Saving Even More Money with a Home Reverse Osmosis System!

Daniel from AB&R Plumbing here again, and I decided that, since I was saving so much money with my new tankless water heater (see the previous blog entitled “Well, I finally did it!”), I decided to save even more on my drinking water.

I broke down and had a new Reverse Osmosis drinking water system installed in my Mission Viejo home.

AB&R plumbing has installed quite a few Reverse Osmosis systems recently, in both homes and offices. We have installed them in Irvine, Aliso Viejo, Trabuco Canyon, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and many other cities in Orange County. I decided it was time to “take the plunge” and start saving money on buying bottled water.

A home Reverse Osmosis system basically gives you an endless supply of purified water that you can use for anything. For cooking, giving it to your pets, watering your plants, using it in the steam iron (or my new garment steamer – still not sure what this is!), making coffee or tea, making ice cubes, almost anything that you would want to make sure and use the cleanest water available.

If you are buying bottled water now, you have a few problems to consider.

- The cost – It can cost you more than $6.00 a gallon to buy bottled water. Sure you can pay less than this, but then you get into the next problem.
- Quality – how good is that water you’re buying? There is an internationally sold brand of water that says right on the label that it has 309 ppm of dissolved solids. This is almost as bad as your tap water!
- Convenience – With bottles, you have to go buy them, carry them home, they take up space to store them, and what happens to all of those bottles? Even if you recycle them (and most people don’t), it still is a lot of plastic! This means that a Reverse Osmosis system is “green”!

With a home reverse osmosis system, you will take the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of your water down to less than 25 ppm (in Orange County, it usually starts at around 450 ppm). You have the system installed at your kitchen sink by a trained professional, we remind you when your filters need to be replaced (usually once a year), and it can usually be connected to your ice maker to give you purified ice!

My wife and kids love it! I had a line run to my ice maker, so it took an extra 40 minutes, but he was done in under an hour-and-a-half. It is very convenient (and pretty cool) to be able to get a drink of pure, clean water, right at my kitchen sink, anytime I want.

There are all kinds of options and add-ons: you can get an undercounter chiller or heater, you can get custom-finished faucets, there are pumps to increase your pressure (and they don’t use electricity), and more.

Give AB&R Plumbing a call and ask about having a home Reverse Osmosis system installed in your Orange County home today. You’ll save money, save time, and cut down on your use of plastic – which is very “green”.

I guess you could say you will save some green by being “green"!

Our Jetting is Better Than Their Jetting

We have customers who pay us more for quarterly jetting of their drains than they used to pay “someone else”, and they are happy about it.

How does that work?

Our jetting service is better than their jetting service for three reasons.

1)Experience: We have over 20 years experience in jetting drains. This means that we know how drain systems go together, what kind of “creative plumbing” we might run into, and – most importantly – what to do about the challenges we find.

2)Our jetter: We use a 4000 PSI diesel-powered jetter with a 500’ hose. This is a powerful tool (from US Jetting) that, unlike the over-glorified pressure-washers that most jetting companies use, will actually emulsify grease and wash it away. Less powerful jetters break off chunks of grease that float down line and become a problem further down.

3)Thoroughness: Most jetter companies just jet the drain mains. This is why they can charge so little; they come in, jet one or two lines, and are gone. It takes them very little time, but it is not nearly as effective as what we do.

At AB&R Plumbing, we jet from every floor sink, every cleanout, every floor drain, and every other access point we deem necessary. We jet the trap arms, laterals, mains; basically we jet everything we can reach. Just jetting the mains and not doing the trap arms and laterals, is like sweeping your hallways and not cleaning the offices.

So, we charge more for our quarterly jetting (or monthly or semi-annually), but you end up paying less in the long run. Since we are jetting as much of your drain system as we can reach, you will be less likely to need to call us out between quarterly visits because something clogged up. All of your lines will be getting cleaned during each jetting visit, instead of just the ones outside.

