In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, co-host Walter Bowser of the Keyrenter team interviews Aaron Wynn, the Owner and Operator of Wynn Plumbing, LLC, about typical homeowner plumbing concerns. Aaron shares the most common pipes and their purpose, how he adapts to rising prices amid inflation, and how to ensure your hot water tank complies with city regulations.
DIY Plumbing: What Owners Should and Shouldn’t Attempt Alone
Aaron Wynn is the Owner and Operator of Wynn Plumbing, LLC, which has served Oklahoma City and the surrounding areas for over a decade. From minor repairs to major installations, the company provides top-quality, affordable plumbing solutions for homes and offices. Aaron focuses on helping homeowners navigate and repair routine plumbing issues through educational videos.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How long do hot water tanks last, and how can you increase their longevity?
- How to ensure hot water tanks comply with city codes
- Trending issues in the plumbing industry: clogged pipes and tankless water heaters
- Aaron Wynn describes the various kinds of pipes and their functions
- Advice to homeowners whose pipes have frozen and burst
- Plumbing self-repair strategies for homeowners
- The value of investing in preventative maintenance
- How Aaron adapts to rising prices amid inflation
In this episode…
When renting properties, owners frequently face various inconvenient maintenance and repair issues. One problem that remains top of mind is plumbing, particularly clogged and frozen pipes and malfunctioning water heaters. What do homeowners need to know about plumbing maintenance, and how can they make repairs themselves?
With a wealth of plumbing knowledge, small business owner Aaron Wynn says that the most common issues he encounters are pipes clogged with foreign objects and damage to tankless water heaters from improper use. Copper and cast iron pipes used in older homes tend to have increased buildup, whereas PVC pipes can tolerate objects like flushable wipes. To prevent frozen pipes from bursting, Aaron recommends turning your faucets on to relieve pressure. Tankless water heaters must be flushed out at least once a year to maintain longevity. Most maintenance and repairs should be conducted by professionals to avoid further damage, but to save money on additional plumbing expenses, Aaron recommends repairing faucet leaks yourself using DIY videos for guidance.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Walter Bowser on LinkedIn
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Wynn Plumbing, LLC on Facebook | Website | Email: [email protected]
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Walter Bowser 0:20
Hi, I’m Walter here, host of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business and real estate leaders. Today we have on Aaron Wynn owner and operator Wynn Plumbing. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management, Keyrenter Property Management. We are a full service property management company, helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. Aaron, great to have you on the show. How are you doing, sir?
Aaron Wynn 0:51
I’m doing great. I really appreciate you guys having me on today. Yeah, absolutely.
Walter Bowser 0:55
We’re super excited to talk with you and really learn and dive into some, some really cool questions that, you know, a lot of owners ask us about, you know, work orders that they might get with plumbing and stuff like that and tight kind of, you know, pulling back the curtain and looking in at different items that come up and no current one that I was just recently dealing with. And then when it comes to ask you right off the bat, is is what’s your opinion on how long water hot water tanks usually lasts
Aaron Wynn 1:25
for? Yeah, yeah, definitely great question. A lot of people are probably going to be surprised, but 10 years, 10 years is what the average life autonomy is now. And I think a lot of the older folks will probably be surprised on that. Because if you go out or even if you live in an older home, you go out there and you check inside the garage or utility closet, that water heater is probably going to be 1520 years old, and you’re gonna like what are you talking about 10 years. So they’re just not manufactured. Unfortunately, just like the rest of the United States, we kind of come away to a throwaway nation. And so it’s more like, hey, let’s limit how long this guy is going to last. And we’ve checked that across the entire board with all the manufacturers, and each of them them are the same on it. Now there are things you can definitely do to prolong the life of oil. But you have 10 years on the traditional tank style water heaters is going to be about Max on those. Okay,
Walter Bowser 2:15
well, that’s, that’s really interesting that you say 10 years, because you’re right, you know, when you go in and buy a property sometimes usually it’s past that 10 year point, what are some things I mean, you just mentioned it, what are some things that we can do to those are one or two things that that helped you last little bit longer?
