Day in the Life of a Plumber: Three Real Days

Alarm. I lie there for maybe 90 seconds thinking about nothing, which is the best part of the day. Then I'm up. Coffee in the Yeti, two pieces of toast with peanut butter. I check my phone. Kip, our dispatcher, already has my board loaded. Four calls today. Running toilet in Hilliard, water heater replacement in Grove City, kitchen faucet install in Upper Arlington, and a mystery leak in a finished basement in Westerville. Mystery leaks in finished basements are the calls where you either look like a genius or spend three hours cutting drywall and apologizing.

In the van. It's a 2021 Ford Transit with about 68,000 miles on it. I keep it organized because opening the back doors in front of a homeowner sets a tone. If the van looks like a disaster, they assume the work will be too. Left side is fittings and supply line. Right side is tools and drain equipment. Middle shelf is the stuff I grab every single call: channel locks, adjustable wrench, flashlight, Teflon tape, bucket. I count my stock of supply lines while the engine warms up. I've got 12 braided stainless lines in various lengths. That should be enough for today.

First call. Hilliard. The homeowner says the toilet has been running for two weeks. She kept jiggling the handle and that worked for a while, then it stopped working. I pull the tank lid. The flapper is warped. It's the original flapper from when the toilet was installed, and the sticker on the inside of the tank lid says 2011, so this flapper lasted 15 years. That's actually impressive. I swap it for a Korky universal. Takes about four minutes. I flush twice, watch the fill cycle, adjust the float height by a quarter turn. Done. The homeowner asks if that's really all it was. I tell her yes. She looks relieved and also slightly annoyed that she waited two weeks for a four-minute fix. I charge $145 for the service call. The flapper itself costs about $8.

Driving to Grove City. Kip texts me the details on the water heater call. It's a 50-gallon gas unit, 14 years old, leaking from the bottom. The homeowner already picked out a replacement at Home Depot but wants us to install it. I text Kip back that we don't install customer-supplied heaters, company policy. He says he already told them. They're going with our unit instead. We stock Bradford White 50-gallons. Good heater. I've put in probably 150 of them.

Grove City. The heater is in the garage, which is ideal. Some of these are in crawl spaces or utility closets where you can barely turn around. Garage installs are the best because you have room to work and you're not tracking through someone's house. I shut off the gas, close the cold water supply, hook a hose to the drain valve, and start draining. Fifty gallons takes about 20 minutes to drain through a garden hose. The water coming out is rusty, which tells me the anode rod has been gone for years. That's what killed this heater. The tank rusted from the inside.

Old heater is drained and disconnected. I disconnect the gas line, the T&P valve discharge pipe, and the water connections. The old heater weighs about 130 pounds empty. I tip it onto my hand truck and roll it out to the van. My buddy Leo works at a scrap yard and he'll take the old ones off my hands. I usually have two or three in the van by Friday. Not much money in it but it beats paying the dump fee.

New heater is in position. I use my Milwaukee M12 copper cutter to trim the supply lines. This tool is the single best purchase I've made in five years of plumbing. Clean cuts, no filing, battery lasts all week. Before I had it, I was using a tubing cutter that took twice as long and left burrs inside the pipe. I connect the cold supply, the hot outlet, a new flex gas connector, and a new T&P valve. I solder two joints where the old copper transitions to the new connections. The garage smells like flux for about ten minutes. I light the pilot, check for gas leaks with a soapy water solution on every joint, and let the heater start its first heat cycle.

Water heater is running. I set the thermostat to 120 degrees, label the gas shutoff with a yellow tag, and clean up the garage floor. The homeowner, a guy in his 50s, asks me how long this one will last. I tell him the warranty is 6 years but most of them go 10 to 12 if you flush the tank once a year and replace the anode rod every 4 to 5 years. He says nobody told him that about the last one. I say nobody tells most people. He thanks me. Invoice is $2,350 installed. He pays with a check.

