Handy Plumbing Man’s company name is somewhat misleading. It brings to mind a faucet, toilet and drain repairman. While the San Carlos, California, company indeed performs all such plumbing tasks, it can also cure what ails the underground infrastructure conveying the water and wastewater serving a structure. 

“We have two divisions, our plumbing division and our drain cleaning and underground division,” says company co-founder Marco Acosta. “We are about 30% plumbing now and we will never get out of plumbing. It’s another way to get work. A call on a leaky faucet turns into a bigger job with a camera inspection revealing a partly clogged drain. Plumbing is a way to potentially find more work for our underground division.”

When Acosta and his wife Amparo started the company six years ago, it fulfilled a long-held desire of Acosta’s to be the boss of his own company. He grew up in an extended family that owned and operated a variety of businesses. As a young man, he worked in several companies before realizing that workplace satisfaction would elude him until he was in a position to make final decisions. So, at age 28, he and his wife opened Handy Plumbing Man.

From that one-man (and -woman) plumbing shop, the business has turned into a San Francisco Bay Area operation with 50 employees answering service calls in 30 vans. The original small office has become 27,000 square feet of office and warehouse space within a three-block area.

“We are pushing hard, my wife and I,” Acosta says. “She is my right hand and such a big part of our success.”

Big Boy Stuff

Yet such success does not represent a pinnacle of achievement for the company. Acosta has his eyes on expansion beyond the San Francisco Bay Area and believes the latest service he offers his customers will be instrumental in growing the company.

“I invested in the LRI pipe lining machine and it’s been a game-changer,” Acosta says.

The LightRay lateral inversion technology he cites is a Waterline Renewal Technologies division. (Another division is Perma-Liner Industries.) Actually, the first LightRay product Acosta tried was the LR3 UV-curing cast-in-place spot repair system. He introduced that to his customers in 2023. He soon was ready for more.

“I said, ‘OK, boys. We need to get into the big boy stuff,’” Acosta says.

Six months ago, he opted for the LRI lining system that employs low-voltage LED UV lights to cure pre-impregnated glass-fiber lining. It utilizes 50-foot UV “light trains” that can navigate 90-degree turns and cure up to 150 feet of lined pipe at a rate of about 6 feet per minute.

“Within a month, it paid itself off,” Acosta says. “The guys are constantly fighting over the LRI. I told my supplier, ‘Get ready. We’re going to need a second LRI.’ The tool is amazing. I never expected it to be this way. There is less property damage using it, and we’re saving customers thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Acosta is running three LRI-trained crews, each certified by a Perma-Liner team. He wants to expand the expertise within the shop.

“Every other Saturday, we set up a demonstration at the shop for other employees who want to learn the LRI system,” Acosta says.

LightRay Training

The LRI is capable of lining pipe as large as 12 inches in diameter. The largest Acosta has done is 80 feet of 6-inch pipe.

“We can do 2-inch, 3-inch, 4-inch, right on up,” Acosta says. “As you go up in diameter, you use different gadgets to accommodate the pipe size. For what I need now, this is perfect. Most of the commercial buildings in the Bay area are running 6-inch pipe. I’m set up for success, up to 150 feet of 6-inch pipe.”

Acosta bought the LightRay inversion system shortly before tackling a tricky job. A commercial property owner in Santa Clara had just completed a million-dollar rehab of all the flooring in a building and then experienced a major backup in a sewer line. Acosta investigated the situation with an inspection camera and found a “huge hole” in the 6-inch pipe.

“The owner said, ‘You are not jackhammering any floors in this facility,’” Acosta recalls.

So Acosta called the Perma-Liner distributor in Anaheim in Southern California, telling him: “You have to train me now how to use this machine!”

Acosta, his wife and six crewmembers flew to Anaheim for three eight-hour days of training.

“The trainer, Oscar, really knows his stuff. And not once did he look annoyed when we were learning stuff,” Acosta says.