Aaron Wynn 2:29
Absolutely, yeah. And they’re gonna be a little different. If you have the tankless, we’ve seen a huge rise inside of those guys versus these traditional ones, the traditional, you’re gonna have either a gas or an electric one. And they can vary on size, you can have the little six gallon all the way up to the 40 gallon, the most common. And the most important thing on those guys is going to be annually, if you can twice a year having them flush, it’s not, it’s not nearly as difficult. With it, we’ll see if we can get a video and put that together and get it over to you guys on it usually takes 30 minutes or less if you you know if a homeowner wanted to get in there and try that themselves, but it’s just flushing it out. And that’s going to keep all the sediment, it’s going to settle on the bottom of the tank, and it’s just going to eat the bottom of that tank out. And so if we can flush them, and it’s going to take all of that off the bottom of that tank, and you’re just gonna push it out. And it’s not gonna let it eat up as fast. And so if you can do something like that, that’s definitely gonna prolong the life. And then of course, there’s going to be a couple of code updates that you’re going to be able to do and it’s just going to make it easier on that tank. A lot of times we see it an H factor where they’re going to oversize the unit for the house. And if you can do that, then it doesn’t have to work as hard. Same thing if we brought it over to residential house. So if it’s one and a half bedrooms, 40 gallons, that’s probably going to do just fine for him. So if you keep the maintenance up on him, and then you add the safety features in there, you’re gonna get a definitely a little more life out of it. Yeah, the
Walter Bowser 3:51
one thing you just said, right, there is the safety features. And that’s one thing I wanted to ask you about too, is, you know, a lot of times you walk into a house or a property in the hot water tank might not be up to code. And a lot of people don’t understand that. You know, when a plumber sees that they have to bring it up to code because you are licensed and you have that stuff. And you kind of explain like, what what it means to bring a hot water tank up to code and what’s like the maybe the most common thing that you see that’s not up to code that you see. Absolutely Good. Well, that’s
Aaron Wynn 4:22
a great question. And so like for me, originally, I came from Stillwater, we just got tired of losing Oh, you’re so excited to move up here. Whenever we were there, though, they’re a lot smaller. And so like a water heater, it’s just a matter of gonna throw in that guy and a couple of supply lines and we’re out the door. Versus whenever you get into Edmond or you get into Norman, they lead the way in all of Oklahoma for for their plumbing codes that they’re going to enforce on it. And so it does vary from state to state or from city to city or their jurisdiction. They can go by two different ones, and they can even write their own codes in there. So I’m going to cover a broad one Don’t want to and then there’s some of the little particular ones that you’ll see. And they kind of varies throughout the towns. So on them, we’d want to go off first, the sizing of your water heater and on that one’s gonna go off of how many fixtures you have throughout the house. And so if we get in there, and you have a, you know, a Jacuzzi tub, and then you’re gonna have two other bathrooms will have 40 gallons, probably not gonna get you anywhere. And so especially if you have those Jacuzzi tubs, you’re only gonna get halfway up. And so then we’d want to size that guy properly inside of it. And a lot of people don’t understand it. On the older homes. They’re not the, the tanks, they’re not the same size as they used to be. They’re, they’re two inches bigger, and they’re about three quarter inches taller. And so there’s always a sizing to where we got to get that that new tank is bigger inside of these. And a lot of people don’t see that they’re like, Oh, well, what am I going to do to make up the room. And so you can go with the more expensive option, and they call it a CBG or a skinny water heater, and we’re gonna throw those ones in there. Again, there’s a there’s a different cost on that just to make sure we manufacture those ones back out and put them in. And then once we do get the proper size of the water heater, then we’re going to go into the important things for me, probably the single handedly most important part is going to be the T and P or the temperature and pressure relief valve, it’s a little brass nipple that sticks out on the side, that guy is definitely your most important safety device on there. With it, if the pressure inside of it builds over 210 psi or gets over 200 degrees, it’s going to pop that guy off, the number one thing we see is that they’re either plugged, or else they’re shoved into a space that’s too tight and it can’t pop off. Or else they won’t put a line down from it. What that’s going to do essentially, is make a giant bomb right there inside of your house. A good episode on Mythbusters is where they went head in, they plugged it off, and they aired that guy up to maximum pressure, it blew up, it shot it up about 300 feet in the air, it’s 157 pounds with no water in it. So whenever that guy’s coming down, it’s going to kill somebody or it’s really going to damage something. And so they’re not something you want to play around with on it, you want to make sure that it can pop off, you want to have clearance for it, and then even having a line coming down with it. And so it’s going to have to be the proper material inside of there. Because if not, you know 200 degrees that pops off, and it hits you on the skin, especially a little kid, it’s going to instantly scold them, it’s gonna take that skin right off of there. And so even for adults, but I always think about for elderly and little ones. It’s that’s why it’s so important to us. We’ve seen it firsthand where it was forgotten on there. And then it pulled off and I ended up getting a couple individuals. Even here in Oklahoma, we had one that was in a school, and they plugged the TMP off a blew up killed a couple of the kids and so very, very, very important on those guys a TMPs. Secondly, the water service valves and those are going to be usually on the cold side coming in, or the right hand side on top of it. If you just want to crank that guy on like twice. If you’re flushing the water heater perfect time to get up there, turn that guy on and off, just so the sediment doesn’t build up in there. Because if you’ve not whenever you get up there to turn it off and little handles and snap off in your hand and