Why You Should Choose T&S for Your Commercial Kitchen Needs

While there are many competitors within the restaurant supply industry, there is one particular company that stands out in my mind when I think of commercial kitchen supplies: T&S Brass. From my experience in plumbing sales, T&S is a very touchy subject for people due to the higher prices they charge in comparison to other kitchen supply manufacturers.  I'm certainly not here to tell you that T&S is right for every budget and every kitchen, but their products should definitely be a top consideration when shopping for commercial kitchen supplies.

Brand Comparison

The biggest turn off I have seen for T&S parts is pricing. Let's take a step back from the plumbing industry real quick and compare T&S to a well known sports brand, Nike.  Nike is well known across the nation for carrying high quality sporting goods. When you buy Nike, you not only buy from a well respected brand name, but you also get higher quality goods for a higher price tag than you would from other sporting brands. The same goes for T&S and their products. When you buy from T&S, you pay more money but receive a high quality, long lasting part that will make the extra money worth every cent.

Replacement Parts

One of the greatest things I like about T&S is that they are an American manufacturer. Not only do American manufacturers tend to produce a higher quality product than foreign manufacturers, but they also generally have the option to purchase repair parts. This is something that T&S does very well. On their website, that have tons of spec sheets and part breakdowns that identify individual repair parts for various fixtures. This allows customers to even further extend the life of the fixtures they buy from T&S.  While cheaper kitchen supplies may be tempting to cut cost, know that buying from T&S is well worth the extra money.

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What is World Plumbing Day?

As many social media users know, there is a holiday or some kind of celebration for anything you can imagine. For example: today people are celebrating "World Sauntering Day" as well as "Juneteenth". World Sauntering Day celebrates a casual form of strolling called "sauntering" and promotes using it to get around as opposed to walking. On the other hand, Juneteenth is a freedom celebration in Texas that celebrates the abolition of slavery. And, of course, there is also a World Plumbing Day. This week, I'll try to give a detailed report of what our wacky celebration is and what it means to the plumbing industry.

What is World Plumbing Day?

World Plumbing Day (also abbreviated WPD), celebrated on March 11th, is a holiday designed to promote water conservation and reduce pollution in existing water sources. The WPD divides their promotion into two categories in a computer analogy: hardware and software. The hardware side of things includes promoting plumbing fixtures and other plumbing hardware that are environmentally friendly. The software side of the promotion is an attempt to raise general awareness for eco-friendly plumbing so that regular people can make a difference by conserving water and reducing pollution.

How do I Celebrate?

Now that you know the basics of what the holiday is about, how can you celebrate it? The goal is pretty clear in trying to promote awareness for water efficient plumbing, so the World Plumbing Council (WPC) has come up with a good list of suggested activities for people of all kinds to be able to celebrate World Plumbing Day. Below, I listed a few of the most convenient ways you can both celebrate and raise awareness.

Writing

Writing is an extremely powerful tool that a high majority of people have access to. Assuming you have the ability to write, you have the ability to make a big difference. One thing in particular the the WPD website recommended was writing letters to newspapers. You could potentially have some of your comments featured in a comment about the holiday or maybe even be the featured content piece in regards to the celebration. Not only can you write to newspapers, but you can also write or contact your local congressman. Congressmen often have the opportunity to make motions in session about particular holidays, so maybe you could persuade him into doing something like that. Even if he doesn't further promote it, at least you gave it a shot.

Public Speaking

If you have somehow found your way to this blog, you are more than likely to have some experience in the field of plumbing. This knowledge about the industry gives you a great opportunity to verbally raise awareness to other people. Speaking in schools is a great way to not only raise awareness on the issues of water efficient plumbing but you can also help educate the kids about the basics of plumbing and how they can help preserve water.

Organizational Leverage

If you are involved in or lead some kind of plumbing related organization, your leverage as a member can help promote the WPD celebration and water efficient plumbing itself. First, promote the celebration through social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook. Then, try to organize a plumbing related open to the general public that can help not only raise awareness but educate about water conservation issues within plumbing and explain how the general public can make a difference.

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5 Pro Tips for Hiring a Plumber

Nobody likes having to hire a plumber to fix their plumbing issues, but the service is quite necessary from time to time. When you do have to hire a plumber, you should be aware of your budget and try to keep the cost to a minimum. In addition to that, you also want to find a friendly plumber who will do the job right. This week, we'll be taking a look at five tips you can follow to better the whole plumber experience.

1) Make a List of Plumbers

The first thing to do is make a list of quality plumbers that you would consider hiring for the job. There is no set number of plumbers that you should put on this list, but what you should do is comprise the list of quality plumbers you feel like could successfully fix your problem. To get the list started, consult Google and find local plumbers in your area. I would also recommend going on service websites like Angie's List to find reliable plumbers. When researching, try to build your initial list off of customer reviews and company authenticity. The golden rule for this list is to not list a plumber that you wouldn't want doing the job; only put plumbers you feel like you would trust with your plumbing needs.

