We’re in our last quarter hour here so Roger I want to ask you a question, what do you do the most of, what, what specialty areas do you have that maybe the average like myself person wouldn’t be aware of in the plumbing field? You’ve made it exciting, you made it fun, I never thought it would.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: We actually enjoy it. I think the thing that we excel at that I don’t think most companies even do is slab leaks and leak detection. We’ve gone to training out in California we’ve bought equipment from California from Mesquite from Canada I believe. We want to be the top in the field at that. And the only way we’re going to be is to train it and have the best equipment and do it that way.
JOHN: OK what’s the hardest part about plumbing? I know people don’t have basements here in general. What is the uh, is the hard ground the toughest thing to deal with when you talk about slabs? Are there other problems in this particular should say specific to our area.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Most plumbing companies around here getting under the house is the hardest part. But most plumbing companies around here you don’t want to pay a plumber…you know we were talking about how expensive plumbers are, you don’t want to pay a plumber to dig 20, 30, 50 feet up under a house. You want to make sure that your plumbing company does that kind of work first because then they’re going to have people. Slab leaks and leak detection are huge. We’ve got companies that we hire that actually tunnel up under it. They’ve got equipment that we don’t have and that helps us make it more cost efficient for our customers.
JOHN: Okay. And what do you do to stay up on things in the plumbing field
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Staying current in the plumbing field with us, what we have to do is we go through advanced training. Actually next week I’m going to be in Anaheim. We’ve got training that we’re going to there. Like I said earlier one of my other plumbers and myself went up to Grand Rapids Michigan for training up there. We do online webinars and we have other companies come in, the water filtration company people’s choice we had our Plumber’s Choice we brought them in to do a training for our guys in our office.
JOHN: And we’ve got Jason on the phone here he’s got a plumbing question.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Hey Jason.
JASON: Hey how’s it going man.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Going good how are you sir?
JASON: I’m good. I don’t know if it’s something you’ve ever run into before I am a plumber myself and I got a red tag the other day because an inspector in Dallas wanted a mixing valve under a two handle bath tub. I’m stumped. I heard you on the radio I thought OK maybe this guy might have an answer.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: They wanted a mixing valve on a two handle tub?
JASON: Yeah
ROGER WAKEFIELD: What did they say their reasoning was?
JASON: He didn’t. He told me I’m a master plumber and I ought to know. I’m asking every plumber that I could think of and I heard you on the radio.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: You know what I don’t know that I’ve heard that one yet. Just like I said earlier I think what I would do Jason is go look at the City of Dallas addendum, see if they’ve written it and for any reason. If you have I’ll tell you one person that I would go to actually two people Rusty and Diane over at A-Aces they do continuing education training for plumbers. Diane used to be the chief plumbing inspector in Dallas. Rusty did too two and they’re both very educated another one that I would call would be Bobby Durant. I have never heard of that.
JASON : Neither have I he wrote me a red tag for it and I called him and asked him am like what are you talking and he told me oh you’re master plumber you should know. Ok.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: I’ll tell you what I’m going to be out of town next week but if you’ll go to my Web site and click on the Contact Us deal and leave me your information. I’d definitely like to call and call back and talk to you more about it but I’d also like to find out how you resolved it or what they came up with.
JASON: Ok
ROGER WAKEFIELD: All right.
JASON: By the way it’s refreshing to hear somebody talking about check your license check your plumber’s license and the whole handyman thing you started out with.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Every time I see a handyman driving in a truck with plumbing and pipe on a rack or a water heater in the back I take pictures and it’s like OK why guys come on.
JASON: Drives me insane we went (inaudible) so many years with our training and everything and everybody thinks you can be a plumber or something.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Until something blows up and it’s not fun anymore.
JASON: Yeah.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: All right Jason thank you for calling sir.
JASON: Alright thank you
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Have a good day.
JASON: You too.
