When one door closes, as they say, another one opens. That was the experience of Randy Rushing in 2008.

Rushing purchased Peerless Plumbing in 2002. The Phoenix, Arizona, plumbing services company specialized in repiping — the complete replacement of a home’s aging waterlines with new copper pipe. In 2008, when the national economy tanked, overhauling an entire residential plumbing system must have seemed a luxury to struggling homeowners.

“The market for repiping fell apart, so Dad was looking for something to expand the business. He was looking into new technologies,” says Christian Rushing.

What he found was NuFlow Technologies, a company that began in the 1990s to introduce CIPP solutions to small diameter — that is, home-sized — pipe problems. Peerless Plumbing became the first certified installer of NuDrain lining in Arizona (examined when the company was first profiled in Cleaner in the May 2013 issue) and the rest is history.

Pandemic business surge

Christian Rushing is part of that history. After years as a U.S. Coast Guard boatswain’s mate participating in search-and-rescue missions off the coast of Oregon, he returned to Arizona in 2005 and began working for his father. While Christian enjoyed the plumbing trade overall, when the senior Rushing discovered CIPP products, he became especially passionate about the business.

The younger Rushing eventually met and married wife Lindsey and, in 2019, the couple bought Peerless Plumbing from his father. The following year saw the arrival of the pandemic, and all the business dislocations that ensued. However, it turned out to be a blessing for the company.

“It was fantastic. We grew significantly in 2020,” says Lindsey Rushing, who serves as company president. “It was a great year for us and for a lot of service companies. Everyone was at home and needing repairs and that allowed us to grow our business.”

When the couple took over Peerless Plumbing, the workforce consisted of Christian and two employees. With the onset of a surge of business in 2020, six other technicians were quickly hired. Today, the Rushings have 20 employees and eight trucks on the road — five dedicated to pipe lining and three for camera inspections, estimates and other service calls. Christian supervises, does camera inspection work, bids jobs, works on some lining installations and generally seems to live in his truck.

“We definitely did not plan to grow that fast,” says Lindsey. “COVID threw us into a growth mode. We had to reallocate funds for growth and get new equipment for the increased workload.”

Pipe lining takeover

In 2024, Peerless Plumbing remains a drain-and-sewer-centric business. Officially, the company consists of two divisions: Peerless Plumbing and NuDrain Phoenix. In fact, 99% of business volume is pipe lining. 

“Peerless Plumbing has been around since 1985, and we didn’t want to abandon that name,” Lindsey says. “We wanted to continue to build on a long-standing company reputation.”

The NuDrain Phoenix division was created in 2020 to differentiate the plumbing work from the sewer and drain lining work. Partly that was a response to the nonresidential side of the business — real estate agents and other businesses that look to the company for nonplumbing tasks like camera inspections and sewer line repair.

“We will always have a plumbing element in the business,” Lindsey says. “Everyone needs general plumbing work done at some time and we have a great plumber on staff, Brandon Brinkley, who can handle all those calls for us.”

But most of the company crew members are out cleaning and repairing lines on residential and commercial properties. Phoenix has been a community for more than 150 years and has a population of 1.4 million people. That represents a lot of drain and sewer lines. In many homes in the older sections of the city, those lines are cast iron or Orangeburg and are aging fast. 

“In 2008 when the company got into the lining business, a lot of the cast iron was in bad shape. Now it is 16 years older, getting very brittle and needing lots of care,” Lindsey says.

Solving desert pipe problems

Residential and commercial drain and sewer pipes are generally 2 to 6 inches in diameter, perfect for NuDrain’s solutions. Vegetation in the desert valley is water-starved, of course, and pipe systems are targeted by roots.

“All those roots want water in the summer and will find ways to get that water. Drain and sewer systems are one way,” Lindsey says.

She cites the oleander evergreen shrub and drought-resistant sissoo trees as particularly invasive of area pipes. NuDrain crews deal with roots and other clogging elements by sending mechanical cables into a pipe to chew through the impediment.