We have contracts with customers all over Orange County for quarterly and semi-annual jetting. We do restaurants in Newport Beach, Anaheim Hills, and Costa Mesa. We do Office Complexes in Orange, Costa Mesa, Tustin and Lake Forest. We do a couple of small malls, a few strip plazas and even a branch of the US Post Office.

Are there other benefits to using AB&R Plumbing as your jetting company? Yes!

Our technicians drive trucks that are well stocked with both tools and parts, and they have years of knowledge and experience to apply to almost any plumbing problem you may have. From clogged drains to leaking faucets, from no hot water to faulty mixing valves, from a toilet that won’t flush to installing a water softener, AB&R Plumbing is the one to call for all your plumbing needs. Residential, commerical or industrial...

If Water Goes Through It, We Do It!

Well, I finally did it!

This is Daniel from AB&R Plumbing here, and I finally installed a new Noritz #0841 tankless water heater in my Mission Viejo home. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner!

My wife has been after me for a long time to install a new tankless water heater and we are all glad I finally did. Endless hot water from these Noritz tankless water heaters is really great. Most homes in Mission Viejo, and the surrounding cities like Lake Forest, Laguna Hills and Laguna Beach, are just perfect for new installations. My Mission Viejo tankless water heater installation, however, did present a couple of unique challenges.

Our old 50 gallon gas water heater was installed in the downstairs laundry room, and the gas line was only ½”. The original flue was galvanized and connected to the FAU vent. This does cause two issues because most tankless units require a minimum of a ¾” gas line and you need to install a stainless steel vent. Having to comply with these requirements was part of my original reluctance to complete the renovation. It wasn’t until my wife left for a trip out of town with the girls from www.calvarymissionviejo.com that I decided to finally take the plunge and surprise her with a laundry room make over.

Believe it or not, I hired my own crew to help in the remodel! The boys from AB&R Plumbing completed all aspects of this make over. Everything from demo, tile removal, drywall repair and of course all of the plumbing repairs needed to convert this outdated Mission Viejo laundry room to something more conducive to today’s demands. Even though I decided to remodel the whole laundry room, my main focus was the tankless water heater. We ended up removing the old 50 gallon water heater and rerouting all of the required plumbing for the new tankless water heater outside …. That’s right….. outside, www.noritz.com offers several outdoor models.

Once I was able to move all the plumbing and the water heater outside, this freed up a lot more space in the laundry room. We were able to install more shelves and a garment steamer. (What’s a garment steamer???? I don’t know … but my wife says she needed it and it “irons stuff”. Who knew!!!!)

Even though I decided to install the new Noritz #0841 tankless water heater outside, I could have still installed it inside as well. With some minor modifications, I could have easily utilized the original plumbing system that was installed in my Mission Viejo home. But now that we moved the new tankless water heater outside, I now have room for a garment steamer!!!!!

Life is good.

"Joe the Plumber" vs. "Dan the Plumber"

It’s a “Battle Royale”!
It’s going to be a real knock-down-drag-out!

Who is the better plumber (for Southern California)?

- “Dan the Plumber” has never been on TV.
- “Joe the Plumber” has never fixed a leaky faucet in Aliso Viejo, or cleared a clogged drain in Rancho Santa Margarita!

- “Dan the Plumber” has never been featured prominently in a presidential campaign.
- “Joe the Plumber” doesn’t have a website, advertising his services, for customers all over Orange County, CA!

- “Dan the Plumber” has never been interviewed by a newscaster.
- “Joe the Plumber” is not a licensed plumbing contractor in California (License # 877283)!

Since this is an amateur bout, folks, it only goes three rounds, but I think the decision is obvious!

If you are a Southern California business or home owner, in need of standard or emergency plumbing repairs, “Dan the Plumber” wins all three rounds!

* Does your home in Mission Viejo need a new water heater?
* Does your Irvine business have a clogged toilet?
* Would you like a softener installed in your Laguna Beach home?
* Does your Costa Mesa business need to have the sewers jetted?
* Would you like to have a Reverse Osmosis system installed in your Tustin home?

Only “Dan the Plumber” can do all of these things and much more; “Joe the Plumber” isn’t allowed! (And his response time would be terrible since he lives in Ohio, or Indiana, or something.)

