John is a Master Plumber and the owner of O’Neill Bros, LLC, a plumbing business located in Washington, DC. John explains every facet of plumbing, from pipe fabrication and installation on commercial projects to fixing a leaky drain on a home project. A career in plumbing can reward those who have a strong interest in mechanics, math, and even video games. Find out how!
Transcript
>> I'm John O'Neil, and I'm a plumber. Okay, we do what everybody else does not want to do with their house. We work on water pipes. Sewer pipes. Gas lines. Vents. We'll come in and break up your slab. Dig down. Dig a trench in your basement. Fix up your plumbing. Get it where you want it in your house. What you want to do as a professional when you show up at someone's house, let them show you the problem. And then stop right there. There's certain things that you want to know from them before you get started. Number one, if you're working on water, where's your main water shut off in your house? Okay. You don't know what they have going on in their basement. It could be anything from a leaking humidifier line. Which is just a 1/4-inch water line off the main. So you just go, and you patch that up. Or roots stop up their main sewer line, and all the basement toilets are overflowing. So you might get a call, and you walk into that. That's worst-case scenario as a technician. Because you need to clean up the area before you can even safely get in there and use electric equipment to snake the drain. It could also be a water heater that's not firing properly. In which case you may have to tell a customer, okay, I'm not going to be able to fix this today. They're going to be very disappointed. But you may need to explain, I need to order this part to get you up and running today. Also, you could be coming in behind somebody who's done something wrong. Which makes it more difficult to diagnosis a problem. So there's a lot of, you know, thinking on your feet at the leadership level. And then, as you go down the totem pole, it becomes more just putting pipes together. Which, hey, those guys, if you just want to do that. You're going to get off at the same time every day. Show up to work at the same time every day. Plenty of free time, whatever. That's the beauty of working in construction it's 6:00 to 2:00. So 6:00 to 2:00. Two o'clock you're off. You're not, you're boss can call you. You don't have to answer. Even after ten years in, your neck's going to hurt. Your back's going to hurt. Your knees are going to hurt. It's not something where, oh, I'm going to be doing this into my 70s, you know. Nobody says that. You can become an inspector. Now you're shuffling papers instead of installing pipes. You're not crawling around through the mud anymore. You're just walking. You got a flashlight. You have a code book. And that's what you do.
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