John Stephenson is The Leak Doctor, a licensed contractor, plumber, and leak detection specialist who works for a leak detection company in the Bay area. John has capitalized on his brand as a leak specialist using social media to build his platform as The Leak Doctor, providing insight and information about common leaks and plumbing humor.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- John Stephenson talks about his business during the lockdown
- What is leak detection?
- How to detect a leak
- John recalls stories of the different leaks that happen in old and new construction
- The similarities and differences between facility management and leak detection
- Has the impact of COVID-19 changed the way residential clients think about leaks?
- Why is the retention of leak detection specialists so low?
- The effect of community building around leak detection on social media
In this Episode:
When an outlet doesn’t work, you call an electrician. If you want to replace a broken load-bearing beam in your house, you call a contractor. If there is an unexpected leak in your home, there are a few different people you could call, like a plumber or a leak specialist. But how do you find a leak specialist?
Commonly referred to as “The Leak Doctor” on social media, John Stephenson works for a leak detection company in the Bay Area. Online, he provides humorous-yet-educational insight about the ins and outs of leak detection.
Got a leak? Join us in this week’s episode to learn about how John Stephenson uses his experience as a Leak Detection Specialist to find evasive leaks and the success behind his growing Instagram platform. Greg Owens, the host of the Watching Paint Dry Podcast, interviews John Stephenson, The Leak Doctor, as they discuss common leaks in residential properties, the rise of home repairs, and the future of leak detection.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- John Stephenson on LinkedIn
- John Stephenson on Instagram
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, it’s Greg Owens here with the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. And Today is July 17 2020. And this is a we’re in California and they just went back into sort of like scaled us back into pandemic lockdown mode. Luckily for us, construction hasn’t been affected and we’re able to keep painting. I hope everybody’s doing well in this nice times. We are continuing our conversations about property owners, facilities managers, and building engineers and other contractors and trades that are also in the commercial space of construction and property management. This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting. We are a bay area San Francisco Bay Area company and we paint all types of commercial properties throughout the whole San Francisco area. We have done work for many different companies like Google Abercrombie and Fitch, Autodesk, like SPIN and many many more. If you’d like to learn more about McCarthy Painting, just go to info@mccarthypainting.com And send us an email or you can go to McCarthypainting.com for more information today I’m excited to have John Stephenson on the call with me and he is The Leak Doctor and Leak doctor is it’s a somebody that’s going out and finding leaks, which is not an easy thing. So we’re going to learn more about doctor John And welcome to the podcast.
John Stephenson 2:31
Thank you for having me.
Greg Owens 2:33
So checking in with you first, like personally how you guys are doing they’re in this lockdown and, and pandemic and what’s going on for you?
John Stephenson 2:45
We are you know, we are doing good. um
you know, as far as as work goes, um, I would say
the first week or so, come weeks maybe if COVID we slowed down a little bit. Just mainly, mainly because people did not want us in their homes. And they could put the, you know, not non life threatening lakes you’d say, on hold, such as irrigation or pools and that sort of thing. But we never really shut down completely. Still went to work every day. Then this last month has actually been our top sales month we’ve added ever Wow, as far as sales, so, you know, it’s as far as work goes, it hasn’t affected us too much. As far as risk and all that, you know, it’s a little nerve wracking, you know, having a virus to deal with they’re
Greg Owens 3:58
totally
John Stephenson 3:59
I had a job in
center fell in the canal today and it’s one of those top areas for the virus and that was a little nerve wracking but um, you know, we just put our gloves on and mask up and get fully suited and analytics. You know, we’re doing as good as can be, I guess.
Greg Owens 4:26
Yeah, that sounds it sounds even better like with the with a good sales month. So explain like a little bit to the audience what what your job entails and what you end up doing? Because I find it fascinating because it’s not something that’s easily defined and easily, like, you know, like discovering water leaks is not easy.