By the way… Who is “Joe the Plumber”, anyway? Does anyone really know? I mean, we have heard him mentioned in a presidential campaign, and then there was the guy on the news, but, is that the REAL “Joe the Plumber”?

“Dan the Plumber”, on the other hand, is a REAL person! He owns AB&R Plumbing (a full-service, 24-hour plumbing company, serving all of Orange County), as well as New Technology Plumbing (A commercial new construction and tenant improvement plumbing company). Some might say he is The Greatest Plumber in the World, but “Dan the Plumber” wouldn’t, he is just too modest.

Noritz Tankless Water Heater Rebates!

Are you thinking about having a tankless water heater installed in your home?

There are some definite benefits to having a tankless water heater installed, not the least of which is the savings on your gas bill. You should use noticeably less gas with a tankless water heater than with a standard “tank” water heater. How?

If you have a 50 gallon gas water heater in your home, you are essentially keeping a 50 gallon tank of water heated to between 115 – 120 F. It will depend on where you have the thermostat on your water heater set, but you are heating this water all day and all night. If you go on vacation, you are heating this water. If you spend the weekend in Vegas, you are heating this water. This uses a lot of gas

When you install a tankless water heater, you only heat water when you open the faucet.

A tankless water heater has a device in it called a flow switch. This senses when water is flowing through the heater and turns on the gas to the burner. If you open a hot faucet somewhere in your house, the tankless water heater will immediately turn on and make 120 F hot water. When you turn off the faucet, the tankless water heater senses the flow has stopped and stops making hot water. This means you only use gas while you are using water!

This could mean a substantial savings on your gas bill. What’s more, there are rebates available from the federal government, and maybe from your gas company. Check the Noritz website and click on “Click Here For Local Utility Rebates” in the lower left corner. There is a rebate from the federal government ($300.00) and there may be one from your local gas company (up to $525.00!).

AB&R Plumbing has a lot of experience installing tankless water heaters. These can be installed in your home, office, RV, wherever you currently have a standard water heater. They can run on natural gas or propane, so you can really put them anywhere. Contact us and find out how you can start saving money on your gas bill today.

Money is Tight!

It is amazing how much difference a year makes.

A year ago, gas prices were in the high $2.00 range; up around $2.75 and higher and they were going up!

A year ago, people were still buying SUV’s, still building new office buildings, still remodeling their homes and more.

Now most of the car dealerships look like ghost towns, many of the office buildings have only 1 or 2 tenants in them and most people have put any kind of major home expenditure on hold.

So what do you do when you have to make the repair?

Obviously, everyone is trying to find the least expensive way to do things. A lot of people do it themselves, others find a neighbor or a friend who can help. But, if you can’t do it yourself and you don’t have a friend, what do you do?

At AB&R Plumbing, we do not charge by the hour. Period. If you ask what our “hourly rate” is, we will tell you about or flat-rate pricing. Are we affordable? You bet your boots!

Let’s say you call a plumber to clear a drain for you. He drives to your house, inspects the problem, pulls out his ½” snake machine and proceeds to try to clear the clog. If his machine is too big (or too small), he probably doesn’t have another one on his truck, so he has to go back to the shop to get the right size.

He charges you for all that time.

Your bill is going to include his time to figure out the problem, the time it took him to try his snake, the time to drive back to the shop, get the new one and drive back to your house, and then he still has to clear you drain.

At AB&R Plumbing, we have five (count ‘em; five) different sizes of snakes on our trucks. We don’t have to drive back to the shop to get the right size, we have it on our truck.

If we clear your drain with our ½” machine at 2:00 in the afternoon, it costs the same amount to clear the same drain with the same ½” machine at 2:00 in the morning. We do not charge overtime.

Something else that we can do that most other plumber cannot... almost everything.

At AB&R Plumbing, our motto is:

If Water Goes Through It, We Do It!