JOHN: I’ve got a question for you. And I’ve managed to avoid this over the years of homeownership. On the downstairs sink the powder room sink and on one of the outdoor hose faucets, if you’d only turn it a little bit turn it on a little bit not give it a full turn, it sounds like it feels like the whole pipe is going to shake apart. Huge vibration if you turn a little more open then that stops and I went to one of the big box stores and ask them about it and they said oh you’re going to have to bleed that or something with a with a welding tool and I thought you know what I’m not going to get into that I’ll just see what happens. And pray a lot is that something you’re familiar with.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Praying a lot yeah every job I go on. You know it’s funny because i really do. A lot of times you barely crack open the valve the rubber washer inside it can if there’s any air trapped in there it can make it Hammer. The water itself if the washer is getting soft it can make it Hammer. I would say turn your water off to the entire house. Take the faucet apart, ease the water back on and bleed it out. That way if you’ve got any air you can force out do that. There’s it may just need to be rebuilt there. Until you get over there and start playing with it and testing it. You never really know.
JOHN: Ok and at that point I hadn’t done nearly as many jobs on a home on my home that I’ve done over the years. I’ve gotten a little a little gutsier about things.
Now let’s talk about your Web site and how people can learn more about Texas Green Plumbing other they follow Texas Green Plumbing.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: Our Web site I’m very proud of our Web site. I’ve got a group of people that work on that with me and we work on this daily and it’s not just our Web site. Believe it or not we’ve got a great YouTube channel where we put out do it yourself videos. We put out plumbing knowledge videos just to teach you things as a homeowner that you may want to know.
And as a realtor in this town whether you represent a buyer or a seller, we have great we’ve done a webinar for realtors what they should look for…we happen to think that our website and our social media the way we stay in touch with people and even getting on the radio we want to create a more educated consumer in the plumbing industry.
So our YouTube channel our Facebook page our blogs I’m on LinkedIn I’m available and I tell people, I’ve given my cell phone number out to so many realtors I get calls around the clock. Do it yourself videos are huge for us and those are something that realtors can direct their customers to. Aand a lot of times a customer will ask them a question about a plumbing issue and they’ll say look either call Roger or go look at his web page or go look at his YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel we are now doing live episodes three days a week and we’re communicating with people and we’re answering questions for them. All of these can be found on our website, Texas Green Plumbing’s web site, Texas Green Pumbing’s YouTube channel, Texas Green Plumbing Facebook page. Everything is there and to be honest it’s not just for us it’s for the people. That’s what we do it we want to give them information that they can use to make their lives better.
JOHN: When do you do your live videos?
ROGER WAKEFIELD: We do live videos at 9:00 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday on YouTube. And if you subscribe to our YouTube channel you’ll get notifications about it. We’re also taking those and rolling those over what we’re doing blogs to go with those. That way if there was something maybe we didn’t cover in the live video we may cover the blogs and we’re doing videos for everything. It’s very easy for me to sit here and tell you here how to do something. But we were actually in the shop this week we did videos on toilets how to rebuild toilets how to determine what’s wrong with your toilets and how to rebuild the different parts of a toilet and take them apart and replace them. And these are things that people can do really easy and if that video shows them how it makes it even easier.
JOHN: Some things are surprisingly easy and as I say I was a renter all my life in apartments until I got into a house and some stuff was pretty hard. But some stuff was really easy but I think anybody who’s been listening to you either just today or over the months you’ve been on can tell you aren’t some that says what can I do? Should I become a lawyer should I become a doctor, I will be a plumber you’re really into this and you really want to help.
ROGER WAKEFIELD: I do I love it. And John I know that we’re fixing to get off here. Earth Day April the 20 th , 21st and 22nd is huge It’s out at Fair Park come out there and see Texas Green Plumbing Man. You can watch him on Facebook get your picture made with him but come to Earth Day.
JOHN: All right and you’ve been listening to Roger Wakefield of Texas Green Plumbing, I’m John Wolf on talk radio 1190.