2) Compare Hourly Rates

After composing a list of reliable plumbers, compare their hourly rates. If your list truly consists of quality companies you feel would be able to accomplish the task at hand, then the biggest factor remaining should be price.  Compare hourly rates that the different companies offer, and narrow the choices on your list down to two or three.

3) Choose Your Plumber

After narrowing the list down to two or three plumbing companies that offer the best prices, you now have a decision to make. You can base your final selection off of price, service, or a ratio of the two. You already know the hourly rates for each of the plumbers in addition to having seen reviews for their service on the internet.

4) Help Their Time Efficiency

Depending on the reason you are calling this plumber, you could just have one problem that needs fixing or you could have multiple problems. Make a list of each of the problems you have that you can give to the plumber when he shows up. That way there is less time talking between the two of you trying to identify the problem and more time that the plumber is working on the project. Having your mess together when the plumber shows up can save his time and your money.

5) Reduce Plumbing Needs

The last thing to do when hiring a plumber is reduce the number of tasks you need him to accomplish. In some instances, basic problems like clogs and leaky facuets can be simple DIY projects after doing proper research on the internet. Fixing smaller problems like these can also be a great way of saving money when hiring a plumber.

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My Experience with European Bathroom Functionality

I recently took a trip to London on "holiday" as they would say. There are lots of things that differentiate the British culture from the American culture, and one of those is the bathroom experience. I didn't actually anticipate there being much of a difference, but I was wrong. While I wouldn't say my restroom experience was worse in the UK, I would definitely say it wasn't better. Let's take a look at a few of the differences.

The Shower

I only used one full bathroom while I was in the United Kingdom, so I can only speak so much for the European showers. There were some things I liked better about the shower, but there were also some things that I just couldn't quite understand. We'll start off with what they did well: the handles. The shower consisted of two cylinder shaped handles (similar to the picture below) that operated the temperature and water flow accordingly. I particularly enjoyed the efficiency these handles brought to the table due to the fact that the off position was in the center of the rotation. Rotate left to turn on the shower, rotate right to turn on the tub spout. The other handle did the same thing respectively with water temperature.

The biggest thing I didn't like about the shower was its design. I'm not one to usually complain about design issues, but this was bad. It was a very nice looking bathroom, shower included, but a flaw that stood out in my mind was the half glass panel that covered the front half of the shower. I don't know where the Brits got this idea from, but it is extremely inconvenient. If you stood in the back half of the shower, you got water all over the bathroom floor. Alternatively, you could keep the floor dry by severely limiting your space in the shower. This made for a very uncomfortable shower experience. Another design preference I hold is that the step into and out of the shower should not be too deep. This barrier that led into the shower was extremely steep in terms of stepping in and out of the shower. Overall, I like the handles, but that was about the only thing I enjoyed from the shower.

Toilets

Another big aspect of the bathroom experience is toilets. No big complaints with British toilets, however most of the toilets did not quite fit my preference. I felt like the commodes are a bit smaller than in the states, which I wasn't a huge fan of. I also noticed a lot of low consumption as opposed to waterless urinals, which is a surprising alternative considering how big they seem to push water conservation. One of the biggest differences between US and UK toilets is how they are flushed. Nine out of ten times in the US you will see some kind of flush arm or some kind of automatic flush mechanism with a manual push button if necessary. In England, I don't recall seeing a single flush arm. There were lots of push button flushing mechanisms, but these were not accompanied by any kind of automatic flushing. In addition to lots of push buttons, there were also lots of pump action handles that were used as a flushing mechanism. The worst part about these is that they have to build up pressure to flush, which can cause a problem if your #2 is big enough.

Faucets

While I didn't notice anything regularly different with faucets, there were a couple of instances where I couldn't figure out how to wash my hands. In general, the faucet spread is about the same as here: some automatic faucets, some handle based faucets. Everything was fully functional and straightforward for the most part, but there were two occasions where I ran into the same faucet model that made me wonder who in the world would buy such a piece of junk. This particular model had two push button handles, one hot and one cold. The problem I ran into is that these aren't standard metering handles that push down and run for a few seconds before stopping water flow. These were special handles. To achieve a constant water flow from the faucet, one of the handles had to be manually pushed down. This forced users to awkwardly wash one hand at a time, making for an extremely lackluster bathroom experience both times I had to do this.

Cleanliness and Availability

Two smaller attributes that were a bit different than in the states were cleanliness and availability. The hotel bathroom was both clean and available, just as a hotel bathroom should be. However, these two aspects differ in Britain when it comes to public bathrooms. In America, the government has no problem setting up free public bathrooms in various areas for its citizens. However, in Britain, the bathroom is almost like another tax. Train stations, metro systems, and other public places all had a required fee to use the bathroom. It wasn't a large fee by any means, but the principle is still wrong. In addition to that, some private businesses in America will even be kind enough to open their bathroom to non-paying citizens every once in a while. In Britain, some public shops didn't even have a bathroom that the public could use. If you were fortunate enough to run into one that did have a bathroom available, you better believe you had to be a paying customer to use it. Along with having a limited selection of public bathrooms, they were usually much more disgusting and nasty than American public restrooms.

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