John Stephenson 4:52
Especially Yeah, it’s got some curveballs involved with it for sure. Pretty much what we do. is we are I work for a full service Leak Detection company so we do everything from pools and spas, gas sewer to city municipal mains feeding on city and multiple homes. So, I pretty much what we do is our main business is locating underground lakes with specialized equipment. I guess an example of that a typical job for me would be we get a call because somebody has a high water bill or their their water department I’ve contacted them and say, Hey, your meters failing we think you have a leak. I normally would come in and he checked the toilets and you know, check the obvious. What we do when we come in is most of the time toilet except all That easy stuff has been rolled out. And we use what’s called a. It’s well, it’s called a leak finder, but pretty much it’s an electronic stethoscope. And it amplifies. I mean, some of the newer models amplify sound, I believe times like 500 compared to the human ear. Oh, well
Greg Owens 6:22
see you’re actually listening for the leak as you go and, and really sort of listening for that sound of water sort of moving in directions or places it’s not supposed to go.
John Stephenson 6:33
Exactly. So pretty much I mean, to do our job, we ask that no water is being used at the time by pressurized water leaving a pipe is going to make a kind of a friction sound. And what we’ll do is we’ll walk around to the outlets, and we’ll listen for it and where we hear it the loudest typically means is closest to the week. Mm hmm. At that point, we’ll introduce a tracer gas into the line. There’s many other there’s two different kinds, we use helium.
A lot of other companies will use nitrogen.
And I’m sorry 2% hydrogen and nitrogen is a different kind of tracer gas. But at that point we can sniff for the leak. So we know this, we’re hearing is pretty much
what?
Greg Owens 7:31
So you have another device that can smell the helium then so like you put the helium in the water or in the line, and where it comes out in the soil, I guess, right like it’s got to come out somewhere is you guys can detect it and then like, closer pinpoint where the leak actually is. Exactly, exactly. So
John Stephenson 7:54
pretty much the sound of water, you can hit it off a pipe, but it’s not going to make a Very big area unless your lead finder directly on it. So what the gas does is typically it actually bubble up around the leak area. So it’s, you’ll it kind of gets you in the area of the leak. And at that point you can listen for it. And in some situations with deeper lines, you know, you have to use the sniffer because sound can be confusing, I guess is the the main main point here. I have beliefs that are six feet deep. And it’s it really takes a trained ear to differentiate between the sound of your ass traveling through the line or water hammer compared to an actual leak. So what the sniffer does is it verifies what hearing is an actual leaking line. And we use this in a number of different scenarios. So a lot of what we do is domestic water mains, from the meter to the home. And then we also deal with a lot of slab leaks where you have the hotline and the coal line running underneath the slab,
Greg Owens 9:09
right.
John Stephenson 9:11
And all kind of the same principles, as well as pools when we pressurize the plumbing for pools is the same principle. We’re listening. We’re using the gas to kind of get in the area of it. And then of course, you know, for metallic ratlines, we have line locators and that sort of thing that kind of help us show us where those lines are running. Hmm.
Greg Owens 9:37
So is that like a mind detector kind of thing that picks up the metal or how does that work? Yes,
John Stephenson 9:43
pretty much it’s a it’s a machine that you attached to the pipe and you grounded off a grounding rod a little ways away and it sits a tick down the down the line. locators are able to pick up exactly where that’s going. Tell us the depth of it. And if there’s any T’s or anything branching off the line, which is something we run into a lot in residential, it’s not as straightforward as commercial,
Greg Owens 10:14
and definitely not as straightforward as municipal municipalities. Oh, interesting. Interesting. So yeah, and in this podcast, we tend to talk to a lot of facilities managers and property owners and building owners like what is there anything that you sort of see that’s common in those kinds of construction as far as leaks go and things they should be looking out for?
John Stephenson 10:39
Um, typically when it comes to commercial buildings, major one we see is in her irrigation. Um, the way a lot of these commercial buildings are set up is they have three different meters so they have their domestic meter and their domestic backflow that feeds all the water for the bathrooms, drinking fountains. All that stuff.
Then they have their irrigation meter and then their fire.
One of the main things we see with these big office complexes or irrigation meters going off
which
reason being is a lot of these big office complexes, they were smart enough not to run their plumbing side under slab, or as far as the pressurized plumbing. And, you know, not to say we don’t do main lines for them, but irrigation is something that typically will have a problem every year or so. Just because, you know, it’s only used half of the year.
Greg Owens 11:45
Alright, so the irrigation lines tend to because they’re not used as often they almost get like hanger rot or some kind of problem happens that they can’t detect as quickly.