We do clogs, leaks, repair. We install softeners, toilets, faucets and more. We


Looking for an “affordable” or “Hourly rate” plumber, stop looking. Look at the flat rate pricing AB&R Plumbing offers. All of Orange County and beyond, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, every day of the year.

Well stocked trucks – both tools and parts – and well trained technicians. 24-hour emergency access to our supply houses. You can’t afford not to call us!



Now, on a totally different subject…

Is anyone out there watching Lost? This is one of the smartest shows I have ever watched! The plot twists make sense (not like some of the over-glorified soap operas that are out there), the characters are believable, you like some and dislike others. It is a great show!

I plan on – after it is all over – going back to the beginning and watching it again to see what I missed the first time. I love all the hidden stuff; the recurrence of the numbers, the connections of the passengers to each other. It is so smart.

Let me know what you think.

Care & Feeding of your Garbage Disposal

With the holiday times here, we are getting a lot more calls for clogged kitchen sinks. Most of these calls are due to a garbage disposal being used, or cared for, incorrectly. Let’s go over a few things about proper operation of your garbage disposal.

First, let’s just call it a disposal. Calling it a garbage disposal gives people the false impression that they can put anything in there, just like the trash can. This is not true. Here are the top 3 rules to using a disposal properly, and thereby helping to prevent the need to call a plumber (like AB&R Plumbing) to fix it.

1) Both the disposal and the water have to be running.
It doesn’t matter which one you turn on first, but the water needs to be running full blast and the disposal needs to be on. Some people claim that it matters whether you use all cold, all hot or a mixture; I have never found this to be true. What is true is, the more water the better.

2) Never put more in the disposal at one time than you would comfortably put in your mouth (if you ate this stuff).
And you wondered why I called this blog the care & “feeding” of your disposal! Seriously though, if you only put small portions into the disposal at a time, it will work much better, last longer and be much less likely to clog. It may take a little longer to finish your food preparations or cleanup, but it will take a lot longer if you have to wait for the plumber to come fix it!

3) Let the disposal finish one “bite” before feeding it another.
What I mean by this is, let the noise go back to the same sound you get when it is running empty. Let the water run for a little while longer and then “feed” it another bite. When you are finished, let the disposal run about 15 seconds longer than you think you have to and let the water run 10 seconds longer than that.

If you follow these 3 simple rules, you will eliminate most of the problems people have with their disposals. (By the way, 2 of the worst things you can put down a disposal are coffee grounds and potato peels. Neither one will hurt the disposal, but they both are the most frequent cause of clogs. Just though you might want to know!)

Let’s all work together to help make this holiday season, and the entire year, a joyous, happy time, free from the hassles of clogged disposals and interrupted plans.

Merry Christmas!

Backflow Devices

A backflow device prevents water from flowing backwards into the potable water system. Many residential and commercial building have one or more of these on lines that go to irrigation, fire sprinklers, down to a dock and other places.

The Orange County Health Department requires all backflow devices in Orange County, CA to be tested once a year by a certified tester. These testers attend a state-regulated course to learn the proper method for testing and repairing these devices. Testers have to be re-certified every two years.

At AB&R, we have 3 employees who are certified by the county to test backflow devices in Orange County. We also use a subcontractor to test devices outside of Orange County (we are in the process of getting certified in both LA and Riverside counties).

If you have a backflow device at your home or business, you should receive a notice from your local water district, every year about the same time, telling you your device is due for testing. If you are not receiving this notice, please, call your local water district and ask them why. Yes, it will cost you money, but it isn't very much, and here is why it is a good idea to have your backflow device tested.

Lets say (for example) you have a backflow device at your home that is on the line that provides water to your irrigation sprinklers. Let's further say that it has not been tested in more than a year, and there is something wrong with it. If a low pressure condition occurs in the city water supply - and this happens a lot more often than you know - water that is sitting on your lawn could be sucked back into the city water supply. This water might have debris, bugs, pesticides, fertilizer, animal waste and more in it.

Do you really want to drink this water?

It only costs $49.00 per device to have your backflow device tested, and you only have to do it once a year! That's less than $1.00 a week! If you contact AB&R Plumbing, we can schedule your test. We fill out all the paperwork, send it to the water district, the OC Health Department, you get a copy and we keep a copy. Next year, when it is coming due again, we will contact you and let you know.