you’re gonna have water going everywhere. And you’re like, man, what do I do? So those ones is probably the second most important, I just make sure and we always try to replace those, whenever we get in there, we’ll test them out. And if they look like they’re functioning well, then you know, you can go ahead, let it ride. But if there’s any kind of question to just replaced those ones. And then third is going to be if you have a gas natural gas water heater, I’m going to make sure that there’s a service valve in an updated one, it should have a little red handle on it or a big white one. And you would have to turn that gas light off to it just basically anything ever happens. If it’s electric, I’ll just find out where your breaker is. And then know Hey, in this breaker box, which one of these is labeled with a W slash H, it may say water heater on there. And I would make sure I knew how to flip that off. So if anything ever happens with your unit, you can just run over there, shut the water off, shut the electric shut the gas off and then go and call your plumber and see what you need to do from there with it. A couple of the other ones though, as we’re running through are going to be a sediment trap. And these are going to be for gas water heaters that what that guy is going to do it’s going to be underneath where your gas shutoff is. And it’s just going to collect anything that may be blown through the gas line. Also moisture buildup, it’s going to collect a little bit at the bottom of a tea. The reason they’re important is because we’ve seen a huge rise on the gas control valves on the front of the water heater, it’s gonna be a little box blinking light on it. They’ve been going out a lot more. And so if anything gets blown inside of that, it’s going to instantly mess it up. It’s the most expensive part usually ranges anywhere from 550 to 850 to have a replaced and so it’s a huge expense on it. It’s the brains of the operation. And so I’m going to try to protect that guy as best I can. And so that’s why we’d recommend new gas shut off new sediment trap on each one of those a new gas applied over to it so you don’t have to try and take that blow. Now most water heaters do come with a six year warranty on them. And so you they’re pretty good about going out on your seven year So that’s and you know, if we see one that’s around year six, seven, it has the gas control valve go out will usually let them know, Hey, you can either just update it get your new water heater, or we can replace this, the bad thing is that it is a gamble. So if you replace that you may get a year out of it, you may just get a couple of days out of it, and it’s something will pop on there, and you have to replace it. So it isn’t expensive once I wouldn’t miss that sediment trap. Expensive isn’t
Walter Bowser 10:25
to replace that valve, like let’s say, you know, like, instead of replacing it just replacing that valve, and then you get a year out of it, like how expensive is it just to you know, like, what would you say? Like, if you got two years out of it? Is that a win? Or is it? Is it more cost effective? Describe replace it? Yeah,
Aaron Wynn 10:39
yeah, you know, we’ve definitely seen a rise in the water heater, it goes back to cost. And so like on the material side of it, everybody across the board, they’ve all gone up, especially after COVID, you know, a lot of them, they’ve seen a, we can get these rates out of it, we’re gonna stick to them. And we have not seen a drop on that. And so most of the guests control valves, they almost tripled in price. And so that’s where we’ll see anywhere from 550 to 850, to replace those guys, depending on who you have going in there on it in the making model on that guy. And so those are definitely something I’d want to protect, just because that’s a huge expense on it. And so if you’re almost $1,000 in on a water heater, and you only get a year out of there, I mean, I know me personally, I’m like, Ouch, that hurt.
Walter Bowser 11:21
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you kind of blew my mind, I didn’t realize that that one, you know, kind of little nipple thing on the on the hot water tank is that, you know, imperative should not make it into a bomb to blow up. I mean, that’s, that’s really, you know, crazy that, you know, you can go in there and see that stuff when you go look at a hot water tank. And you’ll quickly realize I hate you know, this isn’t safe, and you know, to protect, you know, not only the, the person that’s living in the property, but also the asset as well, too, it’s really important to make sure those things are all up to code. I guess Aaron, you know, kind of scoping out a little bit. And, you know, I know we just dove in straight to hot water tanks, because it was on my mind. But I guess kind of scoping out, you know, what are some, you know, core issues that you’ve seen in the in the plumbing industry lately that you’ve been having to deal with on a either, you know, day to day basis, or let’s say a monthly basis, but what what’s the core problem that you’ve seen pop up recently.
Aaron Wynn 12:17
So there’s definitely a few of those ones on there, probably the biggest one. And I’m not complaining because it keeps us busy. But flushable wipes, we see those guys a ton. And you know, if you have updated plumbing on your drain lines coming out, so if you have PVC on it, there’s a little more forgiving on there doesn’t snag as easy. But usually we see older homes, and they still have the cast iron. I do love cast iron, every material has its place and its timing on it. But it just creates it’s going to be metal, and so it’s gonna build up inside of it. And so we’re gonna see a little burrs and stuff like that. And so just gonna make it easier. If you can’t get your toilet paper and just get your thumb and your pinky when it’s wet and just spread that guy and rip it up, it’s not going to really disintegrate like it’s going to like you would think it would. And so that’s just gonna make it more, you know, easier to get snagged inside of the line on it. And so we see a ton of those, even the ones that say flushable wipes. And of course, the hygiene products. And we’ve always just recommend on any of those, if you just put it in a bag, throw it away, not send it down the drain, that’s ideal. But we did it, you know, we see him every day, every day, we get to go over there and Rob those ones open. Another one, which is kind of surprising. Even if you do have the updated, you have PVC on it, we have these devices called a Backflow Preventor. And it’s just going to be right after you’re clean out outside, it’s going to be a little flapper. As everything comes by it lets it go by and then