After many years of working for other companies, Sal Meyer, pictured above, finally opened his own plumbing and heating business in November of 2019.

Sal Meyer has been in the plumbing, heating and air conditioning business for 28 years and has his master plumber license. For many of those years he worked for other companies, but now, since Nov. 1, 2019, he has been working on his own as Meyer Plumbing and Heating in Blue Earth.

“My son-in-law and daughter, Nick and Kate Schwager, had purchased Anderson Electric and I started up my business in their building,” Meyer says. “Then we purchased a building and moved into it.”

That building is located on Highway 169 and formerly housed an insurance office. They moved into it in December of 2021. It serves as the office area for both Meyer Plumbing and Heating and Anderson Electric, although Nick Schwager still has his personal office in the Anderson Electric building.

Meyer’s wife, Jenny, is the office manager. The couple’s daughter, Samantha Sukalski, does the bookkeeping for Meyer’s Plumbing while daughter Schwager does the books for Anderson Electric.

“Our third daughter, Emily, is a senior in high school,” Jenny Meyer says. “We also have five grandchildren, all under the age of five.”

Both Sal and Jenny Meyer say their business grew a lot faster than they had thought it would.

“Within two months we hired our first employee,” Jenny Meyer says. “We now have four employees. Two mostly do the remodeling and new construction work, while two do the service call work.”

The four are Dale King, David Roiger, Travis Ulrich and Jeremiah Schutt. All are former co-workers of Sal Meyer’s from where he previously worked.

“I started doing plumbing and HVAC at the co-op in Mapleton,” Sal Meyer says. “Then I worked at Kaduce Plumbing and Heating in Winnebago, Royer’s Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning in Winnebago, at Kaduce again, and then at Schwickert’s in Mankato.”

He took a leave of absence from Schwickert’s but was still working there one day a week, on Mondays, when he started the business in Blue Earth.

Meyer says their business handles all kinds of plumbing and heating types of work. They are a dealer for Daikin air conditioning and heating products.

“We do all types of plumbing and installation of fixtures in remodeling and new construction,” Meyer says. “Things we get, or the customer can get their own and we can install them.”

They do everything from duct work to geo-thermal systems and everything in between. From fixing a leaky pipe to replacing bathroom fixtures and showers and doing kitchen remodels. And, of course, they can fix any type of plumbing or heating system problem.

Meyer says homeowners can do some preventative maintenance themselves, such as checking and changing furnace filters, checking and changing batteries in thermostats, and checking for blown fuses if the furnace does not work. Even doing a routine water heater flushing, which is a bit trickier.

“But if they don’t want to do it themselves, or if it is a bigger problem, they can call us,” Meyer says. “We do a lot of service call work. And if it is an emergency, we can get our guys there quickly.”

The Meyers say they have had a few issues due to the COVID pandemic.

“It has been a little difficult to get our supplies and materials since 2020,” Jenny Meyer says. “Shower units were one thing that were hard to get. Some things were up to 20 weeks out to get in.”

Many items are back to just a couple weeks to get delivered, but showers are still one of those things which take longer to get. Other items are limited in quantity, such as plumbing fittings. They would order a bunch of pipe elbows and only get 10 at a time, for instance.

While that issue has been improving, the Meyers say another one is having constant price increases from their suppliers.

“Most of our customers have been very understanding of the price increases,” Sal Meyer says. “The big issue is that we can’t guarantee estimates for 30 days as in the past. Now it is 10 to 15 days at the most.”

Despite a few bumps, Sal and Jenny Meyer say they are glad they started their own business. The couple, who both grew up in Winnebago and still live there, say they always had a lot of people urge them to go ahead and do it.

“It is going good,” Sal Meyer says. “We are keeping very busy. But we can still handle more work.”