Oh $#!T Moments EVERY Plumber Has
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- Опубликовано: 15 фев 2022
- Oh, $#!T Moments EVERY Plumber Has - Plumbing Basics
Sometimes as a plumber you get a job where you walk in and you're just like....OH, $#!t!! Today we're going to talk about bizarre jobs that almost every plumber has/will come across at some point in their career.
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What is your craziest OH $#!T moment as a plumber?
Tunneled under a home to get to a broken sewer line. Showed up the next morning and the family decided to use everything per normal even though we told them they couldn’t till the break was fixed. The 4 foot entry was full of sewer to the grass. Has to ruin a good transfer pump to clear it out and while I was pumping it out they started using it again. I told them that I will charge for the tunneling but they need to find someone else. They called the next day really begging for us to fix it. Master plumber went to the job with me and the hole was full again. We walked away.
Swapping out a big liberty pump in a lift station at a prison. The nastiest stuff ever gets flushed down those drains. Needles. Cell phones. Anything. Full hazmat suit with waders up past my knees in waste. Worst thing I ever had to do.
Customer flushed the toilet on me when I had her drainage line cut under the house...
I drilled more than half way down a large supporting beam..
Hey Roger you can check the chat for just a few of my worst moments. You hiring out there in the Dallas area?
@@shuriken204 I pulled a full sized blanket out of a 4inch line at a prison once 🤣 got stuck real bad trying to fish it out. I think those guys rolled it up and torpedoed it down the toilet on the 3rd floor. Caused a big mess at the bottom. The inmates in one of the cells I was working near kept asking if I was stuck as he looked out a tiny window in his door. I said "nope but you're stuck!" I had no idea what it was until I pulled it out!
Hoarder houses are entertaining and challenging, sometimes you throw trash away and the customer puts it back
My father and I run a service plumbing company together out of Massachusetts and some of the houses I’ve gone into are just toxic. I’ve yet to have to leave a house without fixing the issue but some of them have really made me think about it. Hearing about your story of donating that call to that poor family made me smile. I’ve done a couple of calls like that where the people just don’t have anything and are living paycheck to paycheck and it always warms my heart when I can help them out and find a way to donate the time. Keep it up Roger! Love being able to connect to your stories!
As an electrical worker here, most stories I’ve heard of peoples “worst shock” involves being in a crawl space. My best advice to you plumbers, if the wires are just laying on the ground, and are not staple up and away. Go ahead and kill power, at least for peace of mind. You laying on the earth directly is a recipe for disaster in my industry. Stay safe yall
That actually really helps me
Good on you for helping that lady and her family out. See, I knew there was a reason, beyond plumbing, why I like this channel. Now I know what that reason is. 👍
I can't count how many times I was asked to take off my shoes entering a customer's home, just to play hopscotch around shit 😂😢💩
About 7 months now into my job as a helper. One of the ladies that works in our office had a home with a crawl space that had raw sewage flowing underneath, photos showed the main sewer buried under sewage. Donned my white jumpsuit with dish washing gloves, all entry points below the neck secured with duct tape and took my mini shovel and garbage bags. This was my first "assignment" that I got to do on my own. Turns out someone at some point decided to cut the laundry drain and let it flow under the house so it wouldn't go into the septic. However, they didn't cap off the pipe that was last drain to tie into the main sewer before going to the septic. They also had a bad grease blockage after the clean out that exasperated the problem. Luckily the distance between the septic and 2 way clean out was about 10'. I only had a closet auger on my truck and was able to punch a hole through the blockage and saw what looked like bars of soap and styrofoam flow into the septic which the pipe going into the septic had back fall as well. Filled 6 contractor bags full of dirt and doo doo. Had to haul them back to the shop and get them in the dumpster with out puncturing them or getting it on myself. I'm sure there will be worse stuff in the future but this was a good baby step.
Advantage of being an electrician, don't have to deal with #$%@. Advantage of being a plumber, less job competition. Seriously though to many electricians out there lol.
20 years ago trailer park. The first thing I realize is this is a hoarder home but they had the most incredible TV. As I walked to the bathroom over piles of clothes and who knows I made it to the restroom. Everything was piled up and my boots just squished on the floor in there but no fecal matter just a constant leak from a supply line! I fixed it but I just felt horrible like how do people live like this! I’ve got some great stories, unbelievable stuff.