it closes back. And so if the city ever comes in their jet rotting their line, it’s going to press up against and not allow that water to be blown inside the house. But what we normally see with them is where that space in that chamber is with the flapper. It tends to get caught. And so the flapper will actually clog up into that ends up making the issue on itself. Now it’s a safety device required to be there whenever we see a man but a lot of times homeowners can go out there and they can just check it if they have one of those. And so you’re probably going to see a clean out a big circle and then another clean out camp, that big circle in the middle I pop that guy up and take a look at that flapper. If it starts looking grungy or it’s just not flapping real easily, I replaced those and it’s something that you know, homeowners can do themselves on it. And so unwatched those two guys probably the most on there. In then it’s going to be probably back to water heaters, the flushing them out. And the more important one is going to be tankless water heaters. And so those ones don’t flush like any of the traditional water heaters do. They’re going to be a little different with it. You have to actually hook up some pumps to get a special chemical and you’re going to push all the at Florida for about 30 to 45 minutes. And so it’s a little bit of a process, but we didn’t see we’d get a video over for you guys on that one. It’s definitely some Then homeowners can do if you know if they’re like, Hey, I’m a hands on type of guy, then you know, we could definitely get that one over there. It’s definitely do with a little kit. But if you don’t flush those ones, yes, they do have a 16 year warranty on them. They will go out in about two to three years. If you’re not keeping up with that we’re going to maintenance though, they’ll how
Walter Bowser 15:17
often on tankless hot water tanks. Do you? Do you flush that out? Once a year is
Aaron Wynn 15:21
like he’s Yeah, I would do at least once a year to Oklahoma, we have some pretty hard awkward ducks around. And so you know, still water is actually the softness of and even seen it pretty hard over there. Once you get to Oklahoma City area. Yeah, our water is pretty hard. And so if you have a full house filtration, then you could probably get away with just once a year, I would definitely recommend doing some kind of filter or house softening or something on there. That’s going to take it down a lot. And so that’s one question that we was asking, like, hey, they’re like, Aaron, I really would like to get a tankless. And then we ask them, Hey, do you are you? Do you normally keep up with your maintenance? Whenever you go through the house? Are you turning on and off all of your faucets in the stops? Are you flushing your water heater? Normally? You can even they’re like, Well, I don’t know, just ask him do you keep up with your oil changes in your car and he’s like, Well, you know, I forget about it a lot, it’s probably not a good idea that because if you don’t flush it once or twice a year, you’re gonna have problems with it. They are great though. If you stay on top of them and you keep them maintenance, then you could definitely get to 16 years out of it, you have endless hot water, it does take the gallons per minute down and so not as fast as the flow going through there. But that’s just because it’s having to go through the entire cycle as and with a 98% efficiency, you guys are really getting the bang for the buck. But again, you just got to keep up with the maintenance on it. I would recommend if you don’t have a house filter or any kind of softener twice a year, once
Walter Bowser 16:40
a year. Gotcha. Well, that’s, that’s really good to know. And you said something interesting earlier you said you know, flushable wipes and stuff like that. I want to go back to that real quick because I know that for me, I have some little kids and you know, they’re going through our training and they have those like little wipes and stuff like that. Do you often see you know other like, let’s say I would say you know kid products like diapers or stuff like that, that go down the toilet often. Is that something that you see often?
Aaron Wynn 17:04
We usually see that a lot more on the elderly bones or daycares. Yeah, we definitely see toys and stuff like that as they’re getting flushed down. If it happens, what we usually recommend everybody is if you haven’t flushed yet, don’t flush, just leave it there. If you have flush, just don’t flush or you can if you drop like a say a ring or some type of ring or something like your rings like that down your sink drain, just turn the water off as fast as you can to it. There’s still a you know, a possibility that can be retrieved if it was a toy going down the toilet. Hopefully she’s stuck in the toilet, which is a lot better than being stuck inside of the sewer line. Just a lot more work goes into it if not in so we can retrieve those guys out. That’s your best chance on it. But yeah, probably the flushable wipes tampons are the biggest, biggest ticket items. And then if we’re gonna go to elderly or else daycares, yeah, it’s gonna be toys. And we get we’ve definitely seen some diapers in there. Oddly enough, probably the weirdest ones though. Or if you have trees that are overhanging over your house on the roof, and the rubbing squirrels will tend to go ahead and jump off and get onto the roof, they will go over to the vent stacks, and they’re just curious. And so they’ll then they’ll start trying to check them out, well, they’ll fall down in them, and then they’ll die down in there and they’ll swell up really big. And it’ll take you a couple hours to get. It’s just a lot of work to get them going. And so if you have even some chicken wire anything to kind of cover those up. Now you don’t want to block them off because they need to breed but just some chicken wire or something that allows it to strawberry. And if you have over overhanging trees, just you know, maybe put that over the fan zip tie it on there, they even make little covers for it. That’ll definitely save you some trouble.
Walter Bowser 18:39
You know, that’s I was gonna ask me what’s the most interesting thing you found? I think a squirrel is that’s crazy. I would never have thought that that’s that’s super interesting. I guess going back to another thing you said to intrigued me was you know, you said if it’s copper pipes verse or cast iron or whatever you said, verse you know, the the pecs or the PVC pipe. Talk to me a little bit about that and kind of where you see like, Hey, we should go ahead and replace these words. Do you keep the cast iron? I kind of tell me about your thought process on?
