As a young married couple, Scott & Jody Bird began Apollo Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning back in 1984.
They were also starting a family and knew this wouldn’t be an easy task. Eventually, their family of three sons (Brandon, Ryan, and Derek), who grew up watching their parents work hard to build their business, would work with them in running the Excavation department.
Over the years we have found that Oregon & Washington currently have very old, deteriorating pipes and problems with root intrusions which can require extensive excavation with heavy equipment. This can cause major destruction and disruption to the property, person or company involved. In addition, traditional excavation (trenching) jobs put workers in potentially dangerous working conditions. In the search for an alternative, that doesn’t involve disturbing the landscape or digging trenches, Apollo Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning has implemented a Zero-Dig procedure that has been used on the East Coast and in Europe for over 40 years – CIPP (Cured in Place Pipe). The process of CIPP involves inserting a resin-coated polyester tubular sleeve down an existing line, usually through a cleanout, and then curing the sleeve with hot steam for approximately 1 to 2 hours. The hot steam curing causes the sleeve to harden, becoming a pipe within a pipe. This process has saved numerous historical landmark owners from disrupting landscaping and/or structures.
An example is a recent job we completed at the historical Sentinel Hotel.
The Historic Sentinel Hotel in Downtown Portland
The Sentinel Hotel was built in 1909 and was formerly known as The Governor Hotel and originally as The Seward Hotel. The Seward Hotel was a boutique hotel designed by William Christmas Knighton, a visionary Architect and the first known Oregon architect to use Viennese-influenced Early American Arts and Crafts styles, making it one of the most decorated buildings in Oregon. The hotel is a six-story Terra Cotta and imported European marble structure that houses a 7500 sq ft Governor ballroom with large Corinthian columns and gold-plated ceilings.
In 2012 the hotel was acquired by Provenance Hotels and underwent an extensive renovation. In 2014, after the renovation was completed they discovered something quite alarming. They began experiencing problems with a clogged rain drain that ran behind the imported marble walls. Apollo Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning were called to clear the clog and discovered the 105-year-old cast iron drain was badly deteriorated causing leaking behind the marble walls. The traditional method of repair would have required cutting into the marble walls, throughout the entire six-story building, to remove and replace the drain lines.
Apollo Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning avoided traditional methods of drain line repair that would have cut into the marble walls, throughout the entire six-story building.