I own a plumbing business and I ran into a few situations where the people living in the house had some pretty serious personal issues going on and I didn’t end up charging them either. I feel like for us sometimes what goes around comes around.
Serviced this ladies house for a slab leak. A previous company was out there and did a “re route” if you could call it that. Basically they ripped out her cabinets and re routed a line leaving the uponor running shoulder height through the middle of her kitchen and didn’t fix the slap leak. The woman had about 35 chihuahuas all living in the house shitting and pissing all over the floors and a 5 gallon bucket to catch a drip from where her kitchen sink used to be that had 4 drowned rats inside it. I cut and capped the leaking line from the manifold and re routed off her 3/4 copper line that fed the kitchen and washer. Ran upunor over head dropped it down to the fixture. At the end when I was finishing up I saw she has a baby in the house. I called the cops bout it cause a child in that environment can not live. That was day 4 of my plumbing career.
Day 4 as a Journeyman?
@@fakehandle666 apprentice.
Was the child ok
@@fnafplayer6447 yeah she got adopted by her foster family and is doing well!!
Replaced a toilet In a dallas appartment once. Once I cut the caulking and lifted the toilet I saw about 1000 maggots crawling through thick doodoo. They started crawling around and leaving little brown streaks. I jumped onto the tub and they were everywhere. 🤮
there is no feeling quite like going to a house and seeing someone who is too infirm to take proper care for the house, and then finding out they are the caregiver for someone who is more infirm than they are.
Im not a plumber exacly but im a maintance guy for a casino in las vegas and trust me i feel you
When you tell the customer not to flush and you're under the pipe and it's cut and you hear that awful sound of a toilet flushing. I've also been under a completely flooded apartment complex (yes sewer) and it was so gross that mosquito larva were flicking around all over the place, with floating logs and tissue paper and tampons and you name it and it was completely swarming with adult mosquitos everywhere. I rolled plastic out as best as I could but I'm never ever doing that again. I nearly vomited many times, not to mention the having to literally swim on top of plastic praying to God that I don't hit a dip and all that yucky waste gets all over me (which it did anyway) plumbers make a lot yeah, but gee I wonder why?
I've also been to a place way out in the middle of nowhere that was on septic. It was backed up before it reached the tank but the problem was that the main residence was on a second floor and the line hit a blind tee leading to the tank and the rest of the line went to a garage with toilet and hand basin. They didn't know it was backed up and the line ended up getting congested and bloated fecal matter had filled up everything. 2 hour drive to the middle of an island out in the middle of nowhere, ( theres a boat ferry) no reception, congested line, have to locate a septic tank with a blind tee in the line. Clear the congested main line from the garage with cable, from a flange, then clear the secondaries... For sure one of the most difficult oh **** jobs I've had
I have this exact thing waiting for me tomorrow.. any advice? 😬👀
@@captainspaulding4366 if its about the flooded crawlspace: call restoration services before you put yourself in danger. If it's the cut pipe, don't worry just be ready to move real fast. Ultimately you'll have to go with whatever your boss says
@@captainspaulding4366 how did it go?
@@Mr.S_BuildsThings I was relieved it wasn’t that bad, my co worked and I had to chip through 5 inches of concrete slab, dig about 4 feet deep to find out that the electricians had completely placed their gray pipes on top of our main sewer line. They pushed the main further down another 2 inches and caused the connections to break. There was piss and poop mixed with dirt but not too extreme. We did this twice but overall the company most likely is gonna bill the electrical guys lol.
@@captainspaulding4366 5 inches of slab isn't to bad. I had a job once where a 1 day pipeburst at a school turned into nightmare because we hit foundation, twice. We were pulling from one side of the building to the other and had to jackhammer sideways with a 90lb jackhammer to get through. Strapped a rope and a big bar together to hold the jackhammer and pushed a 24 hour shift first day, went back after 8 hours and did another one to make sure the kids had working toilets in the morning (weekend job) Gotta do whatcha gotta do. Feels good when the jobs done and the kind of sleep after is amazing not to mention all that overtime pay. What shocked me the most was the perfectly formed pillar of concrete some idiot decided to place right on the pipe about 4 feet down. That pillar was no less than 3 feet thick and the pipe went right through it. The rest of the foundation was only about 2 feet thick. Plumbers luck isn't always good and engineers like to have ideas that they think works on paper but in real life when it fails repairing that idea is terrible.
As Roger said though be careful under homes with water electricity even pests. I crawled in bad water before and had skin problems for years, be cautious and take your health seriously.