Less than $50.00 a year to keep animal waste and chemicals out of our drinking water... Sounds like a good idea to me!


TO change the subject...

I am sure there are tons of people out there who have comments about the election. If you want to say anything here, please remember the following rules:

1) No profanity. If you use it, I will simply delete your comments. They will never make it to anyone!
2) Be polite. You wouldn't want someone being rude or calling you names if they happen to disagree with you, so don't do it here, please.
3) Be respectful of other people's opinions. I am sure that my opinions are not shared by everyone else. And yet, I am asking people to voice their opinions. Show everyone else the same respect.

That;s it! Not too bad! Let me get it started...

President-elect Barak Obama! I never thought I would live long enough for this country to get past something as unimportant as skin color. Will he do a good job, do you think? He has said he will bring the troops home from both Afghanistan and Iraq, do you think this is a good idea?

Do you feel all clogged up?

Is the drain in your shower slow?

Do you have a toilet that clogs a lot?

Do you have to not use your garbage disposal because it always clogs?

All of these are indications of a potential problem with your drain system and can be investigated and (usually) fixed fairly easily.

Everything that drains in your house drains – through something called a p-trap – into your house sewer system. The pipe where it starts is usually the smallest and, as that pipe joins to other pipes, they get bigger. The pipe that leaves your house is usually 3” or 4” pipe!

The drain for your kitchen sink and bathroom sinks typically connect with a 1-1/2” pipe, your tub or shower are typically 2” and your toilet is either 3” or 4”.

So, if the pipes are that big, how do you get a clog? Good question!

With most sinks, the clogs are going to be in the p-trap. This is underneath the sink and junk can settle into it and not get flushed down the drain. If enough junk gets settled into here, a clog will form and your sink will back up.
With a tub or shower, the biggest culprit is hair and soap scum. Hair catches on everything and the soap scum glues it together. Over time, these can form a nasty clog and really make your drain slow down.
With a toilet, the biggest problem is toilet paper. The p-trap for a toilet is part of the toilet. When you flush some solid waste and too much toilet paper, this is too much bulk to make it through the p-trap. Bingo, a clog! The most important thing?

DON”T FLUSH A SECOND TIME!!!!!!

Toilets are designed to hold all the water in the tank and not overflow. If you flush a second time, then the water goes all over the floor.

One note on toilets: don’t use them to flush things that you don’t want. Everything, it seems, gets stuck in a toilet. I’ve had toy cars, eyeliner pencils, bars of soap and GI Joe’s get stuck in toilets. In all cases, except the GI Joe, it was necessary to REPLACE the toilet! We could not get them out! Keep the lids down and your kids away!

Most of the time a clog in a sink or toilet can be cleared with a plunger. When this won’t work, that’s when you have to call me. Plumbers have machines call “snakes” that feed a stiff wire – ¼” – ¾” thick – down the pipe and rotate it as it goes. These wires (called "cabes" or "rods") have blades on the ends of them that help the snake dig. This will usually dig through a clog and break it up in the process. Then the weight of the water washes it away. Sometimes this process involves more than one size machine from more than one access point.

The thing to remember is that your drain system is designed to wash away liquid waste for the most part. The only place that is designed to handle solid waste is your toilet and it is designed to handle it with a lot of water! The larger your liquid to solid ratio, the better!

Just a note about garbage disposals – they are NOT designed for every piece of food you don’t eat or for when you are cleaning out your refrigerator! Here are the rules for using a garbage disposal:

1) Turn the disposal on first, before you put any food in!
2) The water MUST be running before you put any food into the disposal.

Note: it is perfectly fine to run the disposal without water; it will not hurt the disposal. The reason for the water is to rinse away the food, not to cool or protect the disposal.

