Plumbing was the family trade before RDZ Plumbing and Drains existed. Owner Sandra Torres’s father was a master plumber who plumbed his entire life, and she says she and her brother “kind of took after his trait.”
The company is open around the clock, every day, and the person who picks up is an owner. “It’s always me or my brother on the phone,” she says.
The brother is Salvador Rodriguez, known as Sal, who started the business in San Diego in 2018 as a sole proprietorship. Torres joined him in 2022. Sal still answers the phone and still goes out on jobs.
The company’s own telling has Sal starting RDZ at their father’s urging, after growing up watching him work. Torres also wants to thank their mother.
In the early years the business was Sal cleaning drains. When COVID hit, Torres says, RDZ was still a sole proprietorship, and drain cleaning here and there carried it through. That work never went away. Hydrojetting and snaking are still a regular part of the job, and RDZ says it landed on the cover of Cleaner Magazine in 2023 for reinvesting in high-end plumbing and drain-cleaning equipment.
The work now reaches well past clogs. Torres says the company takes on anything in plumbing, from underground service and main lines to full-house repipes, accessory dwelling units, connections to the city and grease traps for restaurants. She puts the mix at about 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial and says she has no preference between the two. RDZ has handled multi-unit projects.
Torres stays close to the jobs as they start. “I usually go out there with my plumber and do a walkthrough,” she says. Customers see the same plumbers each time.
Torres says the company runs on family values. She, her husband, Manuel, and Sal work alongside one another, sharing experience and ideas and looking for ways to improve the service.
RDZ covers all of San Diego County, out to Julian, Ramona, Carlsbad, Oceanside and Escondido, which Torres figures at roughly a 50-mile radius.