Robert Harbolt’s service calls tend to run past the thing he was called about. He fixes the leak or the valve, then looks over the main parts of the house’s system: the water pressure, the water heater, the expansion tank. Then he stops.
“I don’t nitpick everything,” he says. “And then I try to give them options.”
One customer described that approach in a Google review of a sump pump problem. The backup pump kicked on every time it rained. Harbolt suggested checking the float before anyone replaced the main pump. When that wasn’t the cause, the customer wrote, he recommended the bigger repair, came back the next day and overhauled the system. While he was there, he also checked the water heater and the pressure valve.
Premier Plumbing of Kansas City Inc. is a one-man company in Shawnee, Kansas, and Harbolt has built it around that fact. “I’m a one-man show,” he says. “I’m the owner and the operator.” He has no crew and no office staff. The person who diagnoses the problem is the person who fixes it.
“You get more of a personal experience with me,” he says.
He started the company himself after a long career in the trade. “I’ve been plumbing for 33 years,” he says. “I’m a master plumber.” He also holds a construction management degree.
The work is residential and commercial service and repair. According to the company’s website, much of it involves the systems behind the walls and under the floor: replacing water and drain piping, including tearing out old cast iron drains and putting in PVC, along with tank and tankless water heaters, sump pumps with battery backups and gas lines. The site names Bradford White and Rinnai water heaters and Zoeller pumps among the brands he installs. Harbolt holds a Johnson County contractor license and works in Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
Some jobs have to be thought through before a tool comes out. One customer wrote in a Google review that a master bathtub faucet had been installed badly, and the plumbing needed to be cut and reworked. The repair looked as if it would mean opening the living room ceiling below. Instead, according to the review, Harbolt cut the pipe from inside the drain, which let him lift the tub and do the work without touching the ceiling. He finished within 48 hours of the first call.
Harbolt states his standard plainly: “Quality work with quality products for a fair price.” The company’s website opens with nearly the same words.
He doesn’t hedge on reliability either. “I stand behind my work 100%,” he says. “I believe that you should do what you say you’re going to do.”
He puts his priorities in his own terms. “I’m more customer-related than monetary-related,” he says.
The company is still young, and Harbolt already knows what he wants it to become. He wants to grow it enough to bring on younger plumbers and teach them the trade, and to show them how to do the work right.
“Building plumbers instead of salesmen,” he says.