3) Do not run the disposal when the sink is full of water. This will cause the pipes under the
sink to vibrate a lot and is very bad.
4) Put small amount of food into the disposal, not big hunks. Put the equivalent of about 2
mouthfuls in!
5) Let the food be ground up and washed away before putting in more food,
6) When you are finished, wait a few seconds after the disposal stops making grinding noises
before turning it off
7) Leave the water running for at least 5 seconds after the disposal is off.

If you have any plumbing problems, you can always visit our website and set up an appointment for us to come out and fix it. If you want to remodel, add a reverse osmosis system or softener, replace a leaking faucet or for any other plumbing issue.

Are you following the football season? There have been some interesting games so far! I am a huge Steelers and Patriots fan, but I love football in general. Just some of my thoughts on the season so far...

... who would have thought that the Titans would be undefeated after 10 weeks!

... It looks like Bill Parcells has made a difference in Miami!

... Detroit is off to another dismal start. The question is, is it more likely that Detroit will go 0 and 16 or that Tennessee will go 16 and 0?

... Mike Singletary needs to start thinking like a head coach and not a player. He really threw his Offensive Coordinator under the bus!

... Looks like Bret Favre could take the local Pop Warner team and make contenders out of them; not that I am saying the Jets are bad, it's just that Bret is so good!

Any comments!

All For a Good Cause

Okay, we're famous!

Well, maybe we're not famous, but we are mentioned in a news article for a local homeless shelter. Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach recently did some work, remodeling, among other things, their bathrooms. AB&R Plumbing did the plumbing! You can read the article under "It takes a village to build a bathroom". They liked our work so much that they have asked us to quote the bathroom on the floor above!

This was a pretty good job and it shows off the versatility of AB&R Plumbing. Most "service plumbers" aren't set up to do this kind of work. AB&R has an advantage; we have our parent company. New Technology Plumbing is a new construction commercial plumbing company. They have done many large commercial buildings, including the 8-building Broadcom complex for The Irvine Company. Check out their website to see what kind of work "the Hawgs" can do.

This means that, between AB&R and New Tech, we can handle anything from a clogged drain to new construction of your eight-story office building - and anything in between.

Now, off the subject of plumbing...

Have you watched Dancing With the Stars? My wife and I love this show and we Tivo and watch it faithfully. Between this and So You Think You Can Dance, we get a good "dance fix" from our TV for most of the year. If you have read any of my earlier blogs, you know that we are ballroom dancers, so it is a lot of fun to watch really good dancers dance.

Cloris Leachman has to go!

I loved a lot of the acting she did, but as a dancer she is a train wreck! Enough is enough! Some of the other dancers are really doing well but the fact that people keep voting her back every week is unfair. I think she should have gone in the first week, even if she did dance better than Kim Kardashian this week.

Let's hear your thoughts!

Feeling The Pinch?

When was the last time you went out to dinner?
Did you notice how empty the stores are lately?
How about those giant "For Lease" signs everywhere?
Where did everyone go?
Is everyone holding on to what little money we have?
How did you spend your stimulous check? If you are like me, it went into my gas tank!

I guess I will be the first to say it out loud ....... "It's a recession!" And in my opinion it is going to get a lot worse. BUT ...... there is hope for those of you that are smart with your finances.

1. If you like to eat out - great.. go for it. Just limit what you purchase or even share a meal. My wife and I have been doing this for almost 15 years!
2. Need some new clothes? Hit Target ..... or even Sears .... that's right Sears. LL Cool J has a smokin' new line out at Sears - Buy his clothes and you too can be hip!

In times like these, if you panic YOU WILL LOSE! Be smart and spend wisely. If all Americans stop consumer spending, then you will see a depression and not a recession .... sad but true. Consumer spending in the USA is the "life blood" of our economy.

At AB&R Plumbing we have really felt the pinch. Our entire crew is still busy BUT .... all of our clients -commercial plumbing and residential plumbing - in cities like;

• Mission Viejo
• Lake Forest
• Newport Beach
• Laguna Beach

are all watching how much they are spending on improvements or repairs. "If it ain't broke ... don't fix it" we are hearing.

