John Stephenson 24:14
Um, you know, it’s
it is definitely one of those jobs that it’s something new every day. I mean it’s not something everybody gets for sure. I this job I’ve seen more people go through than any other job I’ve ever had. I’ve been there almost five years and I’ve seen almost 50 people come and go. No, it’s not. We have a high turnover rate and it’s not because of you know, the pain not being good or anything like that. Or the boss is being you know, a loser.
It’s just, you know, it’s hard to get.
I was working this career I, I had to go back to a lot of jobs where there would be a big hole, you know, made with an excavator and I’d have a lot of angry construction workers looking at me because there’s no leak there. And that I mean, that experience for me, of course,
Greg Owens 25:26
like this is when if you sort of Miss Miss diagnose where the leak is, they do the digging, they find the pipe, and there’s no leak there. Which, which can happen. Makes sense, right? Like, you’re not going to be 100 you’re not going to be 100% every time in water detection. I know like we’ve done some water detection on homes and some buildings, you know, and there might be a ceiling leak right here over the table. But the actual place the water getting in is like other side of the roof, right? Like it’s it’s a It’s a total Exactly. And just the way of water where water ends up is sometimes just a complete mystery of how it can get there.
John Stephenson 26:08
It really is. Yeah, I mean, I have seen water surface hundreds and hundreds of feet away from where the actual leak is. And I’ve actually seen our tracer gas come out hundreds of feet away from where the actual case
Greg Owens 26:24
Yeah, because both of those things are, they’re both sort of fluid dynamics in a way, right? Like where they’re gonna go the path of least resistance and not happy. And that might be where the most amount of noise is, or it also might be where the it’s easiest for the gas to get out. And then that throws off your leak detection equipment.
John Stephenson 26:42
Exactly. And you know, it’s, it’s one of the alternatives that people really have to run in a new line. And some of those cases will be one of them. Running a new line is a major,
major piece of
Greg Owens 27:01
Yeah, crazy amount of money to dig up a line and Exactly. So how do you guys then price these? It must be tough to price it do you give a range to a client? Or do you have to just do a ton of materials because you’re never sure 100% sure that it’s the leak is here. Pretty much we price them. We don’t mark a leak. If we’re not sure if they’re,
John Stephenson 27:26
you know, me saying that it was more of I just kind of got into it. And I thought the leak was you know, you. You get in your mind like, Okay, I know it’s here. I know it’s here and it’s, you know, turn. It’s not but I’ve come a long way from from that. As far as pricing goes, typically our jobs or bid as far as residential, commercial. We have a special kind of Potential where it’s, we deal with a lot of biggest stage slot, lots of acreage is the price than normal, you know, three bedroom home. And how we work is it’s our start prices for two hours. After that, it becomes hourly. And for each job with the line over 100 feet, we have to charge for the gas he put in the line. So it makes sense. Yeah, that’s typically how we charge the jobs.
As far as you know,
being big fire lines go, you know, if it takes they’re paying over 2000 for three hours of our time. Just for having to tax on site and dealing with the line over over four inches. But yeah, I mean, that’s that’s pretty much it. I realized early in the career that once you mark the leak, you can’t really charge anymore because at that point, you’ve said it somewhere. So we do you know, if we’re not sure it’s somewhere. We have to at that point, be sure. So let’s say it’s a long line, and we can’t figure out where it is. At that point, we’ll say we need to put isolation valves, we need to cut this line up. I mean, there’s tons and tons of tricks and Leak Detection to kind of,
Greg Owens 29:31
yeah, that makes sense. So if you have a really long line, and and all of your sort of listening devices and equipment and the gas doesn’t detect the leak, then what you’re saying is you have to go back and like dig it dig down and sort of isolate that pipe or different sections of that pipe to sort of narrow down where the leak is. Exactly sort of say like, okay, it’s definitely not this pipe. This one’s This one’s good. It’s most likely this one over here now because that’s what we’re, that’s where the water is coming out of.
John Stephenson 30:06
Exactly. And a lot of it’s off pressure testing,
Greg Owens 30:09
you know, right. Yeah,
John Stephenson 30:11
the gauge up to a home shutting the home off, you lose pressure in the home, all right, we know it’s in there, then I would go shut the water heater off, do it again, if I hold pressure, we know the leak was on the hot water line. When it comes to lines that were separating up, I typically would do that more so on those long irrigation lines, just because they tip typical commercial irrigation is looped so that every zone has adequate pressure. And what we would do if let’s say we weren’t picking up any point friction or gas anywhere, what we would do is we would put two valves in on each side of the property just to split it in half. And then at that point, we would have host bids on each side. So we can pressure test each side and see which one?
We’re right.
Greg Owens 31:04
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting. So and then what’s your thoughts on why there’s such a turnover rate? Is it because it’s it’s a tricky industry to get or is it because you guys are working solo sort of out in the field every day and that’s a harsh harbor environment. What do you what do you What’s your guess on that?
John Stephenson 31:25
I would say, you know, it’s in the beginning there, it’s, it’s pretty late, a labor intensive. The new guys typically will do the a lot of the repairs. That will push people away pretty quick, I’ve noticed. And then, as far as I think the main issue I’ve noticed that my company, the one I work for, is they don’t train guys very well. It’s, you What’s nice about it is they give you event they give you a gas card, they give you a Home Depot card and they throw you out there, they give you a cell phone, and you either sink or swim. And that’s kind of how it’s set up. This point I’m, I’ve moved into a supervisor position where I’m responsible for the new guys and training them to kind of steer away from what was you know, steer away from that. Mm hmm. But that I believe probably was the main thing that was people people would come in and they just wouldn’t get it.