John Stephenson 11:55
Exactly, exactly what we see a lot happened with the irrigation line. is a bigger properties there are multiple irrigation valves feeding different zones. And when those irrigation valves have pretty much rubber diaphragms inside of them, they’re made to be pressurized all the time and open and closed. When those lines are not ran and then ran, I mean that that rubber will kind of tense up and get stuck open and seize and we do is we’ll come come in with our sound equipment and figure out exactly what valves are bypassing or
if there’s high, that sort of thing.
Greg Owens 12:41
Right, right, that makes total sense, right? Because like, you know, if things aren’t being used, like on a regular basis, they can tend to wear out faster sometimes, right? Because they need sort of that lubrication they need sort of that, that environment that keeps all the pieces sort of moving and working together. Exactly.
John Stephenson 13:00
Exactly it’s kind of like a car that’s been sitting there for a year not ran, you know, it’s gonna have more problems and die.
Greg Owens 13:10
Right? Yeah, I guess anything else like the Is there anything that a building owner or facilities manager should look out for as far as irrigation like when do they when do they call you in because sometimes they’re probably troubleshooting it with their landscaper and that kind of thing. At what point they’re like, No, we need a specialist to come in here.
John Stephenson 13:31
I’m pretty much
at the point where we’re true. I mean, he typically they have the landscaper look over it for a lot of times they make my job a lot easier because they done the legwork and figured out what leg a blind it is, or, you know, a lot of these bigger commercial properties. They have what’s called isolation valves to separate the properties up and it’s really nice when I go At one of those big jobs in the landscapers said, All right, I’ve already figured out it’s on this corner of the property. Right? You know, at that point, it’s, it’s a lot easier than doing all that myself. But as far as the, I guess, the customer or the building maintenance, you could always check the water meter. I mean, the downside of these big commercial buildings is, let’s say a residential home. The meter is moving, it’s going to be a high water bill, the water department is going to contact them and say, hey, there’s something going on here,
Greg Owens 14:41
huh? Yeah,
John Stephenson 14:42
the commercial building, you know, they’re not going to do that because there’s so much more volume of water being used. They don’t, it’s hard to differentiate between water used and water leak. So typically, it is not discovered until they get there.
Greg Owens 15:04
Do you think that’s to me? Do you think that could be one of the reasons driving sales right now you said you had like a really like a really good month, and you’re busy. Could it be that since the buildings aren’t being used right now that they’re like, hey, why is our water bill still high and we don’t have employees here.
John Stephenson 15:23
You definitely. I had a
a church the other day in Tiburon, they leave $5,000 water bill. And two months, they had absolutely no one there. So they were like, this is not right. Well, yeah, I can definitely see it contributing for sure. That and we also see I mean, when people were are stuck at home, we noticed a lot of homeowners wanting to get things done and trying to do things themselves or Getting around to things that they’ve put off for a long time. I think that’s contributed to it a lot too. But, yeah, no, it is very good point. A lot of the commercial buildings have not had people in.
Technically there should be no water used it all
Greg Owens 16:20
right, right. Right. Yeah. So and, like, you must have come across some really unusual jobs or unusual problems. What’s been what sticks out in your mind?
John Stephenson 16:35
Um,
John Stephenson 16:37
yeah, I’ve come across a good amount. Is that what I often bring up is I had a job at the airport in Sanford
John Stephenson 16:51
eight months ago.
And I’m dealing with bigger pipe, because it’s not something I’m doing every single Day. So it’s always like, Oh, nice, you know, I gotta change it up a little bit. And they had an issue with their 16 inch fire main fan, which is a big, big pipe.
Greg Owens 17:12
It’s a lot of water. That’s a lot of pressure and a lot of power.
John Stephenson 17:16
Exactly. And the issue that we’re having is that line feeds all the hydrants on the tarmac out there by the plane. And there’s isolation valves forum, but the leak was so big that it was acting as if a hydrogen was on. Which, at an airport like that, raise the alarms on and they had these big diesel booster pumps that fire on to really pressurize that water in the case that there was a fire to extinguish it. Yeah, yeah, problem is it wasn’t coming out of fire extinguisher or a fire hydrant. It was coming out of leak. So that pressure was like detrimental to the line every time they opened that segment with gone. Yeah. So that was it was a pretty cool job. You know, when it comes to big lines like that, you know, it’s, my van would not fit the amount of gas it would take to fill a line like that. So who is we bring a big compressor? Which, you know, you’ve seen the trailer to compressors for jackhammers and air hammers.