Lunch. I park at a gas station on Stringtown Road and eat a turkey sub I packed this morning. I call Chrissy. She's at work, so it goes to voicemail. I leave a message that says "hey, water heater went smooth, two more calls, love you." That's pretty much the standard Tuesday voicemail. She'll text me a thumbs-up emoji in about 20 minutes. We've been together three years and our midday communication is down to a voicemail and an emoji. It works for us.

Upper Arlington. Kitchen faucet install. The homeowner, Mrs. Pruitt, bought a Moen Arbor pull-down faucet. Nice unit. She's got a double-basin stainless sink and the existing faucet is a cheap builder-grade two-handle that she's been fighting for years. I crawl under the sink. The supply valves are quarter-turn, which is good. The old faucet nuts are corroded and I spend about 15 minutes with a basin wrench getting them loose. Working under a kitchen sink means lying on your back with your head inside a cabinet, staring up at the underside of a countertop, with the garbage disposal about six inches from your face. It smells exactly like you'd expect. Every kitchen sink smells like damp sponge and whatever food went down the drain last.

Old faucet is out. I clean the sink deck, scrape off the old plumber's putty, and mount the new Moen. The Moen goes in fast because it's a single-hole mount with a deck plate. I connect the hot and cold supply lines, turn on the valves, and run the faucet. No leaks. I pull the sprayer head out and test the spray function. Mrs. Pruitt is watching. She turns on the water herself and sprays it into a bowl and smiles. That's the best part of faucet installs. The homeowner tries the new faucet and you can see them already planning to do dishes in a slightly better mood tonight. Invoice is $285 for the install. She already bought the faucet.

Westerville. The mystery leak. The homeowner says there's a wet spot on the carpet in the finished basement, near the wall below the upstairs bathroom. It started about a week ago and it's getting worse. I press my hand into the carpet. Soaked. Cold water, not warm, so probably a supply line, not a drain. Could also be condensation from a cold pipe, but that wouldn't soak through carpet like this. I go upstairs to the bathroom above. Flush the toilet. Run the sink. Run the tub. Then I go back downstairs and wait. Nothing changes immediately, which means it's a slow leak and not a drain issue. Drain leaks show up fast when you run water.

I cut a 12-by-12 inspection hole in the drywall where the wet spot is worst. Behind the drywall, the bottom plate of the wall is wet. I look up with a flashlight. There it is. A copper supply line running from the main to the upstairs bathroom has a pinhole leak at a fitting. The fitting is a 90-degree elbow, and the leak is at the solder joint. It's a tiny stream, barely a drip, but over a week it's been running down the pipe, pooling on the bottom plate, and wicking into the carpet. This is a 30-year-old house and the copper is starting to show its age. I shut off the main, cut out the bad fitting, and solder in a new 90 and a 6-inch piece of copper. Total repair time: about 40 minutes. I leave the inspection hole open and tell the homeowner to let it dry for a few days before patching the drywall. I also tell him to watch his other copper joints in the next few years because where there's one pinhole, there are usually more coming.

Done for the day. I text Kip that all four calls are closed. He sends back "solid." I drive to the shop to restock. I grab two more braided supply lines, a pack of Korky flappers, and a roll of Teflon tape. I fill out my paperwork on the clipboard in the van. Four calls, four invoices, total billed: $4,930. Not every Tuesday is that good. Some Tuesdays you spend half the day on one call that turns into a nightmare. Today was clean.

Home. Chrissy's on the couch grading papers. She teaches fourth grade. I sit next to her and she asks how my day was. I say "good, did a water heater, a faucet, a toilet, and found a leak in a wall." She says "nice" without looking up from her red pen. That's fine. The detail of it, the rusty water draining from a tank, the smell under Mrs. Pruitt's sink, the pinhole leak catching my flashlight beam in a dark wall cavity, that stuff doesn't translate over the couch. It's not a complaint. It's just that plumbing is one of those jobs where the interesting parts are invisible to anyone who wasn't there. I grab a beer and start thinking about tomorrow's board. Kip usually loads it by 8 PM.

