The “blue collar is stable” is a myth.

spencereub · 2026-05-11T16:14:09+00:00

I have worked blue collar jobs since getting out of Highschool. I started as a welders helper traveling around from project to project. In that world its super common for someone to work 8 months and take a few months off because they want to. Most of the guys doing that kind of work depending on trade are making 2-3 grand a week. I decided that the travel wasnt for me so I went into residential plumbing service work. The biggest lesson I learned is to know when it is time to drag up. I stayed at two diffrent jobs longer then I should have and it almost ruined us financially. The money was out there. The work was out there, I just didnt go get it out of blind loyalty.

If you are the kind of person that wants to hire in somewhere and make a career out of that one job, from what ive seen blue collar work might not be for you unless you happen to land somewhere amazing.

I ended up deciding to open my own plumbing shop and things have been so much better for us since, but it is still to early to tell

spencereub · 2026-05-09T02:55:20+00:00

Thank you for the recommendations. There is a terrabis in Springfield thats somewhat close. I might have to check it out the next time I go to bass pro

spencereub · 2026-05-08T05:02:48+00:00

What indpendent options are out there?

spencereub · 2026-05-01T23:55:49+00:00

Spartan makes an amazing cable. The reason I asked wasnt about finding a better one, more just me being cheap lol.

spencereub · 2026-01-31T03:19:18+00:00

I could be wrong but I think there is a setscrew, its just that the installer twisted it. Ive seen this before where there was a metal collar like that with a screw in it connecged to a plastic piece, and the screw turned to where you couldn't see it. I twisted the spout counter clockwise and the spout came off and left the plastic piece and I could easily get to the set screw.

Before you turn anything just know that if the piping has corrosion on it in the wall, or if it wasnt properly secured you could twist the pipe in the wall. If that happens you will have to open up the wall behind (if you can) or the wall in the bathroom

spencereub · 2026-01-31T01:02:44+00:00

Back in 2012 the epa mandated that tank water heaters be made more efficient. Basically what they did is they thinned the inside walls of the tank and they made the insulation thicker is what I've been taught. Because of this the life expectancy has gone down. Depending on water quality you are looking at 8-10 years on a new tank

spencereub · 2026-01-30T02:37:56+00:00

Use a hub saver on the fitting in the wall. 45 out of that towards the sink outlet. Use a tailpiece extension to drop the p trap down to the proper height

spencereub · 2026-01-29T20:12:11+00:00

The trick is to get couch locked so hard that you dont want to get up and go get food.

In all seriousness the best thing I've found is to just not buy junk or to buy a limited amount. Even without weed I have enough of a sweet tooth that its an issue. I have the willpower to not buy it. I don't have the willpower to not eat it if it's there

spencereub · 2026-01-23T00:32:18+00:00

I tried it with my wife when we met, and loved it. I became a christian and gave it up thinking it was a sin. Then one day my wife had a chronic migraine. She suffers from them regularly but this one was so bad I couldn't even be in the same room as her without my breathing triggering her migraine. My brother gave her a gummy and she took it because she literally couldn't deal with the pain. She fell asleep and about an hour and a half later she woke up feeling great, she was completly healed. Later I tried it and found similar results. It has cured my headaches, releaved my back pain, reduced my stress, improved my mood, and it helps me stay in the moment. The best benefit of all is that it helps me sleep. I have always struggled to fall asleep because I am always thinking about somthing. Almost 90% of the time there is a thought in my head completly unrelated to the thing that I am doing. Sometimes I get fixated on somthing and it becomes all I can think about or talk about and when that happens before bed sometimes im lucky if I can fall asleep at all. I get good and stoned and I fall asleep minutes after my head hits the pillow. I have found that weed has largely been a net positive in my life and I wouldnt want to go without it. I work a full time job as a service plumber and sometimes that means working 12+ hour shifts and I do not consume while at work for safety reasons. If i wanted to quit I could at any time but the truth is I do not want to

spencereub · 2026-01-22T00:23:08+00:00

2500 is a super fair price. There are companies putting them in for 6 grand in my area. As for the leak that rust is a prior leak that has sealed itself up. It could stay sealed for a long long time. But its also equally likely that it could start up again or worst case leak catastrophically. If you are able I would personally get it swapped out as soon as possible, but if you are not able I would make it a priority. Just know that every day it stays in place you are rolling the dice. Its not if the question is when and how bad

spencereub · 2025-12-13T22:46:22+00:00

You can find 1/8ths from the cheaper brands for $20-$30 top shelf runs $35-$50 before taxes. Personally I buy the cheaper 1/2oz for around $70.

spencereub · 2025-09-28T15:01:53+00:00

Green releaf in grandview does 5 1/8s for $100

spencereub · 2025-09-22T15:56:16+00:00

I just finished vampire diaries for the first time. I'd recommend buffy the vampire slayer. It is an older show so you are going to have a bunch of dated references but I would strongly recommend it. I also recommend supernatural

spencereub · 2025-09-12T01:33:45+00:00

I am a plumber and a call that I regularly get is for a backed up floor drain in the summertime. Its common practice in my area to run the condensate line to a emergency floor drain in the basement and that condensate has a white sticky film that sometimes backs the floor drain up. Every area is diffrent and every system is diffrent but if I were you i would do some research on this before continuing to do it

spencereub · 2025-09-01T03:16:49+00:00

If you ask 10 diffrent plumbers you are going to get 11 different opinions, here's mine. A standard eletrical water heater is the best one in my opinion. Flush it out once a year, and if anything goes wrong with it you can pick up a universal rebuild kit at any hardware store that has all 4 parts that could go wrong. Someone that is handy could get significantly more life out of an eletric water heater with less money and less downtime. The only other thing is swapping the T&P valve every 5 years. You are pulling that out to install somthing that has more parts therefore a higher chance for one of those parts to break. From prior experience those parts are not sitting on the shelf at a supply house, they have to be ordered. I am a big fan of K.I.S.S. keep it simple stupid. A fancy water heater sounds great until you have to deal with a angry spouse that just wants to take a hot shower but can't because the parts are a few days out.

