was there yesterday and I have never seen so many do it yourself plumbers. Me and this other licensed plumber along with over 20 amateur plumbers. I'm all for DIY because I don't know your budget or maybe you just like to build systems BUT you have to know when to stop.

One guy was complaining to the sales rep about the price quote to install a 75 gallon gas water heater.
then almost the very next sentence was "how do you wrap the teflon tape around these nipples?"

Maybe only because of the incidents with explosions posted on here it made me think immediately of why this guy should NOT be installing his own 75 gallon gas water heater. Know when to say when and be safe out there.



Edited 2 times.

they are probably there because the supply house charges them the same as they do you.

"and I have never seen so many do it yourself plumbers"

I believe it has a lot to do with how in our country for a long time now we've been seeing ever changing economic issues and although overall the ultra-rich are certainly still getting richer the middle class and especially the lower-middle classes and poor's standard of living has been going down.

Today housing costs in many if not most areas of our nation have reached a point where lots of people simply can no longer afford what we used to be able to afford. I think although these DIYers that you are seeing more and more would love to be able to hire pros they simply can no longer afford to hire others and must struggle and attempt the repairs and replacements themselves (which in many cases should they make mistakes and do it poorly they end up paying more than if they had hired an honest professional in the first place).

He probably got a quote from a "flat rate" plumber. In this area they quote in the neighborhood of $4,500.00 for a gas 75 gallon installed

I agree with vic on the cost being a factor.

However, I also think the quality of the tradesman and pride of workmanship is eroded over the years.

Before I found this site and started doing my own plumbing, I was hiring and paying professionals to do my plumbing. Something didn't look right but I was ignorant as to what would work and what would not so I posted pictures here hoping to get some clarity. Almost every pro on here said to rip it out and redo it. So I paid plumber B to rip out work by plumber A. After I got to plumber D, who was the father of the city plumbing inspector who came to look at my work said "fail fail fail...and I know just the guy who would do it the way it should be done..." gave me the card of his father who's a master plumber who only takes cash. By the time his father finished the work, was the beginning of me rolling up my sleeves.

So in addition to the cost issues, I think the quality has gone downhill, way downhill on many of the pros.

Wow........He only takes cash, so there's no paper trail to get his son fired. I've gotten to a point where I simply can't do the big jobs anymore. I learned how to do them when I was younger and poorer. I've got a rotator cuff that probably needs surgery. The knees, back and most of the other joints in my body are shot from years of working on machinery. I found a plumber I trust and let him do the bigger jobs now. I still have issues with contractors in other fields, and wind up doing other work myself. I guess you could say I pay for that at the end of the day.

Yup Paul48, I hired his dad to "finish" the rough in. After I paid and his son signed off the inspection, I dug everything back up and redid all of it based in step by step instructions from the pros here.

Obviously all the pros on plbg.com are at the top of the game, but there are also lots of pretenders out there. So I think while there are more and more DIYers because of cost, there are also DIYers because they got burned badly. Plus the availability of cheap tools like Harbor Freight and DIY friendly parts (like sharkbite fittings) makes the entry cost to try to DIY much lower.

I’m a big DIY’er. I do it for 2 reasons: first I enjoy doing it... for example I like collecting tools... even have some antique ones. I enjoy using them, and also, when I have some crazy DIY job it lets me justify spending funds to buy more. For example, I just bought a (used) set of Greenlee knockout punches for conduit on eBay this week for my generator project. Never owned any before.

Second, and more importantly: I cannot find any professionals to hire of the caliber, for example, of the pros who post on this site. Not saying they don’t exist, but they are probably busy doing large projects or commercial/industrial work which I assume is more lucrative than working on houses in a middle-class neighborhood. My experience with this mainly falls into 2 categories: the pro who doesn’t speak English well enough for me to comfortably communicate with, and the “pro” who communicates but gives me concern about his skills.

So I usually just end up doing (or re-doing) it myself. Takes longer obviously but it’s cheaper usually and I don’t have to do it multiple times.