It’s
it’s hard to teach. I mean, when it comes to leak detection, it’s all sounds. I’ve remember I had this, this demo come out to my house with one of the this brand new leak detectors that just came out and it’s supposed to be this time. state of the art I really didn’t notice much difference than that one in the one I have, you know. And what I’ve noticed on LinkedIn and a lot of other people who are in leak detection around the world will comment. It’s the user, you know, it’s not the piece of equipment. So, right. As far as training somebody what to hear, it just takes experience. So, I’ve noticed some people just will not stick around to get that experience because it’s, you know, the guy on market, he’ll dig it up, it’ll be a dry hole, he’ll get frustrated. I just did all this work. There’s nothing here. And people just say, hey, it’s it’s not worth it, you know?
Greg Owens 33:43
Right. Yeah. Cuz I could see that it takes, you know, the, to learn the different sounds, takes that on the job experience and a lot of ways right. It’s kind of like the same as like a painter with a paintbrush, right? Like the whole the painting. And get a really straight line without using any tape, or any sort of other methods in that way that takes that takes a that’s not somebody brand new that takes a couple of years probably of actually doing the work doing the craft to get exactly the point where you’re just like, every time you’re just like straight line straight line straight line. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Like it could be, it could be tougher. And then so as we get closer to wrapping this up, how did you get into this? What was what was your path into becoming the leak doctor and doing Leak Detection?
John Stephenson 34:40
Um, or you know, I
kind of been in construction a little over 10 years. I am right out of high school. I got into work for a company Maverick construction is labor for a little bit, and then I did an entire work made my way into chimneys for about almost five years there where I work with a lot of masonry masonry and gas appliances man, you know I it just wasn’t something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to learn a something that made me think it wasn’t the daily This is how you do it. So I started looking into electrical and plumbing and pretty much applied to this job it was a plumbing apprentice had no idea it would be this in depth Leak Detection thing. And I you know it’s I love it right away. I took off you know after three years in the trade, I I don’t always been on Instagram. Just I always saw this Great trade community on there as far as you know you have some some amazing painters on there and amazing plumbers on there and it is just such an awesome community you can always message somebody get some help with something I just love the community and then when one day I was like why don’t I just make one of these you know I see enough crazy stuff. You know, I do crazier stuff that I’ve seen in there so I I made it really took off.
I just hit 6000 followers
you know people are liking seen it. I think what I do a lot is I do scuba diving to test pool plumbing and people really came to me in a scuba suit.
Greg Owens 36:56
Get into that part two in order to like test the pool. Sometimes you have to actually Go down in the water. Oh, yeah, put the scuba equipment on, go into the pool and go down there, man. That’s that’s an interesting aspect of the job.
John Stephenson 37:09
Yeah, yeah, there’s, you know, it’s, it’s hard to sum the job job up and, you know, in a short, short talk, that’s for sure. You know, it’s we if if something leaks, you know, besides cars, we we will find it you know, we do free times pools as you were saying we do house leaks. Yeah, you know, yes. And of course, you have cool scuba diving.
Greg Owens 37:41
And I think I think like you like, like myself, I, I was never really that great at school or sitting in front of a computer for too long or doing the same activity even over and over again. One of the aspects of painting for me, that was always the most interesting was Is that every week, every two weeks, we’re on a different job. You’re probably even like every single day practically is probably a new job or two jobs or something like that is that
John Stephenson 38:13
Yeah, I do.
Typically six jobs a day.
Greg Owens 38:17
Six jobs. So that’s a lot of jumping rocks. That’s a lot of that’s a lot of driving, moving around and new and new environments. Right. Because every single job that you
John Stephenson 38:25
Oh, yeah, we cover such a broad area.
Greg Owens 38:28
Yeah. You know, it’s,
John Stephenson 38:30
we’re not just Marin County, we, you know, I was in Rio VISTA yesterday.
Greg Owens 38:38
It’s far.
John Stephenson 38:39
Yeah. And we have contracts with the Vale finding leaks on their municipals Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely different every day and I think that’s what I’ve taken a huge liking to, for sure.
Greg Owens 38:53
Because one of the things I’m trying to do with this podcast is like just explore other jobs in To sort of the fields and related to commercial work and that kind of thing, and this is definitely for some types of people, like you said, it’s a, it’s a bit more of a rare individual that would seek out this kind of job but it definitely sounds like could be a lot of fun too.
John Stephenson 39:17
Yeah, no, it’s definitely a it’s a niche to you know, it’s, um, we, as far as Leak Detection goes, you know, it’s the company I work for has has almost a monopoly on it. So it’s definitely a niche, niche work, you know, not people do it and it it takes a lot of practice to get good at it for sure.
Greg Owens 39:41
That’s great. And so where could people find out more about you your Instagram?
John Stephenson 39:48
Yeah, they can go to my Instagram it’s @the_leak_doctor.
And
yeah, got a cool little
cartoon figure I had a buddy of mine he actually does a podcast in the south Bay’s cool, local non union podcast and he, he designed the sticker for me so
Greg Owens 40:13
Oh, nice. That’s crazy that
John Stephenson 40:15
that sticker that’s that’s me.
Greg Owens 40:18
Okay, well, and we’ll put that in the show notes so people can can look you up. I really appreciate you being on this on this podcast. It’s, it’s very interesting to learn more about what you guys do leak detection. And this is the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We had John Stephenson, The Leak Doctor. Thank you so much.
John Stephenson 40:42
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Outro 40:54
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.