Aaron Wynn 19:13
Yeah, definitely. I guess we’ll start with the drain side first and then we’ll jump over to the water lines because there’s gonna be a pretty big one on there as well. The most common drain lines we see are going to be cast iron, especially around the OKC metro, a lot of older homes and as you get on to the outskirts of it, a lot of new homes are going up and so you’re going to have the PVC PVC is not indestructible and that’s probably something a lot of people are like well you know, I have the updated but, you know, eight years ago I think it was we were going through a pretty good drought in what we’d seen with it is the ground started shifting in spots. And whenever it did, it is plastic so we would share it right in half. Or if there’s a bunch of settling on it. It can snap that guy if it’s not properly installed yet back pitch on it. Then it can definitely just fill up and create the same problems. And so it does have its weaknesses, it’s definitely something we do prefer, though is the BBC, it goes in a lot easier. And of course, the cost is going to be much more effective than if we were going in throwing in cast iron in there. But there’s a time and a place for him. You know, for instance, government buildings, we’re not allowed to put PVC inside of there. Because if there’s a fire that goes on in, it’s burning that PVC, it actually puts off a chemical that is poisonous to humans. And so that’s where we usually see that out now, versus if you have a residential. Normally, if the house is on fire, then it’s pretty well gone. And so you don’t have to worry about that as much on it. And so whenever we make repairs, we wouldn’t normally go back with PVC though as our adapters on there. And so if there’s, say a section of cast iron that was split on the bottom, has a bunch of chemicals ran through it, or anything with it, or just finally got to the age to where a to start to get brittle on there, we’re going to cut that section out, we’re going to do some reinforced bands. And that’s one thing I would check, whenever you do look at you know repairs that are being done on the property as the materials that they are using on it, you don’t want to use thinwall PVC, it’s exactly like it sounds, it’s just a much thinner product, and it has a tendency to egg itself out. Or it’s just split really easy. We see a lot of guys trying to use it just because of how cheap it is. And you don’t wanna go too cheap on your stuff explicitly on the plumbing side. You know, even HVAC, electrical, you don’t wanna go cheap on those, you just want to make sure they get done, so you don’t have to keep coming back for it. And so on new construction houses, you’re gonna see the PVC, the old ones, you’ll see the cast iron, if you have what is called Orangeburg, I would definitely you have a very limited time on that. And that’s what we’re gonna see out in the yard. So if your plumber tells you, hey, you have a Warrensburg, I would just really consider like, Hey, let me bite the bullet. Let me get that updated. So I don’t have to deal with it again. If they have concrete or clay tile lines, that means they’re somewhere around 50 years old on your sewer, you’d gotten really good life out. And so on those ones, I would think about updating it. If you do have the cast iron axis and a camera down there, inspect it, see what the integrity looks like. If the rest of it looks good, but you just have a section. And yeah, you could go in there and just cut that section out and replace it with some PVC, and then check the bands that they’re using, they would have a metal reinforced bands and nothing else happens down the road as it starts to settle. It doesn’t start pulling away from itself. Yeah, yeah, I think that would probably cover on the train side of it. Unless you had a question about that one? No, no,
Walter Bowser 22:27
I think that was that was really good. I think that I might have a follow up question after you do the the inside are done with the inside the whole next? Yes, sir. Yeah, the difference between like, I guess you might, you might say this in your answers, you know, the difference between the pecs or the PVC and versus the current one, because we just had a breeze, you know, what’s more effective? And kind of, you know, what does that look
Aaron Wynn 22:47
like? Yes, sir. Absolutely. So, switching over to the water lines, you are usually going to see, one of two is going to be either B packs, or it’s going to be a copper. Now, throughout the metro over here, you can still see a wide variety. If you have anything, it’s a gray, it looks like next, it’s flexible, like fix, but it’s gonna be a quest pipe, and it’s gonna be a gray pipe or poly, that one, they actually had a class action lawsuit. And so if you check in the property, if you’re thinking, hey, I really like maybe to buy this and something I’d ask him to throw that in there, hey, can we get this all this poly removed, and get it updated to something a little more common? If you have CPVC, that’s what all Texas had. So whenever they had their freeze, that’s where they were hurting, so bad, it’s just not stand up well, to take any kind of freezing versus Oklahoma, we’re usually a little more used to that. And so there are two different types of effects, there’s going to be an x a, and there’s gonna be an x B, whenever they say that they’re going to replace that with effects, ask them to do x a, you can actually swell up and then come back down, it’s not as susceptible to freezing and bursting. And so that’s something I would definitely ask now they, they definitely can’t do it. You know, we had a crazy freeze, luckily, one very long, but as we’ve seen that we’ve been seeing pecks aid where they actually froze in the first on it as well. And so insulating is going to be your best friend. And so and so that’s probably the the big thing that we don’t see is houses, insulated, it’s not really something you think about though whenever you’re inside of there, you know, you’re putting everything else in there cosmetic wise, or even updating some of the plumbing and stuff. But if you can insulate a house, you’re gonna be well off on it. I know they will never we will do the RE pipes, we’re gonna go with XA and we’ll run them overhead well then there’s a fear of hey, I don’t want you know, a waterline up in the attic, freezing and busting and flooding everything out. And so on that one as we run them through with our company, we make sure not to throw any fittings up in the attic. We’re gonna go ahead we’re gonna bring that back down inside the wall. We’re gonna insulate that with some piping insulation, but even still, we always let the homeowner know Hey, make sure you get a couple more bats out there. Get it filled up. If your insulation is below or at the same level as the rafters you basically don’t have any insulation and so they say you know, either some spray foam or get that blowing into Lay out, just get some insulation up there. And that’s going to help out a lot with it and keep them from freezing. If you do end up having your pipes where they do freeze, then what we would recommend on it would be to go ahead and open up all the cabinets where any of the faucets are. And then you’re going to want to run the faucet and not just drip it. That’s the enthusiam misconception on it. They’re like, hey, well, I was ripping it gonna run that about pencil size stream should be coming out of there. And that’s combined with the hot and cold just crank them on a little bit pencil size stream coming out of it. I would stay there a little bit because one thing we had seen was the drain ended up either freezing or else he was stopped up within it overflowed everything. And they’re like, Well, I was doing everything I was supposed to. It’s like, yes, you were, you ended up getting the short end of the stick on that. Another one. We had a girl this year, it’s one of your guys’s to where she goes, Well, everybody told me to run my faucets and she was running the outside ones. And so yes, me as I say it froze. It burst in, in after I thought about as well. You know, I never have specified that, you know, you do not want to run your outside faucets. In fact, you want to make sure on those guys, you’re disconnecting the hoses. Yeah.
