Area people who connect with Townsend Enterprises for a plumber may well be stunned to see Rachael Townsend at their doorway. In her mid-30s, Townsend, of Boothbay Harbor, is just one of Maine’s incredibly several women Master Plumbers and a entire partner in the organization.
The 2002 Boothbay Area Superior College graduate’s experience began as a “little kid” of about 8 or 9. She would accompany her father, Jeff Townsend, as he labored. “I would hand him the equipment so I acquired what they have been and how to transform on h2o valves.” In the course of her college a long time, she worked in the industry with her father, who has been in company as a plumber due to the fact 1979.
Wanting to check out other fields, Rachael Townsend headed to College of Maine at Augusta to review pc science and architectural engineering. She worked on weekends with her father and obtained her Trainee Plumber license in 2006 and associate’s diploma from UMA in 2009.
“It was throughout the housing disaster and I could not come across operate in my new discipline, so I arrived again and went to operate for my Dad,” she said. It was, as she remembered, a easy transition since they ended up utilized to doing the job collectively.
From 2009 on, she averaged 30 several hours a week, or about 10,000 hours in the subject, although juggling cleaning and other firms. With her considerable expertise, she bypassed the Journeyman Plumber license and in its place, previous Jan. 20, was accredited as a Learn Plumber in Maine.
Though the condition doesn’t document licensees as male or feminine, gals Master Plumbers are several in Maine. Jeff Townsend explained he has only met one particular about 20 several years back and Rachael has hardly ever fulfilled a different female Learn Plumber. Vocation web-site Zippia claims girls make up all-around 5% of all plumbers.
Making use of for her Learn Plumber license was not her original strategy, but a dialogue with their law firm about her father’s eventual retirement made her rethink. “If I did not get the license all my work would have been a waste of time since I couldn’t consider in excess of the enterprise,” she said. So at the conclude of last summer season soon after remaining encouraged by lots of persons, she turned significant about applying.
In addition to functioning in the subject, she handles accounting, payroll, ordering, billing, inventory and the other business-centered duties of an operator.
Asked why there aren’t more ladies plumbers, she admitted the area could be “…scary for gals. If my father did not have a plumbing enterprise, I wouldn’t be a plumber. You have to have a person who is inclined to enable you function with them.”
She also pointed to the way they work as a crew. “Almost appropriate off the bat we worked nicely with every other.” By seeing and discovering from her father, she discovered what he required her to do and now each and every allows the other. “We can perform alongside one another without talking, we just know and that is a scarce matter.”
“All along she’s absent out in the industry with me but I by no means experienced a believed that she would go all the way with it,” Jeff mentioned.
It was not normally quick and Rachael mentioned her father was a tricky trainer. “It took a whilst in advance of I could carry and set a rest room or put in a h2o heater by myself. I experienced to exhibit him that I could perform the position. He generally told me that ‘try’ is a failure word.”
As for mentoring other females, she is open to the notion. “In typical, shoppers like owning a girl on the occupation mainly because they are additional in-depth than guys,” she said.
And will her son Carter, 10, stick to in the relatives custom? For now, he is carrying out what his mom did – accompanying them in the field and studying how to transform on h2o valves. She teaches him and he has revealed an curiosity but she is not guaranteed if he will come to be a plumber.
And what text of wisdom did her father give her? She answered, “There are no problems, just alternatives.”