Up before the alarm. I've been waking up at 5:15 without help for about ten years now. My body just does it. Phil is still asleep. I make coffee, eat a yogurt, and pack my lunch. Turkey and swiss on sourdough, an apple, two bottles of water. I check my email. The plumbing inspector, Mr. Grimes, confirmed he's coming at 10:00 AM for the cleanout re-inspection. He flagged us last week for a cleanout access point on the third floor that didn't have the required 18-inch clearance in front of it. The drywall guys had framed too close. We fixed it. Today he checks the fix. If he passes us, we keep moving. If he doesn't, we lose at least two days while the drywall crew comes back.

On site. The hospital wing is a five-story addition, about 140,000 square feet. We're the plumbing contractor for the entire project. My crew handles the third floor, which is 28 patient rooms plus two nurses' stations, a janitor's closet, and a soiled utility room. Each patient room gets a toilet, a lavatory, and connections for medical gas, though the gas is a different contractor. The lavatories are Sloan sensor-activated. The toilets are Sloan Royal flush valves, 1.28 gallons per flush. I've installed more Sloan flush valves than I can count. Hundreds, probably.

Toolbox talk with my crew. It's me, Ned, Javier, and two apprentices. Today's safety topic is back injuries from lifting fixtures. A toilet, even without the tank, weighs about 60 pounds. A wall-hung lavatory with the carrier is closer to 85. We're setting 14 of each today. That's a lot of lifting. I tell them to use the hand truck, work in pairs, and nobody plays hero. Ned, who has been doing this for 22 years, nods like he's heard this a thousand times. He has. He also has two herniated discs in his lower back, which is exactly why I keep saying it.

We start setting fixtures in rooms 301 through 306. The rough-in is done, the walls are up, the tile is in. Now we're hanging porcelain. The first step is bolting the toilet flange to the floor. The flange is already cast into the waste line from the rough-in phase three months ago. I check the flange height. It should sit about a quarter inch above the finished floor. Room 301 is right on. Room 302 is a little low, maybe an eighth inch. I use a flange extender ring. It adds a quarter inch and gives me the height I need. Javier sets the wax ring on the flange, we lower the toilet onto the bolts, and I snug the nuts down. You can't overtighten toilet bolts. Porcelain cracks. I've seen guys put too much torque on the nut and split the base of a $400 toilet. I use a feel for it. About a quarter turn past finger-tight, then check for wobble.

Six toilets set. Ned and one of the apprentices are hanging lavatories in the rooms I've finished. The wall-hung lavs bolt to a steel carrier that was set during rough-in. Ned checks each carrier with a level before mounting the sink. Two of them are slightly off. He shims them. The carriers are supposed to be dead level, but on a job this size, with dozens of different hands touching the rough-in work, small deviations are normal. That's why you check before you bolt. Ned doesn't say much while he works. He hums. I've worked with him for six years and I don't think I've ever identified the song.

Break. I sit in the stairwell with my coffee. The stairwell is the only quiet spot on the third floor. The drywall guys are finishing on one end, the HVAC crew is hanging duct on the other, and the electricians are pulling wire everywhere in between. Construction is a lot of trades sharing the same space and trying not to get in each other's way. Most days it works. Some days the ceiling grid guy and the sprinkler fitter and I are all trying to work in the same 8-foot section of corridor and somebody has to wait. Today is smooth so far.

Back to setting. I'm doing flush valves now. The Sloan Royal is a piston-style valve. You bolt it to the spud on the toilet, connect the supply, and adjust the flow. The RIDGID ProPress makes the supply connections fast. Instead of soldering, you press a fitting onto the copper with a hydraulic jaw. It makes a solid connection in about 4 seconds. I remember when ProPress first came out, the old guys swore it was garbage and would never replace soldering. Now everybody uses it. Even Ned, who resisted for about two years. The last time I saw him solder on a commercial job was maybe 2021.

