Contractormag 3127 Petritruck
Contractormag 3127 Petritruck
Contractormag 3127 Petritruck
Contractormag 3127 Petritruck
Contractormag 3127 Petritruck

Green is paying off for Petri Plumbing & Heating

June 9, 2016
Petri Plumbing & Heating serves all of Brooklyn and the majority of Manhattan with six service trucks on the road and between nine and ten employees. Petri’s decision to be an eco-conscious plumber came so early in his career that he was ahead of the trend. It took a while for the technology, his customers and even the government regulations to come around to his way of doing business. 
NEW YORK — The climate and tall buildings make solar applications very difficult. Building density and land values make geothermal almost impossible. Landmark regulations make even venting a challenge. And to top it off a good deal of your customer base is just plain cost-averse.

For all that Mike Petri, through his company, Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc., is putting high-efficiency, eco-friendly systems at the core of his business. His reasons include a fascination with the technology, a determination to make his company stand out from the crowd, and a genuine concern for the environment.

“At the time I started [emphasizing green] my kids were younger, you saw everything that was going on, and there was a need for it,” Petri explained. “Some people just don’t believe in it, and I find that pretty interesting.”

A lifetime in the trade

Petri is no newcomer to the business. He is still working out of the same building the family business started in 1906. “It was initially started up by my great-grandfather, through my father’s mother’s side of the family, and my great-great uncle through my father’s father’s side of the family,” Petri said.

Petri himself has been working in his family’s shop since he was 13. He went full-time in 1977. “My brother and I took over in the 1980s,” Petri said. “I’m fourth generation, and my son, who now works with me, is now fifth generation.”

Petri Plumbing

Petri Plumbing & Heating serves all of Brooklyn and the majority of Manhattan with six service trucks on the road and between nine and ten employees. “We do a little bit of everything,” Petri said. “We do a lot of residential service and repair, we do a lot of commercial service… we’re going back into doing renovations projects.”

Early frustrations

Petri’s decision to be an eco-conscious plumber came so early in his career that he was ahead of the trend. It took a while for the technology, his customers and even the government regulations to come around to his way of doing business.

For instance, he worked through the bad old days of the first generation high-efficiency toilets. “5.0 GPF toilets became 3.0 GPF, then, in the 90s, they came out with 1.6 GPF, but they hadn’t perfected the toilet bowl,” Petri said. “They had all sorts of rebate programs around the country…  all those toilets we put in, most of them didn’t work well… I think they panicked in the 90s, maybe got ahead of the market.”

Another problem from his early days — a problem that still crops up from time to time — are plumbers who sell green systems without a good idea of how to install them. Take tankless water heaters for example.

“A lot of people don’t install them correctly,” Petri said, “and that effects whether they’re efficient or not efficient. It’s like anything else. If I tell you a product is 83 percent efficient and it’s installed wrong, you’re definitely not going to get 83 percent efficiencies.”

And who takes the heat for these mis-installed systems? More often than not, it’s the plumber called in to fix them. Too many times, Petri has found himself in a conversation with a client saying, “Well, listen, I hate to tell you this but the gas line is too small, the venting is wrong and it’s going to cost you X amount of dollars to repair,” Petri said. “They have a canary! Because they paid a lot of money to begin with. It’s a really rough situation.”

But the most difficult challenge over the decades can be summed up in one word: apathy. “I’m just being honest with you here, I think it hasn’t made a major dent in our society yet,” Petri said. On the one hand, money is a factor; green plumbing systems are still more expensive, and the Great Recession made even small price differences seem larger. But beyond that, just not enough people seem to care about saving energy, water, and reducing emissions.

Education, education…

“I tell everybody who works here,” Petri said, “you have to do your due diligence and learn high efficiency equipment; how to use it, how to sell it, what the benefit is to the client. Because that’s the way the world is right now.”

To that end, Petri has pursued certifications and memberships that fit his business model. He’s a member of Green Plumbers USA, a national marketing and brand overlay program that assists plumbers in understanding their role in the environment and public health. The organization had its start in Australia in 2001 in the wake of a severe drought, and a lot of its initiatives echo efforts currently under way in California.

Petri Plumbing is also WaterSense certified — an EPA-partnership certification most people think only applies to faucets, fixtures and appliances. “There was a lot of paperwork,” Petri said, “and it took a lot to prove that we abided by their standards… but they approved me.”

Water is still somewhat taken for granted on the east coast, however, despite efforts to raise awareness. “The big thing that happens in my business,” Petri said, “is I’ll get a call from a client who’ll say, God, I usually pay $300 per quarter for my water, this time my water bill is over $900. Why? Because they had a leak or a running toilet bowl or whatever. Then they know how expensive water is.”

What is more of a factor these days is water quality/purity. The crisis in Flint, Michigan, has made headline news, and New York City does have one of the oldest municipal water systems in the country. Petri Plumbing — in another EPA partnership — is also Lead-Safe Certified, and offers water testing and a variety of water purification solutions.

…and education

For all that Petri has done to educate himself and his technicians, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t educate his customers. To go back to tankless, “Yeah, it saves you money,” Petri said, “but if you go into the shower and sit there for an hour because you don’t run out of hot water then your bill is going to be high.” The new systems just don’t work the same way as the old.

That education extends to programs that can help customers get over that high initial cost. “If we convert a boiler from a standing pilot to electronic ignition and it’s over 83 percent, [the client gets] $500 from the government,” Petri said.  “If you put in an indirect water heater in lieu of a water heater, the government will give you $300. You know what? That’s $800 on a normal installation… it’s up to us, the plumbers in the field, to make owners aware that they’re entitled to it.”

Petri sees the awareness growing in the marketplace — especially among the younger generation. He sees a real future in the green side of the business. “You can see it happening already,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of time, everybody has to be on board… but the products are getting better, cost is getting more affordable. From my standpoint, installation is getting easier.”

It’s a long time since 1977, and Mike Petri can take some satisfaction in that the industry and the marketplace are starting to come around to his style of plumbing.

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