This has forced our management team to really buckle down and reinvent ourselves. What do I mean by this? Look at Madonna for instance, it is easy to become #1 in something but it is harder to stay #1 for any length of time. For the last 20+ years, Madonna has reinvented herself year after year staying in the spotlight without fading ..... a little misguided - perhaps .. but I think you get my point!

I am not saying you should "Reinvent the wheel", but you may need to seriously alter some of your daily spending or rituals to make it through this recession without damaging your image, credit, relationships or employment.

Any comments out there?

Backflow Devices

Starting about 3 or 4 months ago, we got a whole bunch of calls from various property managers saying that people had stolen their backflow devices. (What's a backflow device? Click here!) People were stealing them and then trying to "recycle" the brass at one of these scrap metal places. These things cost a lot of money (in many cases, more than $1,000.00) and, to steal them, they shut off the water to your building! And you can't turn it back on until you replace the device!

Then, they found one of the guys in Mission Viejo with hundreds (I think) of these devices in his house. I don't know what he was going to do with them. No way would a scrap metal yard take that many from one person.

There are all kinds of ways to minimize your risk of having one of these stolen, but the best is to install a cage around it. If you contact us, we can give you a bid. We would pour a concrete pad around your device, install some bolts in it and then put a metal cage over it. When we come to test it, we just unlock the cage and go to work. When we're done, we just put the cage back! A determined thief can still get to it, but most thieves don't want to put that much effort into it and will move on to easier pickings


Now, off the subject...

I put here in a previous post that I am a ballroom dancer (no, I am not nearly as good as the ones on Dancing With the Stars). I do it strictly for fun, some exercise and because my wife loves it. When I started, though, I had a real problem.

I have studied one martial art or another since 1983. Most of these require strict body positioning, positioning that usually looks nothing like any type of dance step. It was really funny watching me try to maintain my balance while trying to look good dancing!

Fortunately, due to the patience and perseverance of many dance instructors, I got past this. Now, I am a decent dancer and I don't look all stiff and awkward as I did when I started.

There are a lot of excellent dance instructors in and around Orange County. Just a few are Lisa Narita, Tom Hyatt and Louie Herrera. Check out these sites if you are interested in having fun, meeting people and getting some exercise!

Price Book Changes!

We’ve Updated Our Price Book!

No matter what the “experts” tell you, we are in a recession. (If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck… )

Because we are ALL hurting, we decided to re-vamp our entire price book. The boss and I spent more than 20 man-hours going through every item in our price book. We lowered almost every price!

Now, plumbing is still expensive; don’t expect something that would have cost $500.00 before to only cost $50.00 now! That’s not going to happen. But it might be $425.00, maybe even a little lower!

Our prices were not outrageous before. We have a saying here, “Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.” By this we mean that we just want to make enough money to turn a profit. We are trying to build relationships; partnerships, if you will. We need to make money, but we don’t need to get it all from ONE customer!

To give you an example of one of our prices. The normal price to test a backflow device is usually either $49.00 or $59.00! That's it! (There are a couple of things that could make it be more than this, but normally this is the price per device!)


Something totally off the subject...

I am sure many of you watched the Olympics! I know my wife and I did. We have Tivo, so we were able to record a lot of it and watch it when we wanted to. (How did we ever do without Tivo? We have told friends about it, and they all said things like, “That’s nice”, but you could tell they didn’t care. Then they got Tivo and they absolutely love it!) It was tough though, I watch Sports Center almost every morning and I couldn’t watch during the Olympics. I didn’t want to find out what happened before I got to watch it. What fun would it have been to watch the basketball gold medal game if I already knew who was going to win? (Okay, I had STRONG suspicions who was going to win, but I didn’t KNOW!)

Water Treatment

AB&R Plumbing now offers water treatment to all our Orange County customers!



I won't even ask if you are spending too much on bottled water. If you are buying bottled water, you are spending too much. Can you believe more than $1.50 for 12 ounces of water!? And you don't even know if the water is any good or not!



