Thursday, May 22, 2014

Sewer Clean Out Bellingham, Wa

Anyone who has had the a sewer stoppage has heard the question, "Do you have a clean out?"

This is a sewer clean out Ball Plumbing installed recently. Yes, it's 15' deep!


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Ball Plumbing's website is getting better

Yikes! I didn't know the website was that screwed up! Most of the mobile function was gone along with most of the pages.

Good thing all you need is a phone to call a plumber: 360-647-2255 or 360-757-4455 will get us there pronto.

Sorry for the inconvenience of a terrible website....

(To be fair, some of it was a certain 3rd party installation, but I sure can't throw stones. Anybody who works with their hands--or in customer service--should have a hard time throwing stones.)

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Ball Watches

There are other companies called Ball like the Ball Watch Company, for example.
http://www.ballwatch.com/

This watch is about average for their offering at just under $4k. That's a lot of stoppages..lol


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Revamped www.ballplumbing.net

I got tired of the ridicule about the "baby poop brown" colors, the dead links, and the references to 1995 design.

I found and destroyed most of the "baby poop brown" except for a few locations where the color code was hidden by original coder.

I put the prices on their own page (www.ballplumbing.net/prices.html) and added a Specials page (www.ballplumbing.net/specials.html)

Nothing fancy, but better that it was this morning.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Installed a customer-supplied kitchen faucet

She calls us from Lowes, while waiting in line to purchase a cheapo Moen kitchen faucet. That wasn't the problem, though.

The problem was what a local plumbing company did to her before she found Ball Plumbing. They quoted pre-tax $479.00 installed for a similar faucet or $279.00, if she bought the faucet. When she balked, they charged her $49.00 call out charge.

I installed her kitchen faucet for the one hour minimum of $132.00, pre-tax. Took 40 minutes.

So, her cost was roughly $250.00 using our plumbing service and buying her own cheapo faucet. She saved $229.00 off the top. Well, add in the $49.00 service charge and it's lowered to $180.00, but that's still a savings.

If she would have bought our really nice stock model Delta kitchen faucet, her cost would have been pre-tax $375.00 for a really nice kitchen faucet. But, that's still $125.00 more than she wanted to spend in her Roosevelt neighborhood home.

Ball Plumbing charges $132.00 for the first hour, which includes travel and one hour of labor.

For each additional 15 minutes, it costs $22.00.

Really, it's cheap at half the price.......yuck yuck.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Sewer Stoppage Charge

How much does it cost to unclog a sewer stoppage?

In 2010: $254.73 (Using the 2010 price book)
In 2014: $245.21 (Using the new hourly rate, as outlined below)

The drain stoppage I did yesterday took 90 minutes from arrival to getting paid. I had to search for the sewer access and then I ran the snake twice the full 100' to the city sewer.

That doesn't include the 5 minutes taking/processing the job order or the 20 minutes to drive there. Those costs are included in the first hour.

Plumber labor break down: $132.00/first hour. $44.00 for additional 30 minutes ($22.00/per 15 minutes) = $176.00

Equipment charge: $50.00 (The big sewer machine)

Tax: $19.21

Total: $245.21

That was for nearly 2 hours (if you include travel), plus equipment. It would have been faster if I didn't have to spend all that time searching for the sewer clean out. Plus, I had to clear the utility closet out to access the sewer clean out.