Having travelled out to the USA numerous times in order to further build on my understanding of the way the country’s plumbing industry works, I often find myself riding shotgun with a plumber and sometimes, his or her crew. 

Over the last year, thanks to some very accommodating individuals, their teams, and many of their customers, I have visited everything from small trailer parks (mobile home parks to you and me) to $50,000,000 properties nestled in the Hollywood Hills. Much of what I have witnessed is very similar to what I had come across in my 25 years as a UK plumber. However, there are also differences, and many of these lie in the sheer scale of everything in the USA. As an example, it is extremely rare to find a residential property in California that has anything less than a 11/4 inch incoming main (35mm to us)!

I have met up with Juan a few times in the past. He has been plumbing in the south Los Angeles area for more years than he cares to remember, and works for a company called Infinite Plumbing Services, based in Long Beach, California. Infinite are one of the larger plumbing companies in the region, with 360 plumbers on board, all employed (none are sub-contracted), and all with company trucks. 

On the day I accompanied Juan, we met at Infinite HQ at 7am. Juan was already there getting his list of jobs for the day, wearing his trademark baseball cap and wrap-around shades, despite it being rather gloomy outside. He told me we had a busy day ahead, so we hopped into his bright white, six month-old Ford F150 pick up truck. 

Our first stop was a site in Anaheim, close to Disney, where some of his guys were laying corrugated sleeved PEX pipe onto a slab ready for the screed to be poured. He explained that sleeved PEX had only recently been approved for covering in concrete. Prior to this, all pipework had to run ‘up and over’, creating long dead legs of cold water in the hot water lines. 

What surprised me is the lack of willingness to install secondary returns to combat this, but he explained that California electrical grids struggle to cope with the demand for electricity at the best of times, so to add thousands – in fact hundreds of thousands – of secondary return pumps would simply add to the problem, despite the fact they pull very little current. However, the flipside is wasted cold water that gets run out of a tap before the hot water appears, but as 99% of all south Californian water is recycled, it’s the lesser of two evils. 

The team was doing a good job, so we headed to our next call in a place called Cerritos, where one of the rooms of the Sheraton Hotel had a dripping shower that the on-site maintenance team couldn’t fix. Clearly Juan was a familiar face at this hotel as every member of staff we walked past seemed to give him a high five! The room was your typical 4/5-star suite, larger than the average apartment in the UK, quite dark even though the curtains were open but with just enough light for Juan to remain as cool as ever in his sunglasses.

Removal of a small panel in the hallway gave us access to the service valves. I have yet to see a valve (ballofix or otherwise) with those dreaded screwdriver slots in them anywhere in the USA. Once the shower was isolated, it all came apart quite easily and the cartridge was removed. It was not a familiar type of cartridge but a familiar brand, Grohe. 

It was decided that we would drive to the local plumbing supply store to match it up; a branch of Hajoca, which is one of the popular chains in the US. 

I have to say that I am always amazed at the amount of shower and tap cartridges held in stock at these places; all hanging up, front of counter. I am pretty sure that even if you travelled all around London, you would struggle to find many merchants who would actually hold any Grohe cartridges in stock, or any other brands for that matter.

We headed back to the hotel, fitted the cartridge, and had the repair signed off by the maintenance supervisor. Juan was telling me that labour for that single call would be invoiced at $195 per hour for a minimum three hours, so $585 for 30 mins on-site and maybe 30 mins travelling; nice work if you can get it!

Our next call was at a residential property in Santa Ana, where Juan’s guys had ripped out an old tank water heater and installed a new, energy-efficient tankless version in the garage. We were meeting the city inspector there so he could sign it off and the customer could pay the bill. 

The inspector (pleasant guy but you could tell he loved the authority he possessed) walked round with his tablet making plenty of notes. Without interrupting too much, I asked some questions and he quickly took an interest in my background as a foreign gas engineer. We talked about the lack of requirement when it comes to carrying out flue gas analysis on an appliance during commissioning, and he remarked that you would be lucky to find an engineer who even owned an flue gas analyser (FGA) in the region. 

He had no explanation other than to back up his statement by saying that all newly installed appliances have to be fitted in conjunction with a mains-wired CO detector and, in some regions, going a step further, be wired to an interlock that cuts the gas supply off if high levels of CO are detected. I didn’t mention to him that I have met quite a few guys in the USA who do carry FGAs, so maybe the lack of requirement was just more in his immediate area. 

I mentioned in a previous edition of HVP that I found it incredible that the USA had so many different jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions when it comes to plumbing regulations. They have federal regs that are blanket rules covering all 50 states, then individual state regs, followed by county regs, that then, in turn, are followed by city regs; therefore a bit of a minefield. 

Juan was pleased with the work, the inspector emailed the pass certificate to Juan’s office, and to the customer, and everyone was happy. 

After one final job, we headed back to the yard not even having raised our heart rate once in the last eight hours… just another day in the life of the ‘laid back’ southern California plumber!