Mr. Grimes is here. He's early, which is unusual for him. He goes straight to the cleanout access on the third floor. I walk with him. The cleanout is in the janitor's closet. Last week, the drywall framing was 14 inches from the cleanout face. Code requires 18. We had the drywall crew pull the framing back. Now it's 19 inches. Mr. Grimes measures it himself with a tape. He writes something on his clipboard. He looks at the cleanout cap, checks that it's accessible with a wrench, and writes again. Then he looks at me and says "good." That's it. Passed. A one-word verdict on a problem that cost us half a day of coordination with the drywall contractor. I tell Javier, who lets out a breath he's probably been holding since 6 AM.

With the inspection behind us, I send Javier and an apprentice to start roughing in the soiled utility room on the east end. It needs a floor drain, a clinical sink, and a mop basin. The clinical sink is a Zurn stainless unit that weighs about 90 pounds. They'll need the hand truck and about two hours. I stay with Ned on fixture setting. We're in rooms 307 through 312 now. The work is repetitive, which is fine. There's a rhythm to setting fixtures. Flange check, wax ring, set, bolt, level, flush valve, supply, test. Each room takes about 25 minutes with two people. By lunch we should have 12 rooms done.

Lunch in the break trailer. I eat my sandwich and read the drawings for the nurses' station plumbing. Two hand-wash sinks, sensor faucets, point-of-use hot water heaters under each sink. The spec calls for InstaHot units. I've installed maybe 40 of them over the years. They're simple but the wiring has to be coordinated with the electrician. I text the electrical foreman to make sure we have power stubbed in at both locations. She says yes. Good. One fewer coordination headache.

Afternoon. Ned and I keep setting. Room 312 has a problem. The toilet flange is cracked. Looks like the concrete crew nicked it when they poured the floor. It's not leaking yet, but it will once there's a wax seal and a toilet pushing down on it. I call the GC's superintendent. He comes up. We look at it together. He agrees it needs to be replaced. This means cutting out a section of the floor, removing the cracked flange, installing a new one, and patching the concrete. That's a two-hour fix and it involves the concrete crew, who are on a different floor right now. I mark the room with orange tape and we skip it. Room 312 gets a new flange tomorrow. Everything else moves forward.

Javier reports back. The soiled utility room rough-in is done. The clinical sink is mounted. The floor drain is set. The mop basin still needs its faucet, which is on backorder and supposed to arrive Monday. I make a note in my daily report. Material delays are constant on jobs this size. You learn to plan around them instead of getting frustrated. I check the overall count: 13 rooms out of 28 have toilets and lavatories set. We need the rest done by end of next week. That's 15 rooms in 5 days, so 3 per day. With the flange replacement in 312, call it 16 rooms in 5 days. Very doable. I tell the crew we're in good shape and I mean it.

I spend the last 30 minutes of the day on paperwork. Daily report for the GC, material order for next week, time cards for my crew. The paperwork is the part of being a foreman that nobody tells you about. When I was a journeyman, I just did the work and went home. Now I do the work, manage four people, coordinate with the GC, talk to inspectors, track materials, and fill out forms. The pay bump is about $6 an hour more than a journeyman. Some days that feels like a bargain. Some days it feels like I'm being underpaid for running a small business inside someone else's business.

Site cleanup. We sweep our section, stack leftover fixtures on pallets, and lock our gang box. I do a walk of the floor before leaving. Check for open test caps, loose fittings, anything that could leak overnight. The cleaning crew waters the floor every evening. Water and an uncapped test tee would mean a flood by morning. Everything is capped. Everything is tight. I drive home.

Home. Phil made pasta. I shower, change, and sit at the table. He asks how the inspection went. I say "passed." He says "that's good, right?" I say "it's great." He nods. He doesn't fully understand what a cleanout access clearance means or why 14 inches versus 19 inches matters or why I was stressed about it for a week. But he knows I'm not stressed anymore and that's enough for him. We eat. I tell him about the cracked flange and he makes a face like cracked flanges are terrible. They are, but the face he makes is funny. I don't correct him. I just eat my pasta and think about the 15 rooms we have left.

