Not the Biggest, Just the Best

Doug did not want to go to college after high school. He had a brother-in-law who was a plumber, so in 1972, at seventeen, he went to work with him. He liked it, and he stuck with it — which is more or less the whole origin story.

In 1978 a friend about two hundred miles away needed a plumber, so Doug went out to eastern Arizona and started his own business. Six years later he brought the company home to the Valley, and it has been here ever since.

What followed was decades of new construction. He built relationships with contractors who needed a plumber, and the work grew from there into large tract subdivisions — at one point Adair Plumbing was among the biggest plumbing contractors in Arizona. Thousands upon thousands of homes across this valley were plumbed by this company, for builders including BB Living, who are still putting up houses here today.

Those houses are the reason for the service side of the business. A home Doug plumbed in the eighties or nineties is now on its second or third water heater, and the softener it never had. Knowing how a house was put together in the first place turns out to be a real advantage when something in it needs fixing.

We are plumbers, not salespeople. Nobody here carries a commission or a quota, which means there is nothing pulling the recommendation away from what your home actually needs.

In practice it is simple. If Doug comes out to put in a water heater, he puts in a water heater. If he notices something else worth knowing about, he will tell you — and if it can wait, he will tell you that too. You get the same answer he would give a neighbour, which more often than not is exactly who you are.

He is still the one who shows up on a lot of jobs, and he still answers the phone. Forty-eight years in, that has not changed.

Ask Doug what people compliment the company on and the answer is integrity — explaining what is going to be done and how, and then doing it.

What that means in practice is that the price you are quoted is the price, the work is done the way it was described, and if you need to reach us afterward you reach us. Same number, same people, a year later.

Adair Plumbing bids new construction, builds custom homes, and has five people in the field. Alongside that, we are putting real focus into residential service — the water heaters, water conditioning, drains and gas lines that homes across the Valley need, including a good many we plumbed when they were new.

Doug is seventy and has no interest in retiring. In his words: the people he knows who retire die, and he has too many grandkids for that.