Is online plumbing school worth it?

Plumbing Forums

Help Support Plumbing Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Pcmaker

Active Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2015
Messages
29
Reaction score
0
Location
,
I'm the plumber for the maintenance department at a very large casino/hotel in Las Vegas. I've been doing this for 10 years now. I never went to school for it and I only worked under a professional plumber for under 1 year before he left and all the responsibility fell into my lap. I had learned everything hands on by myself.

I have a lot of experience, but all of it in house. Granted, it's a very large property and I've had extensive experience with a variety of plumbing issues, mostly finding leaks and repairing copper tubing. As for codes, I know very little. I replace existing plumbing with something exactly the same or something similar.

I was wondering if I should do online schooling for plumbing. Is it worth it? Someone told me it costs around $700 and it takes around a year to get certified.

What do you guys think>
 
I have had a few helpers that took the online course and benefited from it
BUT, They also had a journeyman to bug the chit out of with questions.

ANY knowledge is worth the extra effort.
Question for you, would you be willing to leave your position to work with a plumber?
A well rounded plumber needs the tutelage of experience.

If Vegas has a plumbers license, take the course and GET THAT CARD
It means mo money
 
30+ yrs experience. The only formal training I had in regards to plumbing was a UPC Code class. I had one year of college with some calculus, physics and basic engineering drafting. Got hungry and started cleaning drains.

One thing that would be real helpful in the trade is understanding the physical properties of liquids, gases and solid material. Such as the various properties like pressure, volume and temperature effect the things you work on.
Like what causes a siphon. How does temp effect pressure, or pressure effect flow.

You probably fix a lot of flush valve. One big mistake I see a lot of is others trying to stop a leak between the stop valve and the flush valve using Teflon tape wrapped around the o-ring. Just put a new o-ring on it with a little stem lube and be done with it.

You have question? pop in here and ask. We don't always have the right answer but we try when we can.
 
We work with a lot of the sloan flush valves. There's over a hundred toilets and urinals with auto flushers on property and we work on them multiple times per shift. If it's leaking from the nipple, we replace the O-ring and readjust the body so it's square with the stop assembly. If that doesn't do it, we replace the nipple. That does the trick 99% of the time. They often move out of alignment via people kicking them so they're no longer square with the stop assembly, and thus pushing down on one side of the O-ring, creating a weak spot on the opposite side of where it's pushing down from.

Right now, we're using the push button automatic sloan flushers with the infrared sensors. We keep changing to different flushers over the years based on aesthetics.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top