Up. My mom is already in the kitchen making her own coffee. I still live with her, which I'm not proud of and not ashamed of either. It's just where I am. I spent three years at the tire shop making $16.50 an hour and never saving anything. Four months ago I started the apprenticeship. The pay is $17 an hour, which is basically the same, but the ceiling is different. Journeyman plumbers around here make $28 to $35. That's the number I think about when I'm doing something I don't want to do, which is most mornings at 5:50 AM.

I meet Harley at the shop. Harley is my journeyman. He's 38, been plumbing since he was 19. He doesn't talk much in the morning. We load the truck: a case of 4-inch PVC pipe, fittings, two bags of ready-mix concrete, a roll of caution tape, shovels, the pipe saw. Today we're replacing a sewer lateral for a homeowner in the Highlands. The existing clay pipe collapsed about 30 feet from the house. Harley scoped it with a camera last week. He showed me the footage. The pipe looked like a crushed soda can. Tree roots pushed through and the clay just gave up.

On site. The homeowner, Mr. Wentz, comes out to say hello. He looks worried. Harley tells him the plan: dig up the old pipe, replace it with PVC, backfill, and restore the yard. Mr. Wentz asks how long. Harley says probably two days, weather depending. Mr. Wentz nods and goes back inside. Harley looks at me and says "you're digging." I knew this was coming. This is the part of being a first-year apprentice that nobody romanticizes. Somebody has to dig the trench and that somebody is always the newest person on the crew.

I start digging. The trench needs to be about 30 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 4 feet deep at the deepest point. The pipe runs from the house foundation to the city main connection near the sidewalk, dropping about 2 inches for every 10 feet of run. Harley marks the line with spray paint. I start at the house end because the ground there is looser. The yard is mostly clay soil once you get past the first 8 inches of topsoil. Louisville clay is red-brown and sticky. It clumps on the shovel and you have to scrape it off every few strokes. My arms are burning after about 20 minutes. At the tire shop, the heaviest thing I lifted was a truck tire, maybe 60 pounds. This is different. This is repetitive, full-body, all-day work.

Break. I've dug about 12 feet of trench. Harley has been doing layout work, checking grades with a laser level, and staging the PVC pipe alongside the trench. He hands me a bottle of water and says "you're doing fine." That's high praise from Harley. He told me on my first day that he'd tell me when I was doing something wrong and otherwise I should assume I was doing it right. He has not said much in four months, which I choose to interpret as a good sign.

I get back in the trench. The deeper sections are harder because I'm throwing the dirt up and over my head. Harley starts digging the far end near the sidewalk with the other shovel. We work in silence except for the sound of shovels hitting clay. Around 10:00 I hit something hard. I scrape with the shovel. It's the old clay pipe. It's about 15 inches down at this point, shallower than I expected. The pipe is dark orange, glazed on the outside, and it's clearly broken. I can see the crack running along the top. Harley comes over, looks at it, and says "there's your patient." He says things like that. He treats the pipe like it's sick and we're the doctors. I write that down in my notebook. I write down everything Harley says because half of it sounds like nonsense and then three weeks later it makes perfect sense.

Trench is dug. My hands are raw even through the gloves. The Louisville clay has this particular smell when it's freshly dug, like wet iron and earthworms. You'd recognize it if you've ever dug a deep hole in the Ohio Valley. Harley inspects the trench. He checks the depth at six points with a tape measure and the grade with his laser. Two spots are an inch too shallow. I dig them out. One spot is a half inch too deep. Harley says "that's fine, we'll bed it." Bedding means putting a layer of gravel or sand at the bottom to set the pipe on. It's more forgiving than bare dirt.

Lunch. I sit on the tailgate and eat two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a bag of chips. My mom packs them. I'm 23 and my mom packs my lunch. I could do it myself but she's up before me anyway and she likes doing it. Harley eats a gas station burrito that he microwaved at the shop this morning. We don't talk much during lunch. Harley reads something on his phone. I look at my hands. There are three blisters forming on my right palm. At the tire shop I had calluses in different places. These are plumbing calluses and they're not built yet.