Roger... Helping that lady out doesn't surprise me. You seem like a compassionate guy.
I’m glad you mentioned finding the flying splices in the attics with your hands, I’m an electrician and sometimes I occasionally find one where I put my hand down on an attic floor and get shocked because there’s a flying splice concealed under the insulation with no wire nuts
Have you ever had to tell a customer off for repeatedly doing something like putting stuff down the drain that really shouldn't (i.e: Tampons down the toilet, grease down the sink drain, dental floss down the toilet etc.)?
Absolutely in college housing all the f-ing time it's ridiculous
@@nathanielcarrier1151 If everything comes back into style, maybe composting toilets should be used in collegiate housing 🤣
a plumber I worked with told a story of a major corporation who owned a house they let employees use for a vacation house. he had to make frequent calls for clogged drains. one day, he had to go out on a sunday because the toilets were backed up, walked up with a boat hook, and in front of the vacationing employees, opened the cleanout on the septic tank, reached in with the boat hook, and pulled out a wad of tampons and condoms. he held it up on the boat hook, and told them, "well, THERE's your problem." they never had a clog again.
Was called out to a house for a clogged toilet for there young gal crying on the porch saying she's sorry go inside and there is nearly a tsunami of cats swelling around on the floor eyes burning immediately unable to breathe with smell of ammonia clear my way to back restroom cats every where on counters toilet seat and lid in the tub with fecal matter everywhere got so bad inside I ended up going outside where the owners daughter was she kept apologizing for her mother's home so I called up the owner and told her that her home posed a hazard to me and my coworkers and we needed it to be cleared and cleaned up a bit so we could bring in our equipment and she acted like we were crazy
You should have called the animal cops if they were not already called. Dealing with someone like that she obviously is mentally ill.
Man, these oh shit moments are no joke. I’d honestly be the most scared in the situation of there being an electricity hazard.
My boss and I went to a doctors office to unclog a sewage ejector pump that had back all the way back up to one of the toilets. Literally watched the fecal mud creep up the toilet bowl all the way to the brim. Nearly shit myself. Luckily got it to go back down
Good job helping out those people in need sir, I couldn't take their money either.
Keep up the good work brother
I'm eating while watching this and I'm not that hungry anymore.
If you value your soul sometimes you just have to not worry about getting paid. Seeing that lady and her living situation...
Thank you for providing your wisdom and experience. I really appreciate it!
Good thing I'm a construction plumber
I used to work for a waste water company and we clean manholes, lift stations, and waste water plants aeration basins grit grates etc. so always knee to waist high in poop. Love your videos, maybe you'll bring your school to Abilene tx. I took your free classes already.
Thanks
Thats great to hear Cristian! Hope it helped you
Bro I love all the stories and advice ❤️
Glad you like them!
I took a job remodeling a home that had been abandoned for several years and homeless people were living in. Couldnt get to the toilet until i moved the bedside hospital toilets that also had mounds of feces and tp. Got the room cleaned up cleaned the toilet only to find out somone had got mad and filled the bowl and drain line with several bags of cement. Wasnt a plumber at the time, but my first day on the job is tommorow.
Try being a plumber at a juvenile detention center that is every day.
The references are genius and your content is great as always
Much appreciated!
Upstairs bathrooms 4” drain stopped up solid all the way to the toilet brim. To clean the vertical pipe I had to cut the combination out in the crawl space. Out comes a 4” solid turd worm. Having to carry it out from under the apartment and across the parking lot. Yeah, that was the best. That call named my company. Superhero Home Repair. Plumbing repair isn’t for mere mortals.
7:31 Roger, we want to hear more about plumbing in the house of a person with hoarding disorder! Plumbers frequently work in awkward/confined spaces, but a house that's held a hoard poses different accessibility challenges!
Hehe I've been to a house where someone had old pizza boxes stacked to the ceiling. It was like mini hallways built everywhere so you could get around. The customer was very friendly too and genuinely needed help around the house. She was elderly. It was interesting getting my machine through to the bathroom (also full of stuff). Needless to say I got the job done and customer was happy. Hoarder houses aren't nearly as bad as crackhouses though. I remember looking up once at a ceiling over 15ft high wondering how a pair of shoe prints ended up there 🤔
I will just leave and tell them to call someone else if the house is that bad.
