[John]: And you’re listening to Talk Radio 1190 the Ask The Experts radio show I’m John Wolf and I have with me Roger Wakefield for another segment, and we’re talking about all the things that can happen to your house in plumbing wise especially. Of course, and often Roger the situation is that it’s not the cost of a repair, it’s finding out where the repair is needed and what repair is needed rather than the actual part or the labor to fix it. I’ve found in all sorts of areas and we’re talking about taking it, running a camera through the pipe leading out of your house, and can you see everything and those little inscrutable cameras catch all the fun stuff in there?
[Roger]: You may not see everything. You definitely can’t use a camera to find every leak. Number one, you can’t get to every single piece of pipe in the house because of revents. You can use a camera. Here’s what we do when we get called out: and we run $159 drain cleaning special. If you have clean outs, they’re accessible clean outs where we can open up a clean-out stick the sewer machine in. Whether it’s a handheld sewer machine, a big sewer machine, whatever it is we’re gonna clean it out then we’re gonna run a camera down and then after that we’re gonna give you a bottle of Bio One to help you keep your system clean and that’s really a great deal for $159. But what we do is when we run that camera down if we find a leak, if we find a break, if we find a belly. We have another tool it’s a locator and we can make that camera transponder come on send a signal out and with our locator. We can tell you exactly where it is, we can tell you how deep it is. The good thing about that is say it’s up under your house, I can literally put a dot on a floor and tell you “look, you’ve got a leak right here. It’s three feet deep.” So we know how big a hole we need to cut, if we’re gonna cut a hole or we know how far of a tunnel we’re gonna have to dig, if we decide to tunnel under. But a camera and a locator; literally you can pinpoint the exact issue or is exact problem with your plumbing system.
[John]: Well I know when I had a slab leak, which was same as canceling my kids education, when he showed us, the plumber which was not you, showed us the leak in the piece of pipe he said “it’s this pinhole here.” Could something that small, assuming he was being honest with me, something that small be detected in the dark with your with your camera?
[Roger]: Well a pinhole leak is on a water line. All this that we’re talking about today is on a sewer line. So, we don’t have cameras to go in water lines, and no it wouldn’t be detected because that is so small you’re probably not gonna see it. You listen to that or you find that by listening to the system, and I think last time I checked we’ve got about $30,000 worth of listening equipment to pinpoint leaks like that. They actually make certain noises and you know a water slab leak is completely different but yes, that little pinhole leak it can be found. Now if it’s so small it doesn’t spray or leak, it just kind of seeps those are hard to find and it may not be worth spending as much money as it would take to find it to make the repair if the leaks really that small.
[John]: No I did, it did spray. I saw it happen. But it was so small or I thought: how could you find that? Especially in the dark underneath the house. What’s the best way for people who are not well versed in plumbing to learn more about the basics? You can’t learn everything unless You’re gonna be Roger Wakefield, the expert plumber.
