AquaMaster

03/31/2023

Check out our website at AquaMaster

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06/16/2021

06/16/2021

06/16/2021

Case in point - the reason you don’t put real drainage systems in with a trencher. This job had a ton of rock and had they hired a contractor wanting to put in corrugated pipe with a trencher they might as well have taken their money into the back yard and roasted marshmallows with it.

03/28/2021

Okay, this was the site of the biggest stress test of my entire life. We were installing multiple catch basins around this porch when Craig was digging just past it, right in line with the power meter, and he hooks a rock with one of the backhoes teeth - nothing at all unusual for this location. It appeared to be a small rock - it wasn’t. The darn thing broke free and pulled the power service line (that had been run on top of the rock) out of the meter. Massive arch. The power supply was arching to the meter lugs and could have burned the house to the ground!
The meter was toast. Power off to the house and most of the subdivision. Family trying to leave the next morning on a trip - oh and by the way they had stretched their budget to the max to have the system installed so telling them to “call an electrician and let us know when he is done” wasn’t a remote option - not that that is our style anyway. Sometimes the problem with knowing how to fix so much is you then feel honor bound to do it. No pressure there!
Duke Power comes out, determines it isn’t our fault (thank God, but being right doesn’t always mean powers that be will call it that way). It’s almost 5:00 and supply house is about to close. This was an old meter and Home Depot wasn’t going to have an old style meter, and a new meter was going to cause the necessity of customizing the siding to the new style meter box. Anyway....we got lucky and made it there before they closed and they had an old style one in the back. Had to blow the dust off the box to see the item number - but hey blow away - whatever it takes to get the darn thing.
Duke couldn’t exactly figure out which leg shut off the power to that set of houses - actually about half the subdivision and one woman is on oxygen. Have I mentioned how there is no pressure here - if not let me mention how totally laid back we were all feeling right about then!
The new female employee thought she had it, but didn’t tell us it was a guess! The Duke guy decided to give Craig a hand instead of just standing there while he changed the meter out. They are exchanging Army stories (he was 13 Fox and Craig was 11 Bravo) when the Duke guy’s shirt brushes against one of the wires Craig is pushing up into one of the lugs and it arches and burns a hole in his shirt. 240 volts. Right before that they had both decided working with the thick rubber gloves was a non-starter and ditched them. It’s a wonder both of them weren’t killed. That was my second heart attack of the day.
We had skipped lunch that day and stayed until 7:30 pm getting the customer hooked back up. An electrician would have charged him about 2 grand to fix that and it would have been worth every cent. Frankly because we had doubled the size of our 100 year-old house and done the majority of the work ourselves we knew what to do. No hotel, no electrician.
As a bonus Craig and I got a free stress test that day.

01/22/2021

The pipe locating equipment combined with the sonic leak detection equipment finds the leaks that no other irrigation contractor can find.
A customer yesterday who had a leak on a newer system that the company who installed it couldn’t find said we needed to do more advertising. So....here I am, advertising. 😂😂😂😂
Help me out friends.

11/24/2020

This Travelers Rest couple was getting water in their finished basement each time we have a hard rain. Due to the expense removing the large deck to install a foundation drain we decided to install a longer, wider swale and lined it with river rock. Once the homeowners plant the berms and mulch the berms it will look very pretty and handle a great deal of rainfall.

10/02/2020

The level runs the job.

09/25/2020

Hey guys with all the rainfall we have had this entire year - as if COVID isn’t bad enough - drainage has become a major issue.
Share to your page some of our post or videos to help your friends find a quality drainage contractor.
Proper drainage installation is much harder than a simple water or sewer line installation. It’s complicated - too complicated to explain it in a post. Many landscape contractors do drainage but don’t know drainage. Most plumbers won’t touch it because there is easier money to be made.
I’m a Master Plumber and saw a need.
If you have a need for this service call me. If you know someone who might have a need recommend me.
Check us out at aquamastersc.net or
My number is 864-430-0117 and my email address is cskelton66@yahoo.com.

07/03/2020

Why we won't be wearing masks while on your job site...It is not because we don't care or are making a statement. We are in South Carolina where the summer temps normally run in the 90's and the humidity is murder. We engage in extremely hard manual labor and underground work that many times leaves us exhausted and dehydrated. It is not abnormal for me, the owner, to sweat through three or four t-shirts in a day. A mask would be a sodden mess and utterly useless on us in 15 minutes and because of the sweat soak may be even MORE likely to spread a virus. Add in repeatedly touching and adjusting the mask with dirty hands and the danger of infection to the worker is magnified. We can wear some sort of mask to speak to you for short periods or on appointments but when we come out to install your project or do service work we will NOT be wearing masks for all of the above reasons. Anyone on our crew who feels ill or is running a fever will not be allowed to work until cleared. Since most of our work is outside or under a house, the customer should feel perfectly safe to stay indoors and watch the progress if they are concerned about COVID and our crew...Since this issue has become a hot button topic we decided to address it here so that our customers understand why we are not in masks while we work. If it upsets someone to the point of not using our company we understand but we wanted to tell all of you what our reasons are. Heat stroke, injuries, dehydration and exhaustion are the prime very real medical issues we fight EVERY year, not just during this crisis. Worker safety in this business is not a one issue thing. Folks who work in an air conditioned, low activity job may not understand it this way so we wanted to describe it to give the reader another view....Thanks to all our customers. Happy Independence Day and God Bless America...Land that we love.

06/11/2020

A few weekends of Craig lazing about!😂😂😂😂

06/11/2020

Hey, we know it looks all sexy from the outside😂😂😂😂😂, but behind the scenes not so much. This is a 1983 Ditch Witch diesel trencher. We saw it for sale one the side of the road doing about 70 mph going to a race in Rockingham. On the way back through we stopped and bought it. This machine has done a ton of digging but it’s also had a ton of loving.
You know, writing a check for a new piece of equipment/truck whatever that you pass the expense on to the customer is the easy answer. When a contractor has an old piece like this that is well maintained and loved on it says something about him personally. His attention to detail, his desire and willingness to throw himself into something that is going to cost him something in sweat equity because dealerships don’t work on stuff this old. Heck, most of the time you have to find machine shops that are talented enough to fabricate the parts you need.
Doesn’t matter - totally worth the effort for knowing that we keep this little piece of history out of a scrap yard, thereby paying the old girl back for all her hard work. 💞

06/09/2020

These are the inside pictures of the video I posted where Craig is explaining why “banana” shaped pipe can be such a problem.
This customer was on a slab home and every few month her toilet would “explode” leaving her with quite a mess to clean up. The builder naturally wanted nothing to do with helping her fix this issue.
A plumbing company came out and wanted to replace all the sewer lines in her home. A MASSIVE, and very invasive job. After running a video camera in the line coming out of the toilet we determined the issue was in a single run of pipe. Once that run was removed and a line installed with no reverse fall on it the problem was solved.
While this was an invasive job and necessitated the customer stay at a hotel for a few days it was nothing compared to the destruction the other company wanted to impose.