@@shuriken204 well, sometimes it's about making sure your customer is happy and not making them feel worse about the situation. Sometimes people are already embarrassed that they have a plumbing problem and someone else has to see their mess. She needed help and it was manageable. When you have an old lady like that and they need help and they called you thinking you could help them, do you want to say they were wrong to pick you first just because you felt uncomfortable around all the trash and then let that money they are willing to pay go to someone else? In my situation I couldn't do that, that was good money just waiting for me to collect but not every situation is the same. If it's a crackhouse yeah sometimes better to say no.
The sewage filled ditch sounds absolutely horrifying, hopefully you had a good set of long rubber gloves and a good set of chest waders
They fired you for that?? At my company they would probably think less of me but they wouldn’t fire me for that. I had one toilet about 3 weeks ago. The property management had a tenant that wasn’t paying her rent and so they told her the police is coming. So she spitefully kept taking the biggest dumps in the one toilet in the unit for id say about a week or two and wiped with paper towels the whole building stunk so bad. Idk where some people get off thinking they are entitled to free rent and then are so nasty do this, probably came naturally to her. Piled up high with her crap stained thongs laying around 🙄 I charged them about $350 to clear that toilet and they gave me a $50 tip on top of it. All I did was use a small shovel and shoveled the crap out of the toilet and then augered it. Three the crap in the dumpster. Idk how but I didn’t seem to be bothered by it too much at the time
I went to an apartment and the lady says come in. She's upstairs and the roof is leaking middle of the living room. She says upstairs and downstairs was backed up. Both like u described shit piled over the brim and water running over causing the ceiling to cave in from shit water. I could barley make it to the downstairs bathroom without a shit shower
Not exactly plumbing, but my first house was a model home, and the office had been in the garage. There was a decorative curtain between the bathtub and toilet, and apparently the bathroom had run out of toilet paper at some point in the house's past, and someone used that curtain. I'm surprised the dry cleaners took it, I pointed out the brown stain and explained what I thought it was.
But sometimes you absolutely have to go under the house or in the roof how do you be more careful in that instance
Vicks menthol rub under the nose for smelly situations
Oh boy ! What a mess! Been there done that ! Would sprinkle lime on the floor/ ground to try to control the whole mess!!
I've been asked to service stuff like that multiple times. We were hired to install new plumbing not to give away service calls. I'm so glad my boss had my back an told me to walk away from the poo stew instead of fix it or your fired. Not to mention I had no sewer machine or toilet auger available in less than a 2 hour drive... sorry bro, hire retail maintenance. General contractors always hiring filthy subs an expecting a free service call from their plumbing contractor gets tiresome
Yeah a company firing a skilled laborer for not wanting to deal with literal crap is not something i think we would hear about now a days. And I’d be glad to leave that company because I’m sure they are butt wipes anyway. It’s a night and day difference between a company like that and another one that appreciates and respects their technicians
Please just for safety go flush all you toilets now. Prevention maintenance
What are some of the best books for a beginner apprentice to buy and read. I'm starting in about 2 weeks so I'd like a head start. Thanks!
Roger!
HEY!
Question, 3/8" copper pipe under my mom's trailer had a leak. The copper pipe is the soft kind that comes in a roll I think. When water froze in the pipe earlier in the year it widened the 3/8 pipe just a bit so now 3/8" unions and sharkbites don't fit. How do I fix this now? I cut the pipe already so I have a 4" gap I need to replace. Can I buy 3/8 pipe, flare the ends so they fit over the old 3/8 pipe and just solder it that way? Or should I flare a coupling? I'm lost on this one.
Tear it all out and run pex pipe. So when it freezes again it will just swell up till it thaws. Or.heat tape it
@@dave8k9hohnjmdavez57 that's the plan for the summer. My grandfather built a box around this main water line (about 30ft long) and packed with insulation and heat cable. The box has screws that break because they are so rusty. Long story short replacing it with pex is going to be a 2 day job and there is no way I'm doing it when it's this cold. I just want a way to fix this spot. During the summer I'll run new line and get rid of the box. My grandfather ment well he just didn't think of how to get into the box if we needed to. Haha.
Is newspaper hoarding a thing? Honestly I have seen that several times myself.
To Any other fellow plumbers out there, Do any of you guys wear a tool belt?
Idk how I’d react to that apartment one, I think I’d say, you guys better at least clean that trash can and floor, I’m not touching it till then.
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Channel so lame. I thought it be like the failed laborers videos. All talk from an old has been.
Sorry I didn't meet your expectations MrLonelyDrifter