The Drive, Counted Both Ways
The drive is one dollar a mile, counted both ways. Round trip. From Killeen to your door and back. That is the only travel charge. No hidden trip fee, no fuel surcharge, no service call that gets waived if you buy something. You pay for the actual miles the truck rolls. The homepage has a drive gauge. Type your address or ZIP, and it tells you the miles and the drive dollars before you talk to a human. That number is the deposit to reserve the visit, and it comes off the final bill. You are not throwing money away. You are putting it toward the work.
Here is how the round trip drive looks for towns around Killeen. Harker Heights is about 8 miles out, so $16 round trip. Copperas Cove about 11 miles, $22 round trip. Belton about 20 miles, $40 round trip. Salado about 24 miles, $48 round trip. Temple about 29 miles, $58 round trip. Georgetown about 45 miles, $90 round trip. Round Rock about 55 miles, $110 round trip. Waco about 60 miles, $120 round trip. Austin about 70 miles, $140 round trip. Those are the drive dollars, plain and simple. No extra for traffic, no extra for tolls. The mile is the mile.
Most shops wrap the trip charge into the labor rate and call it a free estimate. It is not free. You paid for it in the hourly number they quoted. I split it out so you see it. The drive is separate from labor because it is a separate thing. The truck burns fuel whether I turn a wrench or not. Paying the drive as a deposit locks the calendar. The rest of the labor gets settled when the job is done. You know exactly what the travel costs before I leave the shop.
Parts at Cost, No Markup
The softener itself is a part. You pay what the supply house charges me. I hand you the receipt. No margin added, no handling fee, no restocking charge folded in. If you want a specific brand or model, I source it and you pay cost. If you want to buy it yourself from a big box store or online, do it. I will install the unit you bought. The labor does not change. I am not in the business of selling boxes. I am in the business of plumbing them in correctly.
Salt is the same way. I can bring bags at cost, or you can have them ready. Some softeners take pellets, some take crystals, some take block salt. We figure out what your unit needs, and you decide who buys it. There is no secret margin on the salt delivery. The trade has trained people to think the parts price is the parts price, but it almost never is. Most plumbers run a heavy markup on materials and call it standard. I call it a hidden fee. You should not pay extra on a part just because I picked it up.
Fittings, valves, clamps, drain line, all of it is at cost. Every copper elbow, every sharkbite, every stick of PEX. The supply house invoice is your invoice. If a job needs a specialty fitting that costs sixty bucks, you pay sixty bucks. Not ninety. Not a hundred and twenty. This is how honest work gets priced. The labor is where I make my living. The parts are just parts. You should never wonder if you got taken on the materials.
- Softener unit sold at supply house cost
- Salt at cost or bring your own
- All fittings and pipe at cost, no markup
- You see the parts invoice, no hidden margin
- Install your own unit, labor stays the same
Filtration and Water Testing
A whole house water filter install is $400 labor. An under sink filter is the same number. The labor covers cutting in the housing, mounting the bracket, and plumbing the in and out. The filter unit itself is a part, sold at cost. If you already bought a filter and it is sitting in the box, I install that one. The labor is still $400. No penalty for being prepared. Cartridge changes down the road are $95 labor. You buy the cartridges at cost or keep your own on the shelf.
A water test and recommendation is zero dollars labor. Free. You pay the drive only. I come out, pull a sample, run the hardness, iron, and pH checks, and tell you what the water actually needs. No sales pitch tied to the test. The test is data. If the water is hard and you want a softener, the softener install labor is posted. If the water has sediment and you want a whole house filter, that labor is posted. You decide what to do with the information. I do not use a free test to scare you into a big system.
Filter change service is straightforward. You call when the pressure drops or the taste changes. I come out, swap the cartridge, check the housing, and you are back in business. $95 labor. The cartridge cost is separate, at the supply house price. If you have a case of cartridges in the laundry room, the job is just the $95 labor plus the drive. No upsell, no we recommend a full system rebuild. Just the work you asked for, done and gone.
- Whole house or under sink filter install, $400 labor
- Filter unit at cost or install yours
- Cartridge change $95 labor, cartridges at cost
- Water test free, drive only
- Test results with no sales pressure
The Cart on the Homepage
The website has a price board and a cart. You see the jobs listed with their labor prices. You can add a water softener install, a loop install, a filter install, whatever you need. The cart shows a running total. No phone call, no form submission, no we will get back to you within 24 hours. You build the job yourself and see the number. The only thing added is the drive, which you get from the gauge by typing your ZIP. The total you see is the total you pay, subject to what the job turns out to be.
To reserve the visit, you pay the drive fee as a deposit. That deposit comes off the final bill. It is not an extra charge. It is the travel cost applied to the labor. If your drive is $40 round trip from Belton, you pay $40 to lock the date. When the work is done, that $40 is subtracted from the labor total. You are not paying a booking fee. You are prepaying the miles. It keeps the calendar honest and it keeps people from ghosting on a scheduled day.
This system works because it removes the awkward money conversation. You already know the labor prices. You already know the drive cost. You already paid the deposit. The only variable is the parts, and those are at cost with a receipt. When I show up, we talk about the work, not the price. The price was settled before I started the truck. That is how every trade should operate. No one should have to wonder what the bill will be when the plumber is standing in their kitchen.
- Add jobs to the cart, see a running labor total
- Type your ZIP, get the round trip drive dollars
- Pay the drive as a deposit, it comes off the final bill
- No phone estimate, no callback, no waiting
- The price is settled before the truck rolls
How a Softener Install Goes
The job starts with the location. The softener needs to sit near the main water line coming into the house, usually in the garage or on an exterior wall. I show up, we walk the spot, and I confirm the plan. If the house has a soft water loop, the install is straightforward. I mount the softener, pipe the in and out to the loop stubs, run the drain line to a standpipe or floor drain, and plug in the control head. The startup cycle flushes the resin and gets the unit online. You have soft water the same day.
If the house does not have a loop, we build one first. That means cutting into the main cold line, installing a bypass valve set, and running the loop to the softener location. The outdoor spigots and the kitchen cold stay on hard water, which is how it should be. The rest of the house runs through the softener. This is all copper or PEX, depending on what the existing plumbing is. The work is clean and the joints are solid. No shortcuts, no saddle valves, no junk that leaks in two years.
After the softener is online, I set the clock and the hardness level. I run a manual regeneration to make sure the drain line flows right and the brine tank fills. I check every connection for drips. You get a quick walkthrough on how the unit works and when to add salt. The whole job, loop or no loop, is done in a day. You are left with a working softener, a clean work area, and a bill that matches the numbers you saw on the website before you ever picked up the phone.