Hey guys I'm Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber. I'm coming to you today
to talk to you about plumbing and why it's a good idea to use the best
plumbing company that you can get and we get calls often just wanting to know
pricing and guys if all you're worried about is pricing, you've got a problem.
Because here's the deal you cannot have the best plumber, you cannot use the best
material and you cannot be the cheapest person and that's what it takes. If all
you're looking far as pricing, guys for me to be the cheapest plumber I've
got to get rid of the good plumbers that I've got and I've got to get some
plumbers that are the cheapest plumbers, some plumbing companies in our
area even send out apprentices. They send out apprentices that have no experience
and they send them in to take care of your plumbing system. Here's what I
believe; you get what you pay for and I don't mean that bad.
I mean it's serious, you get what you pay for. If you want to pay a cheap price
you can't expect a good plumber and you can't expect the best equipment. Now to
me on the other hand if you're paying that good price it's worth it because
you're gonna get or you should get a good plumber and you should get the
right equipment, you should get the job done right. Guys I don't compete with
other plumbing companies on prices, I don't want to. I never grew up wanting to
be the cheapest plumber in town, I grew up with an idea that I wanted to try to
do it best. I wanted to try to do it better than anybody else. And I know that a
lot of people pricing is all it's about. Let me give you a couple of examples
I've had people call and complain about our water heater pricing and guys we're
not the cheapest in town. I'll tell you that right now. But we do it right. I use
good quality water heaters, not water heaters that you go down to the box
store and get. Is there a difference? Absolutely. Some people don't understand
that. Some people don't realize it. Some people don't want to pay the difference.
That's fine. Guys you're probably not my customer and
I'm probably not your plumbing company. I don't mean that bad, I'm just being
honest. So we use a better product because we use a
professional-grade product. Some of the products that we use are even commercial
grade because we know it lasts longer. That's fine,
it's a better thing for you. One thing is we're fair. We have a straightforward
pricing guide that we use. Whatever we charge you, we charge the person next
door, we charge the person next door. But we can show you that upfront so you know
that we're not just making up numbers and when we have a straightforward
pricing guide that lets you know - we're not doing that time and material and I
heard one of my call center reps yesterday explain it very well: look
some companies will give you a very low price for T and M rates and they'll send out
their worst plumber and it'll take him four times as long to do it and guys
that can very well happen. Another example is I had a company call
me and said hey look we had somebody come in and give us a price to redo
piping under our house. At Texas Green Plumbing we specialized in slab
leaks and leak detection. So I'm very familiar with it so he sent me the
estimate, I looked it over and guys they were replacing about 40 feet of pipe
under the house and their price was only $15,000 and I gotta tell you that's low
and he sent it to me and I went through it and I looked at it and I figured
footage. I looked at everything they were talking about they were doing. I also
looked down at the labor and materials that they said that they had in the job
because they broke it out very clearly and here's the deal; guys you can't
tunnel 40 feet up under a house and it only take 5 hours labor and about $300
in material. Not to replace and repair everything on his list that needed to be
done. So he asked me, he says "what do you think?" And I said sir I'm gonna be honest
with you. If they can really do it for this price, this is a good price but here
are the things that I noticed: they've only got this much money on materials,
yet they're talking about replacing about 30 feet of pipe. They're showing
other areas that there's problems that we're going to have to replace fittings.
So my issue is they don't have enough money in materials and they don't have
enough money in labor to do that job accurately. Now the other things that I
noticed they didn't pull a permit under a permit and inspection it showed "zero".
The other thing was where we're at this happened to be in a city just north of
where we're located, they require an engineer's report any time you tunnel up
under a building. They didn't have an engineer's report in there. Guys we do
things right and to me if you're gonna pay for a plumbing job look at it like
this: your house is the most expensive investment you will probably ever make.
Why have a handyman ,why have a cheap plumbing company come in that's probably
not gonna do things right? Guys talk to another plumber, ask them why. Now the
only reason that this guy showed me the price is when he asked me "show me
everything that needed to be done" I gave him a price he told me said you're
almost twice as high as the other company. But now this other company was
also replacing a yard line so that that's why we got up twice as high.
Don't get me wrong, we were more but I'm telling you by looking at what they said
they were doing, we're a better company and if you're investing in your house do
you want to make it an investment or do you just want to pay somebody to put a
bandaid on something that can cause you problems later and maybe cause more
problems? Because the reason that we were called out to this house is because of a
slab leak, because a foundation company came out. Guys they've already had
problems they're spending a lot of money on foundation problems that may have
been caused by a plumber before. Another problem we run into on water heaters,
Handymen. Guys handymen are not licensed to do water heaters and yes you can get
it done cheaper than we can do it, but chances are in the long run your gas
code is not going to be up to grade or code. Your gas
inlet line, your flue pipe may not be put in properly that can cause burning down
your house. The water heater itself is probably not
the quality of water heater that we're gonna install. We're gonna teach you
about flushing it and let you know how often you should do it and what you
should do. We're gonna teach you things to help you make that last longer so
again I'm back to the point: this is an investment in the most expensive
investment you've ever made, your house. Not only that when it comes to water
heaters and gas and things like that I'm assuming you have family there. I'm
assuming you have friends there. Guys be very careful and how you spend your
money plumbing wise. It's well worth it to make the right investment. So I hope
you're learning something from these videos. If you've got a comment, please
leave it down below, if you'd like to subscribe and you haven't yet - yes I see
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subscribe button so you know about these videos. Guys share these with your
Realtors, share them with your neighbors, share them with your friends,
if you're a Realtor, share them with your buyers. I give people information to help
them. Hope you like these. If so give me a thumbs up let me know. My name's Roger
Wakefield with Texas Green Plumbing saving you money one drop at a time.