Walter Bowser 26:12
I didn’t know that happened. That’s that’s actually super jam. Yeah, I’d never specified whenever we, you know, send that out, you know, you’d assume that you’re you know, we’re we’ve covered the outside Boston, it’s you know, with with a little insulators, and then, you know, we’re dripping the inside. And that’s a really good thing that you said is always having a pencil string because we have those in our in our templates, when we send those out to the tenants. But, you know, sometimes they just read, you know, drip the faucet, and you know, they put it on a slow drip, drip drip. And you know, that’s really not gonna do anything for you. Because there’s not, you know, doing what Latins like or what’s your advice? If, let’s say it freezes on the inside of a wall? I mean, is that still, you know, obviously, still open up the cabinets I got, but once it’s like inside of a wall or something like that, like what would, what would your advice be to, to that person, definitely,
Aaron Wynn 26:54
in so usually what we’d recommend on them is go ahead, open all the drawers up. If your water heater is outside in the little, like a utility closet, get a little space heater, I pointed over there towards the back of the wall. And then I’m gonna go to each one of my faucets. And I’m going to open the cold in the hot all the way. Now say that you open the hot and you have perfectly fine pressure coming out of it, we’ll go and bump that down to a little pencil sized stream, but leave the side that is frozen all the way on. And so that way, whenever he does, the thought is going to go ahead and is going to open up, it’s going to relieve that pressure. And so instead of putting the pressure on the pipe itself, it’s going to have somewhere where it can go and so we wanted to come back out of the faucet, something we typically do see what that is, hey, it the thought now I have no pressure on this faucet over here. And that’s just pieces of the inside of the pipe have flaked off. And so they’ve come through and they got into the air rater simple fix, you can always just take that guy out and flush it out, let it continue to run though for a good 510 minutes after it D thaws. That’s
Walter Bowser 27:53
such a that’s such a good point. Because you know, honestly, I think your first reaction wherever your your pipe freezes or whatever, you know, you don’t want to leave it on, you want to you know, go ahead and shut the water off. But that’s not I guess where the water is actually coming from, you know, you want to you want to shut it off either at that point or, you know, like you said, leave it open, I guess it’s the best thing to do is leave it open. And so it has someone got some really good, good thought, you know, you know, I feel like you’re our human reaction is to go ahead and turn it off. And you know, hopefully it’s all worked out. But yeah, that’s a really good, good point. I guess, you know, changing gears a little bit, kind of going into just a little bit different of a topic, what is something that you see where maybe an owner can save a little bit of money on on, you know, making a repair like themselves versus calling a plumber out? Like is, Where’s where’s that tipping point at you that you see typically?
