About the Owner - Dave's Story
"I want to run a business that can help people, and by doing this, provide a living for my family."
Born in Wild Rose in 1965 on an October afternoon. United States Air Force veteran, served from 1987 to 1991. Awarded Airman of the quarter from the 62 CPTS for 3 consecutive quarters. Youngest of seven children. Graduated from Appleton East in 1984. Completed college degrees in Financial Management and Applied Technology while in the Air Force.
Happily married to wife Lucy since 1987, and have five children: Amanda, Ben, April, David and Emma.
We are members of Christ The Rock Community Church. God and our church are the most important things in our lives. A portion of what we earn goes toward our church and other Christian outreach activities. We do not support anything that would be considered radical. We just believe in helping people when possible and being a good example to those around us, and hope our children will want to do so also.
Owned & operated DLS Commercial Lawn Service. Sold company to Lawn Pro out of Green Bay in Spring of 1999. Worked at Sears Auto as a service writer and store manager at the same time on nights & weekends to obtain health insurance for family. I then took six months off to spend time with family after selling the business.
After my time off, I took a position at a local Plumbing & Heating company in Combined Locks WI, which is now out of business. That is where I learned about Radon. I was their Radon mitigation, residential plumbing replacement/remodeling & small commercial salesperson. At the time, they were one of two certified companies in the Fox Valley that worked with Radon.
I was sent to school in Waukesha, WI for Radon mitigation and testing. I completed the classes and passed the tests.
After a short while I realized that this could be a good business to start on my own. I felt that by having another company in the Valley that is certified to work with Radon, that customers would get more of a choice - competition is always good for the consumer.
I started on my own in July of 2000. We are now the largest Radon mitigation & Testing company in WI. We install an average of 15-20 systems a week, not including new construction.
I have not had one customer that wasn't happy with our quality of work or that we haven't been able to "get it right" until they are. The first system installed was in our own home, which tested at 30 pCi/L and now tests at below 1 pCi/L.
I hope to get more into new construction, expand into the Milwaukee area and continue to learn more about new techniques and Radon related information.
The hardest part of owning this business is keeping up when it's busy and finding work when it's not. This is a very physically demanding job, not for the faint of heart. We have gone through a few installers because they were not able to do the job physically or their quality of work was lacking.
Some days you might have to work in an attic where the temps get up to 150 or 170 degrees, which can be dangerous. A few months later, you might be installing a system outside in 0 degree weather. We will always be looking for qualified installers that can be trained when needed.
I will not send an installer to a job by themselves until they can demonstrate to us that they can install a perfect system. I would rather pass on a job than send someone out and have a less than perfect system.