[Roger]: But remember I’ve been doing this 38 years now. So to learn plumbing as a homeowner the first thing I would tell you is go to my YouTube channel, go to The Expert Plumber. The reason being is we don’t just do training videos, I don’t just show you how to rebuild a toilet, we talked about plumbing, we talked about water heaters. we talked about why are they expensive? How long should they last? We talked about the difference between gas and electric. We talked about the difference between tankless and tank-type. Going to our YouTube channel, The Expert Plumber , go to it and subscribe to it. You’ll see anytime that we put out a new video and you can also contact us. I tell people all the time call the office if you have a question. I’ve got great people there that can answer, if they can’t answer it they’re gonna put you in touch with me. I love challenging problems if we get a question, it’s something I don’t know, you know I want to find out the answer. So our website is great, like John said it’s texasgreenplumbing.com. Our YouTube channel we’re very proud of that, because we literally, like I said guys, anytime I get calls from other plumbers and “say you need to quit doing what you’re doing you’re costing me money.” Okay, I’m fine with that. That doesn’t bother me as long as I’m educating the public, I’m teaching them the right way how to do things. I don’t know. Follow me on Facebook. We just we sent out a deal yesterday to say thank you to Bradford White. I literally in my office have two water heaters. I’ve got an electric water heater and a gas water heater that Bradford White was kind enough to cut open for me so literally you can see the complete insides of a gas and an electric water heater. And guys, I know other plumbers aren’t doing this because I’ve looked, I’ve tried finding out: is this stuff available? I’m finding out it’s not. So I’m having this stuff made that I want done so I can educate people. If you want to contact with me personally, I’ve got a LinkedIn page. My name is Roger Wakefield, connect with me, subscribe to me on YouTube, follow me on Facebook, whatever you want to do. I had a guy just the other day, Mr. Hanlan just outside of Austin, Texas, and he’ll see this video or hear this podcast, the cool thing is he called me Thursday through Facebook Messenger. He says “Roger I’ve got a problem.” He says “I’ve got a manhole here that smells horrible, I seen your videos I love what you’re doing I love the information you’re giving and man, I feel like I can trust you, I feel like I know you. So I’ve got a question.” So he calls me through Facebook Messenger we talked for about 20 minutes of what I would do and what I think about it and I’ll tell you what, it was really neat just to know that that people are seeing this. I was at a training show in Anaheim a month ago and a lady comes up to me says “Oh my God, I see your videos all the time.” It’s like “Great! Where do you live?” She says “Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” I’m like: okay I don’t know why we’re getting them out that far, how they got out that far but it makes me feel good. She’s like “Look, I love watching your stuff you care about what you do and you’re right. I mean you tell people the truth” I think all plumbers ought to do that it’s a unique concept.
[John]: Roger, this social media thing… Nobody’s gonna get to go outside, enjoy their lives. They gotta find you on Facebook, on YouTube, on your website, call you on the phone. Let people go outside, Roger. Let people get away from the computers. It’s so hard to get outside you go: oh I gotta look at.
[Roger]: Everybody needs to get outside there’s just there’s so many different ways that, so many. And everybody may not be on LinkedIn, everybody may not be on YouTube, everybody may not be on Facebook. We try to reach out to people in all different areas that way they can find out about us, they can learn something. You mentioned something earlier; people when they have an emergency they need to call and get somebody right then. My thing is I want to be that plumber that they know, they’ve learned about, they’ve heard about, they may have even talked to me. That way when they’ve got an emergency they know, “you know what? I need to call Roger”. Or even if it’s not an emergency, “I’ve got a question I need to call Roger and talk to him because I want to know what to do”.
[John]: Well to take it one step back from the era of social media, do you send out magnets for the refrigerator? So people will know that’s what “it’s on the refrigerator let’s get them out here!”
[Roger]: Believe it or not my guys carry out magnets. We’ve got the magnet cards it’s like our business card on the magnet. We actually put water heaters on the stickers when we put them in. That way when people come up they can look at it. But it doesn’t just say “call Texas Green Plumbing.” It says “if your water heater is leaking, here are the steps that you need to go through.” And guys, that’s phenomenal you can save people a ton of money.
[John]: Well we’re just about at the end of the show, anything else that we haven’t asked you’d like to tell people?
[Roger]: You know you asked me about The Expert Plumber , and I take great pride in that there were a lot of plumbers submit videos. I love the fact that American Standard picked me to represent them. that they chose me as their expert plumber. I love getting to go to the KBIS show and whatnot and talk to them. Guys you can also go to the American Sandard’s YouTube channel . I’ve done a lot of videos for them, it’s something I love, I’m passionate about plumbing and I love helping people. So anytime I can tell people how to fix things themselves and I know it’s gonna save their money, I think that’s a great thing.
[John]: Money out of your own pocket to help people? Become a plumber. That’s great. We’re speaking and have been speaking with Roger Wakefield, the founder and owner/operator of Texas Green Plumbing. texasgreenplumbing.com. On YouTube at The Expert Plumber ,