Aaron Wynn 28:42
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So for us, I’m a little bit old school with them. And so I’m going to whenever I plumb something, I plumb it to where the, the homeowner has an opportunity if they want to, and they feel confident enough. And they can go in there, I’m going to make sure that it is something that they can work on. For instance, water heaters, whenever they’re being put in there, if you’re a plumber, if he’s hard pipes, that copper all the way down to the water heater and he screws it on there. And then they solder the whole thing up. More than likely most people are not comfortable with Oh man, I gotta cut these copper lines, metal lines, I gotta cut them out, and then replace it versus, hey, if we throw a couple of flexible supply lines on there, then you’re gonna feel a little more confident go being able to go in there and just turn a nut. Take that guy off, put the new one in there. They are plumbed like that for specific reasons just for like we’re saying they’re like, hey, we want to kind of cut that it’ll be an out we don’t want them touching it. We want to touch it and there are some instances like tankless, I leave that up to a professional you know, I don’t, I don’t change, change the belts or anything on my car. I was like, Hey, let me go take it over to a professional on that. And so we’d be about the same way. So there’s some things we like Hey, I wouldn’t touch it. But there’s a few things like rebuilding your faucet. So say the chamber faucets is constantly dripping. That’s a great beginners or You know it like a DIY or if it’s a homeowner, hey, you can get in there, watch a couple of videos if you want it. And there’s a ton of them on YouTube. There’s a lot of the plumbers out here that we upload videos on step by step how to do it. And so I would just try it, that’s what I always tell him like, hey, if it’s something we think you can do, try it. Because if you’re a good plumber, it doesn’t matter, I’m gonna get in there, and I’m gonna be able to fix it. And so we make anything happen on it. And so on those ones, I’ll try with the with the boss of rebuilds, see how you do on that, and then you can move on a little more from it. One thing we do see though, is the shark bites, and you know, they’re they have the pros and the cons to them, your plumber should not be throwing them off. And the reason I say that is because if you’re paying, you know, plumbers aren’t cheap, and so if you’re paying for them to come out there, they need to show that expertise, they need to make sure that it’s an actual permanent fix. Now, if you read on shark bites deal, they do say, hey, yes, we back it up by 10 years, it is a permanent fix, we just see a tendency of them failing a lot. And so I know personally, if it’s going to get you out of a pinch, by all means, go ahead, throw that guy on there. But just don’t be surprised later on. It’s up leaking or blowing off or anything like that. So I wouldn’t put it in, like up in an attic, I wouldn’t put it inside of a wall or anything like that. I’d be really cautious on it. Some of those. But if you’re stuck out on a holiday weekend rates or even more, by all means go on there, try it out, get your water go on. Again, whenever normal business hours come back in or rates are normal again, I would have a permanent fix as it comes back inside of there. But for me, I always tell them, Hey, give it a go. And then see how it goes. And if it doesn’t go well, by all means give me a call. There’s simple stuff like motor oil flappers. I think, you know, I would I would I change my own oil. So I would change my own flapper here. Yeah,
Walter Bowser 31:41
that’s a good, that’s a good way to put it now, I guess, maybe a different question. But kind of along the same lines is, you know, we’re just isn’t smart for for a homeowner or an owner of a property to spend a little bit more money on something that would you know, maybe last them longer. And in the long run versus, you know, the the easy, simple fix, like I know, we talked about that a little bit on the hot water tank, you know, fixing that, you know, just go ahead and replace it at the at the seven year mark and for the warranties, because most likely something’s going to happen pretty quickly. But what’s what’s another, you know, example of that? Or that you see kind of often?
Aaron Wynn 32:17
Yeah, yeah, definitely. water softeners. If, if you would spend a little more on or water filtration, as I say, especially on the rental properties, usually with them, you’re probably not gonna have your tenant taking the salt inside of there and dumping it in keeping up with that regular maintenance on there. And so I’d go with the whole house filtration, they are a little pricey on it. But if you can get those in there, it’s going to save you on the water lines themselves, you’re gonna get more life out of them, the water heater, and all the fixtures throughout the house, you’re gonna get a lot more life out of it almost double, in some instances on there, especially the water heater, the water heaters themselves, there’s a couple of deals you can do on that they are upgrades with it. But where the valve is that you’re going to constantly real flush your all your your, you know, twice a year flushing that guy out is there’s little water hoses that connect to the bottom of it. Yeah, he definitely. So that one is going to make sure that you’re getting everything out of the tank, instead of just like it’s going to double the size allowing all the sediment through. So if there’s a bigger sediment buildup in there, it’s going to allow that through even a sacrificial anode rod. And what that’s going to do, it’s a, it’s a piece of metal that sticks down inside of there, and it’s going to draw all the sediment, so it’s going to keep it off the sidewall, it’s going to keep it off the bottom, it’s going to draw it over to that and eat that metal up. And then you can change that out, you know, every three, four years and put another one in there, they have electronic ones, those are going to prolong it, there’s even these little adapters that sit on top of the tank, that’s going to guarantee another three years on top of it. So you can really, you know, maybe 15 years out of it. So what we’re seeing now the old tanks, if you did everything you’re supposed to hammer arrestors expansion tanks, valves on both sides and sediment traps, stuff like that on there. If you’re doing all that to your water heater, really upgrade that guy, give it the best chance possible normal flush on it, you’re gonna get some great life out of it. Same with the house, whole house filtration systems, if you can do that, it’s going to prolong the life of all your fixtures, the water heater and the water lines themselves. And so I’m a big fan of those guys in making sure you can upgrade those. If you’re in a house that you see more than if you’ve had more than one slab leak, because you know that’s also something’s pretty big around here and we usually will see it on homes with copper lines underneath the slab. Whenever you have that usually you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna have water popping up somewhere there’s a hotspot somewhere throughout the house and your water pressure has dropped down