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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast right here in Montgomery, Alabama with your hosts, Travis and Michael. We do this podcast as a community service for the River Region. This includes Montgomery, Prattville, Millbrook, Wetumpka, Pike Road, Auburn and any other surrounding areas for people just like you.
Travis McGowin:
All right, so we are a small locally owned business and we like to help out other small locally owned businesses as well. So today I have James Watson and Justin Harris from Pro Flow Seamless Gutters. How are you guys today?
James Watson:
Doing pretty good. How about yourself?
Travis McGowin:
Man, doing well, doing well. So like I said, we like to highlight other businesses who do great services and also who kind of have an effect on some of our pest control techniques and gives us an advantage at people’s houses when we do pest control. So we wanted to talk to you guys today. So tell us, how did you guys get started?
James Watson:
Well, so right out of high school, I went in the military. I served in the military in the Air Force for about 10 years, got out in 2015, moved back to Alabama. Me and Justin have known each other since we were one and two years old, practically family. Moved back up here, got into doing gutter cleaning and gutter guards for another company. Learned everything there was to know about gutters and gutter guards and reached out to Justin one day and said, hey, I got a plan. I want to go out on my own, do my own thing, see if he was interested. So about the end of 2016, we came up with Pro Flow Gutters, and that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing ever since. Gutters, gutter guards, and anything to keep that water away.
Travis McGowin:
Sure. Awesome. Like I said, family owned and veteran operated, that’s awesome. We always like to see that. So Justin, James, tell us, as far as gutters go, I’m sure that you guys get a wide variety of sizes and shapes of houses and length of eaves and that sort of thing too, and all kinds of problems associated with those houses. But what problems do gutters actually solve for the homeowner if they were to call you and have a problem? What type of problems would they correct?
Justin Harris:
Well, one would be actually keeping your flower beds from washing out, from you having to go buy more mulch and put them down as well. The mold build up on the side of your house, keep from having for you to clean your side of your house from pressure washing. The foundation of the house, just to start with, there’s numerous of things that the seamless gutters do help out with.
Travis McGowin:
Speaking from my own experience, which we don’t have a full set of seamless gutters, which probably we’ll be calling y’all guys very soon. But what I have noticed when I’ve got runoff off of my roof, coming off the side of the roof, is that where it splatters up on the side of my house, because my house has a painted finish or a type of finish on the brick, is it’s completely washing away the finish on the lower portion of my brick. So now it’s not even uniform or even anymore.
James Watson:
Right. Yeah, and you know, a lot of customers don’t realize with gutters, the soil base in Alabama is a sandy soil mixed with a clay subsoil. So usually that sandy soil, that water will kind of sift through it real easily. And then when it hits that clay, clay acts kind of like a channel. So if you don’t have proper drainage around your home or gutters with the downspouts in away from the foundation, you know, so anytime you’re forcing water into the foundation, then you’re going to have, you know, shifting of the foundation issues. You know, most all houses, you know, built these days or either block up from the bottom. And then you have brick, which we all know, you know, concrete is porous. So it soaks that water in. You get the discoloration on the outside of the bottom of the brick, that green substance, which is, you know, like a mildew substance. Well, on the inside of that wall, where it’s dark and stays humid, if the outside’s staying wet, the inside is staying dark, well, then you start to mold build up on the inside of the house. You know, so it prevents all of that. When you, you know, when you have gutters installed, the trenching around the outside of the house where the water builds up, you know, it eliminates that and kind of keeps that foundation intact. You know, and then, you know, if the water’s pushed away from the home, you don’t have any standing water. Kind of helps eliminate mosquitoes, gnats, you know, the many nice bugs that we have here in Alabama that are a nuisance.
Travis McGowin:
I would tell you, yes, Alabama, take it from us. We’re very, very well versed on how many insects are in Alabama. But no, I like what you mentioned. So standing water, yes, I mean, that’s a huge problem, especially for mosquitoes and nobody likes mosquitoes. I still haven’t figured out, you know, I think I’ve asked the good Lord as well. I haven’t figured out what the purpose of a mosquito is. Anyway, I can see, you know, the purpose of like a termite. I can’t see the purpose of a mosquito. But speaking of termites, I like what you said about getting that moisture away from the house. So in a pest control perspective, we always try to point out what we call conducive conditions to customers. So that’s going to be, you know, excess moisture, excess wood around the house, those sorts of things. And excess moisture, you know, is like a calling beacon to termites. It’s a calling beacon to mosquitoes, molds, funguses and things like that. So, yeah, gutters can definitely help solve that. But if a customer calls you and they say hey, Justin, hey, James, I’m interested in having you come out to my house. I’m interested in your product and seamless gutters. Walk us through that. What’s your process on, you know, from, let’s just say, from start to finish on a gutter estimation all the way through the install?