When you are talking about drinking water, you usually measure what is called Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in Parts Per Million (PPM). TDS is basically a measurement of everything dissolved in your water, that is not water. It can't tell you how much of it is lead or sodium or phosphorus or iron, it just tells you the total. An easy way to think of PPM is, if you had 1 million ounces of water, at 500 PPM, 500 ounces of that water would not be water. Typical Southern California tap water is between 350 and 500 PPM.

So, what do you do? You can buy bottled water! That's expensive, you have to lug the bottles home from the store, you end up throwing away 9or hopefully recycling) a lot of plastic. You can't even be sure if you are getting good quality water! One of the major brands of water sold in stores today (it was VERY trendy a few years back and it's one of the more expensive brands) tells you right on the label that they have 309 parts per million of dissolved solids in their water!

This stuff is almost the same as your tap water, and they want you to pay more than $2.00 a liter for it!!!!!

Talk to your friends who have them and you will find that a home reverse osmosis system, installed under your kitchen sink, gives you bottled-quality-or-better water for only pennies a gallon.

Many of the major water bottlers use reverse osmosis to purify their water and then they sell that water to you. You can cut out the middle man, spend a lot less than $6.00 a gallon, and get clean, fresh, purified water right at your kitchen sink.

Contact us today for more information about a home reverse osmosis drinking water system or whole house water softener today

We are going to be increasing our content on our website to include more information about reverse osmosis and water softeners. Keep an eye out for that info and, in the meantime, if you have any questions, just contact us.



Now a little bit about your author (that's me!)

I have been in the water treatment field for more than 20 years. I started out in Boston with a company that is now (I believe) the largest privately held home & office water treatment company on the east coast. (My brother owns it, so I'm kind of proud!)

After Boston, I moved to a more central part of the state and started my own home & office water treatment company. After 3 years, I sold that company (to my brother) and moved to California.

In California, I helped a friend start a third water treatment company in Santa Ana. I left after about 5 years.

I am now working for AB&R Plumbing. We are using their expertise in plumbing, combined with my expertise in water treatment, to bring the best of both worlds to you.

So, since I lived in the Boston area for all those years, can you guess what my favorite baseball team is? That's right! The Pittsburgh Pirates! (Just kidding, it's the Red Sox!) Any other baseball fans out there? Keep it clean, especially you Yankee fans!

Welcome to AB&R Plumbing

Welcome to AB&R Plumbing's first ever blog page! Here, we hope to tell you about the services we offer, anything new that happens, and basically give you more information about plumbing and AB&R.

First, who we are!

AB&R Plumbing has been in business for over 20 years. We are a full service plumbing company offering all the services you would expect of a plumbing company, plus a few you probably wouldn't expect. See our list of services below.

At AB&R, our motto is:

If Water Goes Through It, We Do It!

AB&R Plumbing services all of Orange County, California and a little bit beyond. We service homes, offices, office parks, apartment complexes, condo associations, Home Owners Associations, restaurants and more. If you have a need for a service plumber, you would do well to call us first.

Some of the services we offer:

• Backflow Device Testing & Repair


• Drain Clearing


• Drain Video Inspection


• Reverse Osmosis Sales & Service


• Water Softener Sales & Service


• Commercial Kitchen Ficture Repair or Replacement


• Residential Fixture Repair or Replacement


• Water Heater Repair or Replacement


• Tankless Water Heater Installation

We provide scheduled services and repairs as well as Same Day or Emergency services.

Check out our website for more information on these services. Also, I will be posting more info here as time goes on.

If you check out our website, go to our Plumbing Services page. Click on the "Print Coupon" button and our list of discount coupons will come up. You can select any (or all) of these and print them for discounts off our plumbing work.

Okay, enough about plumbing for a minute. Let's talk about our people.

Our company President is a surfer! (He doesn't say "dude" that often.) I have heard him say he gets up at 4:00 in the morning to go surfing! He and his pastor frequently go together!

My wife and I are ballroom dancers (for fun only, we do not compete or teach). We actually met at a dance in Newport Beach. I started dancing in Massachusetts about 9 years ago and she started here in California about 10 years ago. We know some great places to go dancing and quite a few good instructors here in Orange County, CA