Greg Owens 18:33
Yeah, yeah, we’ve used them for sandblasting and that kind of stuff for sure.
John Stephenson 18:36
Yeah, exactly. So we take one of those and you know, we do this little manifold or I have this manifold I make where I it’s almost like a wife for him, but he’s got on there and I have my helius set up one of those outlets. I have the compressor set up another gauge on the other and then later for the other one. What we do is we pressurize it with the, with the compressor and the helium just to make that sound. And it just stands out to me. I mean, it was a pretty easy one to find, but it was, it was cool just purging all the lines at all the hydrogens, you know, all over SFO and
Greg Owens 19:21
right, what ultimately was it cuz that’s a lot of water that day, like where like, Where is that water going?
John Stephenson 19:30
Well, you know, typically when they do those underground pipes, right, you know, they have a huge barrier of like pea gravel and all that around there, which acts is almost like a drain. And I mean, it pretty much was just going into the ground and we were all making jokes like one of these days. The parking lots gonna cave in from that leak, but luckily, we’re able to find it pretty quickly and You know I actually got a picture of the leak they found and it was like a
say this probably revised three inches.
Greg Owens 20:10
Oh wow like a three by three inch hole inside a 16 yeah diameter pipe.
John Stephenson 20:16
Yeah it was a it was a big one
Greg Owens 20:19
considerable
John Stephenson 20:21
yeah so it was a luckily it was pretty easy to find it was big sure if it was cast I think it was steel because it was welded all welded flange separately old pipe for sure. But oh yeah that definitely stuck out to me. That was one of the one of the good ones.
Greg Owens 20:44
Yeah and so you’re and see you guys you go in and do the the leak detection you also sometimes are hired than to fix the leak is an or sometimes like it sounds like in that situation. An outside plumbing contractor with heavy equipment and that kind of stuff. came in to do the actual fixing you guys did the detective work really?
John Stephenson 21:04
Exactly. Yeah, we do.
So I believe our plumbing license allows us to
do okay, so we can do I believe up to like four inch lines
and it’s also only allows us as far as we can only go five feet deep after five feet requires shoring and all that stuff and I’m sure we we could get that but as far as the work coming in, it’s just as a one man shows so it’s so cool for guys off their territories to do a job like that. Just
Greg Owens 21:52
see if you guys have specialized in up to a certain size and then not having to trigger certain things like shoring the wall. If you go down below five feet because it gets more complicated you need
John Stephenson 22:03
exact heavier
Greg Owens 22:04
need a lot of heavier equipment you need one of those like what their their steel sort of like walls basically that they drop into.
John Stephenson 22:13
Yeah, that dropped into the hole and
Greg Owens 22:15
yeah, yeah that makes sense. Yeah
John Stephenson 22:17
and I mean they then you need confined face permits it just kind of gets iffy at that point. We do do repairs a lot of the income comes off repair work but again, we are we are one man shows so it’s kinda like you got you know, gotta get what’s the most one guy is going to be able to do repair on a mainline under the asphalt one guy can do in a day. You know, I dropped like that at SFO would be weeks out and we wouldn’t be able to get to the other Customers pretty much
Greg Owens 23:01
right. And I would I can only imagine a job like that it’s probably like five people or something because everything at the airport is overly complicated and you need way more manpower and a year, or accept expecting with all the security and all that stuff.
John Stephenson 23:15
Exactly. Yeah, I remember it was, I had my special name badge and the high was on one side of the fence and the parking lot was on the other. And every time I went from each side of the fence, I had to stand with the guy I was with and he had to come in and they open the gate. Right?
Greg Owens 23:33
Yeah, we’re complicated. I’ve looked at some work at the airport. And I’ve turned it down. Because of those reasons. It’s so complicated, logistically, it’s like, like there’s other people that really specialize and doing the work out there. Exactly. Yeah. And it’s great that you get to move around and look at different types of jobs all the time that keeps your job. Sounds like it keeps it really interesting and fresh and new every day like you’re not in the same place. for very long What’s it what are some of the other aspects of career in Leak Detection? Like if somebody’s out there and they’re thinking like, Oh, I want to you know, this this might sound interesting.