James Watson:
Yeah. So usually, you know, we can be reached two ways, obviously, either through our Facebook page, Facebook Messenger, or, you know, just a general comment on the Facebook page. And our phone numbers are listed on there. If you’re in the, you know, the Tri County area, we do have yard signs out with the phone numbers on there as well. So from, you know, point of contact, once you reach out to us, we set up a time and date where we can meet you at the property. Once we meet at the property, we want to walk around the house with you so that we can identify areas that are going to be of heavier concern. And then we want to go over the areas that sometimes aren’t really as heavy of a concern as far as, you know, upper level roofs, so on and so forth. And we discussed the two. And the reason we do that is, is obviously we want to get the gutter in the concern areas. But then again, gutters can add an aesthetic look to the house as well. You know, not all gutters look bad, depending on what color you want to go with, what style you want to go with, so on and so forth. So they do add a type of crown molding look to the exterior of the home. So we show up, we walk around, we identify those issues that you’re having. We want to discuss where we want to place the downspouts on the home. You know, some people don’t like the downspout look, so we do have options of rain chains that are more of a decorative look to the home. So we have that option. We also do rain barrels where if you have a garden and you want to use the rainwater to water your garden. So those are the things we want to discuss while we’re walking around the home, so that we can make sure we are taking care of your problem, number one. And number two, that we’re actually giving you the aesthetic look that you want, so that you don’t have that, you know, that traditional look of a gutter that some people don’t like. So we go around, we get all that figured out. Then we want to discuss color. Do we want to go with a matching color to the house? You know, do we want to offset it? One thing we’ve been running into a lot lately is, you know, there’s a lot of black and white houses being built. So in a lot of these white houses, we’re going with black gutter, which looks really good, you know, it pops out on the house. Yeah, definitely. So we pick that color. We want to make sure the color is going to go well with the home. Once we get that color picked, we look at the, you know, the surrounding area and discuss whether we want to put a gutter guard on top, you know, to keep the leaves and stuff out of the gutter. That way, once that gutter system is on your home, you don’t have to worry about getting up there and dealing with anything. We put it in, you leave it alone, everything’s good to go. If you don’t want to go to guard, if you don’t have a lot of foliage in the area, then, you know, we just do an open gutter system. From there, we pretty much, you know, once we get the color selected, if you decide to go with us, well, we sit down, we discuss what date is going to be best. You know, we show up, get the install done. Typically, an install, you know, can range anywhere from four to six hours in a day. Once everything is done, we walk around with the customer, make sure everything was done to satisfaction of the contract. If everything looks good, we do the payment collection at the end of the job. Once the job is finished, all customers get a one-year service warranty for workmanship on that job.
Travis McGowin:
Okay. Now, is there any additional warranty on the materials themselves from the manufacturers or anything like that?
James Watson:
Yes. So, the manufacturer that we get the gutter from, they have what they call a 50-year baked on paint process warranty through the actual manufacturer. So, if you’re familiar with like power coating and things like that, the gutter, the aluminum, and they’re all 0.27 or 0.29 gauge aluminum, the gutter goes through that same type of process for the paint. So, they kind of guarantee it for a 50-year deal. We do, we use a 50-year tri-polymer silicone. It’s a marine grade based silicone. So, that’s, you know, that’s got a 50-year manufacturer warranty. And then if you decide to go with the gutter guard, we have two different gutter guards that we use. One of the gutter guards is a 25-year manufacturer warranty. It’s aluminum-based product. And the other one is a 40-year manufacturer warranty for that product.
Travis McGowin:
Awesome. I feel like those are great numbers. And I feel like if someone calls and gets you guys to do an install, that they can trust that that product is going to be there and be in good shape for a very, very long time. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, you know, that about does it. But if somebody, like, you know, we’ve talked about the process. We’ve talked about how you guys got started. If somebody were to want to reach out to you, say, from this podcast or whatnot, what’s a good contact information for you guys?
James Watson:
So the easiest way to contact myself, James Watson, is by phone, 334-312-5235. And like I said, our Facebook page, Pro Flow LLC. You can message us there, put a comment on there. And then, like, if you’re riding around a Tri County area, you know, we do have yard sign stuff out with that phone number. And then you could also contact Justin as well.
Justin Harris:
And my phone number is 334-306-2024. Also, we have a truck and a trailer that’s got our logo, phone numbers on it, too, as well.
Travis McGowin:
Awesome. Well, anybody in need of seamless gutters, definitely reach out to Pro Flow. The guys at Pro Flow will get you taken care of. And guys, I appreciate y’all coming on the show today.
James Watson:
Absolutely. Thank you.
Justin Harris:
Thank you, sir.
Travis McGowin:
Hello. And thank you for listening to another edition of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast with your hosts, Travis and Michael. If you have any questions in reference to what we discussed today, give us a call at 334-595-9055. And you can ask for me, Travis McGowin. I’ll be more than happy to speak with you. Make sure you share this podcast with your friends and family. And subscribe to us on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and any of the other major streaming platforms. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.