Afternoon. This is the part I've been waiting for. Harley is teaching me to cut and glue PVC. The sewer lateral is 4-inch Schedule 40 PVC, which is the standard for residential drain lines. Harley sets up the pipe saw on a pair of sawhorses. He cuts the first piece, a 6-foot section, and shows me how to deburr the cut end with a utility knife. Then the glue. PVC glue is a two-step process: primer first, then cement. The primer is purple and it softens the pipe surface. The cement is gray and it bonds the pieces together. Harley says "you get about 15 seconds after the cement goes on before it starts to set. That's your window. Line it up, push, and give it a quarter turn." He does the first joint. I do the second one.

My first joint looks okay. Harley checks it. He pushes on it. He looks at the alignment. He says "the twist was good but you put too much cement on the inside. See the bead?" I look. There's a ridge of gray cement inside the fitting where it squeezed out. On a drain line, that ridge can catch debris and start a clog. Harley says "the outside bead is fine. It's the inside bead that matters. Less cement, spread it thinner." I write that down. Less cement, spread thinner, inside bead matters. My pocket notebook is filling up fast. I'm on my third one since I started. The first two are in my nightstand drawer. I read through them sometimes on weekends. Half of it is just short phrases: "slope is your friend," "glue sets in 15 seconds," "measure twice because PVC doesn't stretch."

We start laying pipe in the trench. Harley is at the house end, connecting to the existing stack with a Fernco coupling. I'm in the middle of the trench, holding pipe sections while he checks the grade. We lay about 15 feet of pipe, joint by joint. At each joint, Harley puts his RIDGID pipe wrench on the last fitting and gives it a slight turn to make sure the cement is holding. The wrench is the big orange one, 18 inches, and it weighs about 5 pounds. Harley has carried the same one for over 10 years. The jaws are worn smooth in places. He told me once that a plumber's wrench is like a carpenter's hammer. You don't lend it and you don't lose it.

All 30 feet of pipe are in the trench. Harley does a final grade check. Every section is within spec. He fills a 5-gallon bucket with water and pours it into the clean-out at the house end. We watch it run downhill through the new pipe and out the other end at the city connection. It flows clean. No pooling, no back-up. Harley says "good pipe." Two words. That might be the nicest thing he's said to me. We won't backfill today. The inspector needs to see the pipe in the open trench before we cover it. Harley calls to schedule the inspection for tomorrow morning.

We clean up, rope off the trench with caution tape, and tell Mr. Wentz not to use any drains in the house until the new pipe is connected to the city main, which will be tomorrow after the inspection. Mr. Wentz asks if he can use the kitchen sink. Harley says no. Mr. Wentz says "not even for a glass of water?" Harley says the water is fine, just don't drain it. Mr. Wentz looks confused. I understand the confusion. The water coming in is fine. It's the water going out that's the problem. Plumbing is two separate systems and most people think of it as one.

Back at the shop. We unload the truck, put away tools. Harley tells me I did good work today. He says the trench was straight and the pipe joints were "acceptable." From Harley, "acceptable" is about one step below a trophy. I sweep the shop floor because that's what the first-year does. I'm the only apprentice at this company, so all the first-year tasks are mine. Sweeping, loading, unloading, cleaning the porta-john tools after a sewer call. I don't mind it. At the tire shop, I swept the bay every day too. The work is different but the position is the same. You start at the bottom and you prove you belong.

Home. My mom is making dinner. She asks how my day was. I tell her we dug a trench and laid pipe for a sewer line. She says "that sounds hard." I say "it is." She asks if I like it. I think about it for a second. My hands hurt. My back is sore. I'm 23 and I'm covered in Louisville clay and PVC primer. But today I learned how to glue a pipe joint and I watched water flow downhill through something I helped build. At the tire shop, the tires went on and the car drove away and that was it. Today I put pipe in the ground that's going to carry water for the next 50 years. I tell my mom "yeah, I think I do." She says "good" and hands me a plate. We eat in front of the TV. I'm asleep on the couch by 8:30.