“All of our trucks are outfitted with multiple sizes of Picote milling machines,” Christian says.

The lines are then jetted to rid them of residual material. Each company truck carries a small Spartan or General Pipe Cleaners jetter for rudimentary cleaning. A larger Spartan Warrior jetting unit is available as needed.

“Going back to when my dad ran the company, Spartan was the brand of jetter we always used,” Christian says. “We’ve had a lot of good experiences with General jetters, too.” 

Though the company primarily serves residential customers, it does have a team dedicated to commercial projects, overseen by Michael Eppich. For example, one such job completed in June was for Maricopa County. Another for a local hotel occurred in July. The company also has ongoing projects at flight schools in the valley.

Whether commercial or residential, each line worked on by the company is camera-inspected free of charge. If something is found in a pipe that requires additional service work — a clog, a cracked pipe — the fee is rolled into the subsequent repair bill. If nothing is found, the inspection remains free. Inspections are done using Vivax-Metrotech cameras. Liner installation teams use RIDGID cameras. 

If a pipe indeed needs more than cleaning, the company offers several solutions, including pipe coating, CIPP and inversion lining. The NuDrain CIPP liner is the most opted-for repair, with epoxy-coated lining material inserted into the pipe through an existing access point — a clean-out, for instance — and the liner pressed into place against the pipe’s interior and cured to become essentially a new pipe.

UV curing shift

NuFlow has another lining option that NuDrain Phoenix is using more frequently — a UV-cured liner called NuCure.

“We are getting more and more involved in the UV system,” Christian says. “It also is a NuFlow product, but the liner itself is very strong and is more chemical and temperature-resistant. It also cures much faster.”

The curing is the key. For example, temperatures in Phoenix in July around the time of the large hotel job reached 114 degrees. The impact of that on epoxy-coated liners is significant.

“We have a certain amount of working time before the epoxy liner needs to be in the ground. In summer heat, the time is shorter,” Lindsey says. “With UV, it doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is. Curing only begins when the UV light is turned on.”

Most lining done today by the company is ambient-cured epoxy resin, but the move to UV lining is accelerating. One of the company trucks is being redone and outfitted for exclusive work with the UV lining system.

“Our goal is to install more UV liners in the near future,” Lindsey says. “We are working with NuFlow to make sure our employees are fully trained in everything UV.”

Tell your friends

Before the 42-year-old company president married into the plumbing and pipe repair industry, Lindsey was a police dispatcher and 911 operator. When she assumed the executive position at the company, she decided Peerless Plumbing-NuDrain Phoenix could prosper on referrals alone. She has been proven right.

“It sort of developed that way,” she says. “We saw business growing without ads and billboards. We didn’t do any of that and still there was growth. The customers were coming from referrals.”

The company pays a referral bonus to anyone who refers a new customer.

“It is a better use of my marketing and advertising budget than anything I have ever done,” Lindsey says.

Not all customer calls are from referrals, but the vast majority are.

“A neighbor of someone we worked for or a family member will refer us,” she says. “I love the method because a person is going to trust his neighbor or a family member more than a billboard or a commercial. After all, the person referring someone to us is putting his or her personal reputation on the line.” 

Always something new

Where do the Rushings see the company headed — growing into a regional or national company, perhaps?

“Arizona keeps us very busy,” Lindsey says.

Most of the company’s business is in the Phoenix metro area, but crews will go anywhere in the state if a job warrants the travel.

What is for certain is that new technologies will be part of the company’s future. While some trenchless pipe replacement solutions like pipe bursting hold no allure for the Rushings, “We definitely are going to get into more technology,” according to Lindsey. “Everything improves over time, things get better, faster, stronger. We are going to have to keep investing in ourselves, our employees, and the company to stay ahead of things.”

That actually was the philosophy of the senior Rushing, who since retiring has passed away. He looked out for his customers by looking into the future of work.

“He was providing better solutions to customers. That’s why the company got into trenchless repair work. He knew it was a better way to do it,” Lindsey says. “Today, we know there always are better ways to do something. There’s always something new.”