain into it. You take extra time to figure out stuff at night. You're saying, hey, what, what are some ways I can advance myself on it? It pays off in the long run. And I had to tell a lady, I was like, if someone wants to talk to me while I'm in here doing this repair, we were doing the shower valve repair. Yeah. But I'm talking to him, he did. He came and talked to me and I was like, look, dude, I said, you're 16. I said, you got a couple of years to figure out what you want to do. But if it's something where you think you want to do this, you can make money, get your education, not rack up debt, and then still make money. And you don't have to go in a debt for it. Well, that's the good thing about it. Coming in the green, you don't make the 100 or the six figures a year that they show you on the, if you look it up, it tells you what plumbers make. Well, they're giving you the Atlanta area plumbers. I mean, the Chattanooga area plumbers, they're probably making close to that, but they're not knocking down no million dollars a year as a tag. But the good thing about it is if you come in as a helper, you get paid to learn. You know, you go to college around here, you pay them to teach you. Here, we pay you to teach you. But you have to put us a good day's work in. And we're gonna give you a hard time. I mean, that's one of our perks is we get to give the new guy a hard time. It's part of blue collar work. You mess with people, it's just how it is. Yeah, I mean, we still mess with each other. I mean, we mess up. That's another thing about holding us to a high standard of quality. We hold each other to a high standard of quality. We might make a joke. There's a little bit of truth behind it, but that's the thing though, it's because we're not saying, it's just so you don't forget. It's a joke and it's funny now, I'm like six months down the line, but how many other jobs are you gonna find where you get paid to make a mistake when you're early on in it? You're like, hey, I can handle this boss. Yeah, but if you make too many mistakes, that's where that 10% comes in for me. Yeah, which it happens. I mean, when I got started, the amount of times I heard the 10% versus now are different because I had to learn. I hadn't, that's the thing. It's like, well, hey, I told you to do it this way. I did do it this way. No, you didn't. It's just one of those things. And it's definitely something that anyone who has, I mean, you could be 25. I mean, I started when I was 22. You could be 16. It doesn't matter. Wherever you're 50. I mean, there's open opportunity to learn it. And as long as you're smart about it, it's not as hard on your body as people say. No, it's not. If you don't, I wear knee pads in under houses and wear gloves, like take care of yourself. And then that's fine. But if you go in there and you're just being silly, not taking care of yourself, then it's gonna hurt your body. I mean, it's just- Well, it's like working at, it's like working at a manufacturing plant. If you don't follow the safety, you're gonna get hurt. I mean, we got, y'all have access to knee pads. Y'all have access to Tyvek suits, splatter shields, gloves. There's safety precautions of how to use the auger equipment, this, that. And yeah, you can get hurt. I mean, we got excavators. We've got skid loaders. We've got trailers and stuff. We have to be mindful of what we're doing. But if you pay attention, you're not gonna get hurt. You're not gonna get, it's not as bad as it used to be. I mean, back when my dad started, they used to do lead and oakum stuff. They used, their pipes was 500 pound per joint, or just for, probably exaggerate a little bit. But then they had to pack it with rope, oakum, and then pour a lead joint. I mean, they was lucky if they got five or six joints a day in a house. Yeah. I mean, it's quicker, it's safer now. And that's the thing. It's not something where you have to worry about getting gross stuff all over you. Take care of yourself. The job will take care of you. You know, that's how it is. I mean, if you take care of yourself, it puts you in a longevity spot. It puts you, it allows you to definitely flourish for sure. And I think you've touched on it a lot. And I think just go ahead and just say it like it is. People think plumbers don't have to have a lot of training or they don't have to be smart. But to be a plumber, you've got to be, you've got to have a good working knowledge of the system. You've got to have the technology that you learn, and you've got to have mechanical, attributes, because I mean, you've got to be, it probably takes, someone that can plumb and plumb well, is probably just as acute as a surgeon. I say it all the time. I mean, we do the same thing as surgeons just on a larger scale. You know, I know we all the time ain't got people's lives in our hands, but without plumbers, and I've said it, you know, you can go home and sit in the dark, but you can only poop in the corner so many times where you've got to clean it up, or you've got to get rid of it. So indoor plumbing, plumbing is very important. We, I mean, we see it all the time. And when it's the Plumber, Grandpa Plumbers Day, they post it all the time. Plumbers protect the health of the nation. They do. It's one of the things that statistically keeps us from being a third world country. I mean, proper plumbing. It is definitely something, like I said at the beginning, it's something I'm glad I got into. Well, we're running out of time here for this episode of Plumb Delusional. Channing, it was great having you on. We'll tune in next time. We'll be on another topic. Remember, we're Mitchell's Plumbing at 206 North Duke Street. I'm Daniel Mitchell. I'm Channing Overby. And that's Plumb Delusional for today. We'll see you next time.