They returned north and successfully repaired the aforementioned pipe “with very little property damage. None of the floor was damaged,” Acosta says.

Acosta says he is familiar with various inversion systems. A key difference between them and LRI is the pre-impregnation of the liner.

“There is literally zero to none chance of error in trying to mix the resins for the liner. They’re already in place. It is almost dummyproof. You have to try really hard to mess up this liner. I have repaired the work of other contractors because they didn’t get the mix right and there was a problem.”

Assembling the Team

Acosta says he has, from the beginning, been fortunate by being able to attract capable applicants to Handy Plumbing Man to perform the various services the company offers. He continues to experience almost daily walk-ins who want to work for him. That might be written off as novelty when a company is new, but after six years, it surely says something about the company’s reputation.

“It’s pretty simple, really,” Acosta says. “We treat people with respect, as I would like to be treated. I opened the business with the goal of treating my employees as I was never treated and to have a successful culture. We have monthly barbecues, a monthly catering of food, a Christmas bonus. We do a raffle for employees. Last month, a guy won a street bike. The year before, one of our installers won a dirt bike. We see the hard work they do and in return we want to compensate them with extras. Instead of all the profits going to the company, we set money aside to do these things.”

As the company has grown, Acosta has assembled a layer of supervision to manage all the business activity. His field manager, Arturo Lopez, has 20 years of experience in the plumbing industry. His operations manager, Osmar, supervises the underground division and his general manager, Angela, supervises the plumbing division. They manage independently, but consult one another as necessary or confer with the field manager. If all else fails, Acosta is called.

More Tools in the Toolbox

The LRI system is still a fairly new offering for Handy Plumbing Man, but Acosta is looking at other options for serving his customers.

“I’ve been eyeballing a Perma-Liner brush-coating machine, a Picote product. It combines two resins and the brush is inserted to apply the resins right inside the pipe. This brush-coating would be another tool in our toolbox. We are a one-stop shop when I have options on the menu.”

As Acosta envisions the company growing and expanding across the state in the future, he is not distracted from taking care of business today. So who is his chief rival among his competitors in the Bay area? 

“I say, ‘I don’t have rivals. The only rival I have is myself,’” Acosta says. “I compete with myself. We are always looking at how we are doing things and how we can improve what we are doing. I am open to helping other companies, in fact. I just compete with myself and have friends at other companies in the industry. There is plenty of work for everyone.”

The Right Relationships

Acosta is professionally generous. Rather than keeping everything close to the vest and competitors at a safe distance, he is inclined to help other companies in need. Consequently, he is making friends in the industry across California.

One of them is a man named Charlie and his wife Lulu. They own and operate Charlie’s Sewer & Drain in the Los Angeles area. Acosta says the couple remind him of the partnership Acosta enjoys with his wife Amparo.

“They have a very good company and we are always bouncing ideas off each other,” Acosta says.

One of those ideas was the LightRay LED UV systems that Charlie introduced to Acosta.

 “I was doing a lot of pipe bursting but not doing any lining. I then saw the system at the WWETT Show in Indianapolis and bought the LR3,” Acosta says. The rest is history.

Another business relationship Acosta mentions is the Perma-Liner regional manager for California.

“Brandon has been instrumental in helping us navigate machinery logistics, ensuring the team always has access to the right equipment and support,” Acosta says.

His open-minded approach to business relationships has earned Acosta a reputation as a mentor. Other company owners and managers regularly call him for his valued opinion. This nurturing attitude is evident in another way: training. As part of a facilities upgrade — the company now has 27,000 square feet of office and warehouse space — Acosta is opening a training center.

“We want to train our people, our installers, and train technicians how to deal with customers in different situations,” he says. “The bottom line is, it’s OK to make mistakes. This is how we learn. It’s how you go about fixing that mistake that matters.”

It sounds like a good internal program except that Acosta has more generous plans.

“I am also planning to offer training to people outside the company who want to learn how to do things,” he says.