From the classic trucks he runs to the vintage uniforms he wears, second-generation plumber Cliff Lao has been strongly inspired by his father, Ruben. That influence also extends to his preference for Spartan Tool drain cleaning machines.
“I have a long history with Spartan machines,” says Lao, who co-owns Cliff’s Classic Care Plumbing with his wife, Debra, in Sierra Vista, Arizona. “My father plumbed for 45 years and he ran Spartan machines back in New York. They’re just tried and true — pretty much bulletproof. You get your money’s worth out of them. If they were good enough for my father, then they’re good enough for me.”
The company owns three Spartan machines: a Spartan 1065 (for cleaning 3- to 10-inch-diameter lines); a Model 100 (for 1 1/4- to 4-inch pipes); and a Model 700, a hand-held unit for shower, tub and sink drains. But the real workhorse is the Spartan 1065, which Lao calls “Baby Huey.”
“It’s our go-to machine,” he says. “In tough situations, a machine breakdown is the last thing you want, but I never worry about that with this machine. I go into even the toughest jobs with confidence.”
Case in point: One Thanksgiving, a customer called with a real problem — a house full of guests and a clogged sewer line.
Lao usually doesn’t make emergency service calls on holidays, but he made an exception because it was an associate pastor at the church his family attended at the time. Unfortunately, the house had been plumbed without a clean-out and the lateral sewer line had a long run between the house and the mainline. But Baby Huey, which carries 112 feet of 3/4-inch cable, still got the job done.
“Fortunately I had enough cable to take care of it,” Lao says. “After excavating in the front yard, I found an old access hole that a previous plumber had used before to clear this line. As it turned out, the problem was tree roots way at the end of the line. But even at that distance, Baby Huey had enough power to cut through them.”
Lao also likes the fact that the machine runs quietly, thanks to its permanent magnet 4/10 hp motor. That’s beneficial not only from a customer standpoint, but it also enables him to hear, not just feel, if the cable hits a bad fitting or is binding up on a blockage.
The power cable feed feature also offers benefits by minimizing operator fatigue.
“That self-feed feature is nice,” Lao says. “Having to physically run out that cable wears on you, especially now that I’m 55 years old. But with this machine, I just put it in gear, let it go and it does its job.”
Read more about Cliff’s Classic Care Plumbing in this full profile featured in the April issue of Plumber magazine.
