Gold Canyon Plumbing is not your standard plumbing business. It is nonconforming in its ownership, doesn’t have a front office and caters to a customer base that is home only about half of the year.

The Arizona-based company is succeeding, though, and is having fun while doing so.

Kim Yeagley is the woman behind this success story, a native of the Phoenix area and the daughter of a handyman.

“My father was a handyman, my grandfather was a handyman, my uncle was a handyman,” she says of the family legacy of workmen who would undertake just about any manual task, including cabinetmaking.

Although Yeagley was around her father’s work, she did not actively participate in it. After he developed cancer and began to lose his strength, however, she helped more than before and absorbed more skills than she may have realized. This became apparent a few years later when she met the plumber she would marry, Ivan Rowe.

“You know your tools!” Rowe said approvingly when she first accompanied him on plumbing calls and demonstrated familiarity with wrenches. Rowe was a partner in Gold Canyon Plumbing, which was founded in 1990. Yeagley began working in plumbing supply houses, which proved invaluable when she eventually got involved in plumbing itself. That occurred when Rowe lost his business associate to a move out of state.

Finally, in 2019, Yeagley decided to fully commit to the enterprise and began the process of becoming owner of the plumbing house. Besides solidifying her position in the company and industry by becoming her own boss, she thereby gave herself freedom to flex her schedule and care for her ailing mother and father-in-law, both of whom now have passed.

Knowing the tools

Today, Yeagley is 50% owner of Gold Canyon Plumbing and two auxiliary companies — Coppertop Plumbing and East Valley Locating — and is working toward full ownership. An associate, Brian Kronebusch, fully operates the locating firm. For commercial plumbing, Yeagley bids jobs through Coppertop Plumbing and subs out the work.

Rowe, who has 30-plus years’ plumbing experience, concentrates on residential plumbing through Gold Canyon Plumbing. His colleague in the residential work is 35-year-old Steven Irvin, an unofficial family member.

“Steven adopted us,” Yeagley says. “He didn’t have a father and said, ‘Ivan, I want you to be my dad.’ He’s one of my kids now.”

After 17 years in plumbing, Yeagley knows a lot more than just which tool is a pipe wrench. “I know my plumbing and I like turning wrenches. I can do just about anything,” she says. “Soldering. Locating. Conditioners. Toilets. Sinks. I like being hands-on and don’t ask the guys to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. One of them might help me lift a heater in place, but I can install it.”

Unique service area

Three-quarters of Gold Canyon Plumbing’s business is service calls. The remaining residential work is for local building contractors. Though the 41-year-old owner is not a master plumber herself — the business, of course, is licensed — she is working toward becoming one.

After all, she’s busy. Yeagley largely handles sales, billing and customer service from her Dodge 1500 pickup using a phone and iPad. “My truck is my traveling office. Technology is great,” she says and notes her mobile office situation is on purpose. “I tell everyone that the key to our success is low overhead. Simplicity.”

The company footprint covers East Valley, East Mesa, Apache Junction, parts of Scottsdale, and, of course, Gold Canyon. The latter is an upscale retirement and “winter visitor” area in the foothills of Superstition Mountain.

So-called “snowbirds” residing there flock south as winter approaches in northern climes, effectively doubling the population of the area. They constitute half to two-thirds of Yeagley’s customers. Yeagley was asked if providing service to impermanent customers is much different than serving a less transitory residential population.

“The primary difference is a lot of these people are here just six months out of the year, so I don’t want to sell them stuff they have to maintain year-round,” she says. “I try to find out each customer’s needs and provide what really fits them.”

The here-and-gone character of the winter-visitor customer is evident during certain times of the year.

“I get a lot of calls in the spring about turning off the water for six months. They need to have a good shutoff,” Yeagley says. “They also sometimes need to replumb the system so that, while the house is shut off, the lawn can still get watered in summer heat.”

Gold Canyon Plumbing bills itself as a 24/7 company and lives up to that. When the calls come in after hours and into the night, they are answered. Yeagley says she might get two or three emergency calls a week or go months between emergency responses.

“When people call at night, they really are in need of help,” she says. “I remember one lady called about 3 a.m. and she was freaking out because her house was being flooded. I tried to walk her through shutting off the ice-maker line, but it started spraying her in the face. We immediately ran out to help.”

Awkward no more

As a woman owning a business in a male-dominated industry, Yeagley has suffered her share of awkward moments when a customer finds a female plumber standing on the doorstep.

“Once they see that I know my stuff, it’s not a huge issue,” she says.

In the cases where a customer can’t get comfortable, she good-naturedly doesn’t push the matter.

“I know when to give up and suggest the customer talk to my husband,” Yeagley says. “I let my husband deal with it. You have to kind of know what the mindset is with a customer. Some people are just dead-set against using a female plumber.”

On occasion, she has gone ahead and fixed a plumbing problem while her husband distracted the customer with talk.

The flip side of the gender issue is that being a woman owner of a plumbing shop sometimes brings business that might otherwise go elsewhere.

“I advertise on my website that Gold Canyon Plumbing is a woman-owned business and a lot of women call me for that reason,” Yeagley says. “They are more comfortable with me doing the work — they feel safer — and are afraid they are going to get ripped off by a male plumber. Me personally doing the work gives them peace of mind.”

The competence of the husband-wife plumbing team and congeniality of Yeagley have proven to be reassuring to the generally retired winter visitors who are their customers. She says that “my customers love my husband and me. Often they become our friends. We stop by just to check on them and to say hello, giving them five minutes of our time between calls.”

Going green

Gold Canyon Plumbing is environmentally conscientious. Water in the area contains lots of dissolved minerals — so-called hard water — and begs for treatment. Says Yeagley: “In the valley, our water is very, very hard.”

She gives her customers treatment options to deal with it. “When they don’t want to mess with lifting heavy bags of salt, I give them salt-free options to soften the water. Whatever they decide, they say they appreciate that I educate them about their choices.”

A growing segment of her customers is choosing the Green NAC scale control water treatment system over traditional salt softeners. NAC uses neither electricity nor salt and requires little maintenance. Yeagley believes it is “way better for the environment.” Employing a reverse osmosis machine is another common treatment method. Yeagley recommends her customers employ an alkaline system to restore some of the good mineralization into filtered water.

Beyond green alternatives to more traditional water treatment, Yeagley is a fan of certain plumbing fixture brands, such as Moen and Delta. “Nothing else for me,” she says. “They’re easy to service and easy to put in and come with lifetime warranties.”

She also prefers Milwaukee tools and RIDGID SeeSnake inspection cameras, which she uses on service calls as well as inspections for real estate agents. The company subs out waterjetting when the need arises and rents a mini-excavator if digging out a line becomes part of a plumbing solution.

“If I need a Bobcat, I’ll rent it and run it myself,” Yeagley says. “On a rough day, it can be nice to sit and dig awhile.”

The long-range plan for Gold Canyon Plumbing is to expand some.

“I want to get three trucks on the road,” Yeagley says.

She is quick to add though that she doesn’t want to grow so large that the company’s family feel is sacrificed. There are priorities, after all.