gross, you’re gonna get a bill from the city saying hey, your water you should just double if you’re 50,000 gallons and you’re like, oh my gosh, what is happening here, and especially if you go outside looking for that much water, you don’t see it anywhere. Well, it’s just creating a void underneath the house. And so those ones I wouldn’t go too long with them. And if you have For more than one of those, I would go ahead and I would just replace all of them updating with the PAC system. So that we don’t have to make another claim on it. A lot of insurance companies that will work with you guys on it, that’s something that we’re very familiar with as it comes through, they just want to know, hey, is it normal wear or tear, or is this installation error. And so that’s how we would work with them on it, see what it’s covered on there. Because if you can, I just get it over with and then update that guy out. Same with the old lines, you know, if you have the orange for the cast iron, if you do have the thin wall, PVC, any of those, I would go ahead, and I would just pull that stuff out. And I would get it replaced. Because anytime that one of those backs up, it’s never a convenient time. I mean, you’d be surprised how many Christmases that, you know, we get called out and I know all the other companies that are the same way that they’re a lot higher on those pricing. And so it’s never convenient. And so if you can just get ahead of the game on some of this, while you do have a little bit of extra revenue coming in, I go ahead and just update that, you know, the same across the board, probably with all the other trades. If you see something on your H back unit, instead of trying to just get along, I go ahead and just get that guy updated. And so you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just at that point, like a lot of the plumbing, if you do your water lines and your sewer line, you’re probably not going to have to worry about that for the next 20 to 30 years. And so those ones I would just go and get that taken care of, and it’s just straight revenue coming in at that point. Yeah,
Walter Bowser 36:25
absolutely. I mean, you know, I think that’s great is, you know, you know, fix something the right way when it’s when needed, and it’ll save you a lot of money in the long run. I feel like that’s, you know, really common and something that, you know, we try to encourage people to do because, you know, if you don’t fix it right that first time, then it’s just gonna, like you said, limp along, and and then, you know, cost you more money in the long run if you don’t take care of it right away the first time. Yeah, I guess I know, just to kind of to wrap us up. Last question here for you something that, you know, a lot of people have been seeing, and I think it covers every industry over the last, you know, probably three years specifically where we’ve seen a bunch of inflation and stuff like that. But you know, I’m sure, you know, everyone’s seen prices go up about everything. I mean, not only in plumbing, but you know, just in cost of goods and living. You know, what, what does it look like on you know, not only like us just paying the bill of Oh, whatever the pay a plumber, but like on your end, I know that the prices of you know, your material. And you know, the tools that you use have gone up kind of tell me, you know what that’s looked like for you and how you’ve been able to adapt to it?
Aaron Wynn 37:27
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Great question. We definitely have seen a huge, huge uptick on materials. Of course, it really, really started at the whole COVID deal and the pandemic as it coming through. We even seen almost overnight, we’d seen on the drain, the sewer replacements and the drain materials, where they tripled in price. And so what we used to be able to go and get a stick for 150 bucks, you know, they’re they’re over $300 for a single 20 foot stick. And we’re like, wow, what happened with this? Now for that one, there’s, there was two manufacturing plants in the United States. One of them was down in Texas to Charlotte, and that they had a shortage on their plastic. And so they couldn’t, you know, make the pvc piping. And so whenever that happened, we had to use up all the supplies we had. Well, of course, we seen prices go up. Now they did catch up. But since then, it’s maybe come down to about half of that the rest of the materials that we’ve seen throughout there are up at least 30% is the lowest I’ve seen across any of them. If it’s the pecs, it’s the brass, if it’s the gas fittings, all of it across the board. We’ve checked several other manufacturers that we try to always keep it local if we can, so we use some of the local companies around here. But even as checking outside of those guys, we’ve seen that hey, even dammit, they’re hurting themselves. And so everybody across the board has definitely gone up water heaters a took about a 40% jump from where they were on it. And it doesn’t look like anybody’s coming down anytime soon. And so that was something we even had to rework our books. You know, and you do get to a point, I know that farmers catch a rap for just charging an arm and a leg. But once you really put the numbers down on there, but we had to rework ours we asked these other companies Hey, where are you guys at with it and every one of them had to do the same thing with it just to try and compensate on that back end. So it’s definitely not just all of us.
Walter Bowser 39:22
Oh, no, not at all. But I know that you know, everyone across the nation is you know been seeing that and you know as as costs go up, you know, it’s it, you know, hits the bottom end for everyone so 100% understand that and kind of know exactly where you’re coming from. But But Aaron, I mean, it was great talking to you. You were talking to Aaron when the owner and operator of when plumbing out here in Oklahoma City. Aaron one last thing tell us you know, where can we learn more about you? Do you have a website or where’s the easiest place to find you?
Aaron Wynn 39:52
Yeah, definitely. So we do have a couple different ones. We do have Facebook, we have an Instagram. We’re gonna try to get something going with a with you guys we’re getting a couple of videos uploaded to YouTube and stuff with it so that way if you need the clients do have something a little just go over to the Keyrenter website and be able to check that out but it’s going to be [email protected] For our website and Wynn Plumbing LLC for our Facebook, we’ll see if we can get you guys some links on those as well. And then like say we’re gonna try to make some videos with you guys where the easier stuff you know, like flushing the water heaters that we’re talking about, or maybe some of the updates and so you want to see like Hey, I would like to put a picture to what it is that I’m paying for to see what I you know, I like my getting the most bang for my buck on that. So see if we can’t cover a few of those and let’s put a couple of them up. So for some di wires, ours
Walter Bowser 40:42
the more Aaron it was great talking to you. I appreciate you taking the time in doing that with that. Again, this is Aaron Wynn was Wynn Plumbing thanks for coming on.
Outro 40:55
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