ABOUT US

How PlumbSmart was Born!

In July 2008 this PlumbSmart adventure became a reality. Although we didn’t know how we were going to do it and we didn’t really know what it was going to look like, we did know that providing good quality plumbing services to customers while helping to explain their options and explain the things they could do would give them peace of mind and assurance that they were getting good value for their money. We have been graced over the years to provide great service and good quality work to all of our customers. Many of the customers that we interact with have become returning customers. We have contractors that we have done work for for many years and we have individual clients that we have done work on multiple homes for.

Having grown steadily over the past 15 years and having the privilege to do plumbing service work around Asheville has allowed us to become part of a fantastic organization called PHCC. The PHCC is the Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors association. This is a national organization and we’ve also become part of the state association serving the WNC region. Working with this organization and seeing the great opportunities, information and knowledge that this organization helps provide, a few of my fellow plumbing contractors and I decided to form a local WNC region chapter under the state chapter. This local WNC chapter of PHCCNC help to bring valuable knowledge and information to all plumbing heating and cooling contractors in the area. This organization helps allow for a free exchange of information and knowledge from legislation down through code officials inspectors and contractors alike.

Meet the Owner, Don Hilderbrand

The year was 1982 and I had just finished my summer job at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz and the surrounding Salinas valley of central California. I had no idea that I was getting ready to start my career as an Asheville Plumber. Being young, I didn’t have much going on and I was looking for something to do that I could do on the weekends while in school. At the time, a friend of mine, Eric, his dad and family owned a fire sprinkler installation company. His dad offered me a job digging ditches and doing grunt work on the weekends. I never realized installing fire mains could be such hard work! The pipe they use is Ductile iron and it is extremely heavy. The work itself was very challenging, learning how to join the pipe - to make the fittings thread the smaller connections and compress the larger connections - was definitely a challenge. And spending all day in the sun digging ditches and laying pipe was a very tough and rewarding job. But, to this day, the skills I learned on this job has continued to help me become a better quality plumber for Asheville and the WNC area.

Don Hilderbrand - President & CEO

PlumbSmart Plumbing & Drains

I was still young and all I really knew about being a plumber is that when you turned on the faucet or you needed water from a tap you just turned the valve or handle and the water came out. Until then I had never realized that the fluid dynamics & physics played such an important part in moving water. Eric‘s dad taught me a lot about the physics of water. Also, from time to time, Eric‘s dad would send Eric and I out on service calls for sprinkler heads and other fire sprinkler issues. It was here that I received my first real plumbing lessons and gained exposure working directly with the public one on one. We would walk into folks houses or into their businesses and start communicating with them about their needs. Learning the things they liked and didn’t about water dripping on areas really showed me how much treating people well mattered especially regarding their needs; and especially so to be a trusted local plumber in Asheville and the WNC area. Many days, in doing this work, I would find myself in the shop cutting and threading drops for sprinkler heads. I would cut and thread pipe in diameters anywhere from three-quarter inch all the way up to 2 inch. This valuable practice taught me how to do the math needed and the correct measurements needed for running a pipe length correctly so far from the wall or so far from an offset. This job really taught me a lot, although, at the time, I really thought I was more being punished because I did something wrong to have to do this work. What I didn’t realize was Eric‘s dad was preparing me for a future as an expert plumber in Asheville which I never really saw on the horizon.

After this job I ended up serving time in the army. When I finished my commitment, I found myself living in Clarksville Tennessee. I took odd jobs and did various things for people: sometimes I would be bagging groceries, other times I would be mowing lawns, or cutting firewood, and even working around horses and animals. I went to work for a global construction company named BE&K construction. It was here that I found myself in western North Carolina at the Canton Paper Mill. I was hired for a very large renovation & rejuvenation project going on at the mill at the time. And, it was here where I was exposed to very heavy industrial work. Climbing the steel frame, working high up on lifts, and working off of ropes & harnesses really allowed me to fully experience and understand industrial construction. While at BEK I traveled with the company a few times but I always found myself right back in Western North Carolina.

I knew that after getting out of the military and doing these odd jobs I wanted to further my education. So, I decided that I would enroll at the local college where I earned my associates degree in electronics engineering. I learned a lot about programming computers, relay switches, solenoids and many other electronic devices. While I was in school, I also had a full-time job with a local mechanical contractor - while working there I met a very diverse group of people many of whom I still call friends today. We did a lot of building and construction work in and around the Asheville and Western North Carolina area. I really enjoyed the work that I was doing and I really enjoyed the friendships that I made and the hands-on education that I received while working there.

When I graduated with my college degree, I received a job from an electronics manufacturing wireless infrastructure company. This position allowed me to travel and see lots of our great country. However, no matter what I did I was always doing something mechanical; and, this was long before even becoming an expert plumber in Asheville. I decided to go back into the plumbing and the mechanical trades and started working for various plumbing contractors around the Asheville area. It was while working for these contractors, getting to see and experience the people in the WNC area, where I discovered that there was something lacking in the local Asheville plumbing scene. And, I truly felt Asheville needed a different brand of locally trusted plumbers. It is because of this truly valuable need that my wife Cindy and I decided to take the plunge and create PlumbSmart Technologies. Now, 15 years later we have grown and continued to improve our business becoming PlumbSmart Plumbing & Drain - Asheville's Most Trust Local Service Plumber.