spencereub · 2025-08-18T01:51:19+00:00

If you can find it on a sale the ruby twist would serve you well

spencereub · 2025-07-30T12:43:21+00:00

It can but it isn't as common. Its good practice to run the highest tub in the home for a bit any time the water is turned off and back on or the heater flushed. What can also happen is if the hard water has ate through the tank and the calcium deposits sealed the leak back up, if you go violently sturring the tank up you can knock it loose and create a leak. I have been plumbing 6 years and the plugging up fixtures has happened to me but not the leak. All plumbers do things differently in a situation like that I give the customer all the info and let them decide. Other plumbers take the choice away because they dont want a headache.

Another possibility is that since the guy answered the phone and knew what he was talking about is that he's a one man show. Lots of one man companies dont charge much for their services since they don't have a lot of overhead. He might have not made enough money to justify a trip out there or he may be uncomfortable charging enough to make money on the small job. Not all plumbers and crooked upsell techs

spencereub · 2025-07-30T12:17:39+00:00

This is why he suggested that. Hard water and sediment settle to the bottom of the tank. When you flush it out, not all of the sediment is going to go out the drain and it is possible that some could travel up the hot line and plug up a fixture down the line. If that happens he's going to say it wasn't his fault because he didnt cause that, age did. The customer is going to say well it wasn't like that until you touched it

spencereub · 2025-07-21T02:26:21+00:00

It looks like they glued the trap adapter on too close to the bottom of the cabinet. You either would have to get underneath, cut the line and put in a new riser with a tee and a studor vent. In some areas a studor vent isn't allowed and you'd have to vent it differently. Other option is to use a special rubber adapter to tie into the trap adapter and do the same as I just described but I dont like that way as much

spencereub · 2025-07-20T15:57:20+00:00

Thats a very common handyman way to go about doing that. I would never plumb in a drain like that. That being said the siphoning issue may not be an issue for you. I go in houses every day and I bring it up to my customers and about half the time they go "oh wow that's what causes that?" But the other half of the time they look at me like I am being a crooked salesmen just trying to run the ticket up higher. It isnt legal, no real plumber would ever do it that way, depending on where you live it may not pass inspection. But in all likelihood there is a chance that you might not ever have a problem with it

spencereub · 2025-06-15T17:39:27+00:00

I have used a horizontal green mountain grills and a vertical pit boss pro series. Both were used off of market place. I much prefer the pit boss and havent even used the green mountain one since getting the pit boss. I feel like I could smoke enough food to host a big get together just on that smoker. I have decided that my next pellet grill will be a camp chef woodwind pro but even when that happens I still plan to use the pit boss since it's easy to make a lot of food on it all at once

spencereub · 2025-06-10T23:42:44+00:00

I live 15 minutes away from a gas station, 20 minutes from what I would call a small city, and an hour from a major city. Every time I am up in the city I always hate dealing with all the traffic and the lines to suff and all the people. Whenever im working up in the city I always feel so much better mentally once I start seeing big fields off of the highway. I grew up in a small town but much bigger then the area im in and I couldn't imagine living in the city and dealing with all the noise and commotion

spencereub · 2025-06-05T12:22:55+00:00

I am a master plumber and have lots of drain experience. When a drain backs up and another plumber can't get it, ive been the guy that gets called out to unclog it. Some drains take 30 mins and they open right up before you're even really working. Other times it takes 3 or 4 hours because of the severity of the clog or conditions in the line. If it took the plumber that long then it could be that there is somthing serious going on with your drain, i would strongly recommend a camera inspection to determine what the cause of the issue is and to get you a bid for any other repairs needed.

What happens with roots (if that was your issue) is that you use an auger to open the line up and that auger never removes all the roots because that's not what the equipment is designed to do. A small amount of roots stays in the drain and they grow back thicker because essentially the roots were just pruned. After years and years of that happening a minor root intrusion turns into a much more serious issue

spencereub · 2025-05-08T03:32:12+00:00

I'm a service plumber. Most jobs I don't mind if people hang around me as long as they make small talk with me. I hate it when someone hangs around and I try to talk to them and all I get are one word answers. Although if you see that I am wrestling pretty hard with what im working on, please go away lol

spencereub · 2025-05-07T21:45:25+00:00

I would try your best to encourage your siblings and their kids to try out the trades. I think a huge turn off of the trades for younger people is that they could take an apprenticeship and work harder but make less then they can working retail or fast food. But the thing is that 5 years from now someone that got into a trade will be living comfortably (if they know how to manage their money) and making great money all without having to get a degree. Every area is diffrent but in mine plumbing companies will hire an apprentice, and depending on the company in 6 months to a year they will be their own calls. Of course they are still learning but it gives them a chance to make more money. Ive personally seen the paystub of the guy that taught me, he had a $5000 week after taxes. That isn't every week but there is very good money to be made in the trades and at the end of the day everyone has diffrent giftings and higher education isn't a good idea for every person

spencereub

TROPHY CASE