After 37 years, Wiener's Plumbing and Irrigation Ltd., now called Wiener's Plumbing and Drain Cleaning, is under new ownership.

KELOWNA, BC (February 8 ,2021) Wiener's Plumbing is excited to announce they are under new ownership with a slightly new name. The company was recently purchased by Dan and Crystal Benoit. Dan was an employee of Wiener's for the last three years. Knowing the owner was wanting to retire, he expressed interest in taking on the business and continuing its legacy with the same great team of employees.

Wiener's Plumbing and Irrigation was opened in 1984 by Wayne Schaeffer. His dad, Gord, who is now 85 years young, came on in the last decade to act as the company's Office Manager. The father and son team grew the company to offer 24-7 emergency plumbing services to the Okanagan Valley along with full-service contracts with many restaurants and stratas in the area, as well as the City of Kelowna.

The Benoit's have a bit of an adventurous story in getting to this place. From 2010-2013 they owned and operated a plumbing company in Saskatchewan called Matrix Plumbing and Heating Ltd. Dan was then recruited and worked as a mill maintenance supervisor with a Uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. He would fly in/out in 1-week rotations. After 4 1/2 years, the toll of being away from his wife and three children was getting to be too much. Factor in Saskatchewan winters and they decided a change was in order. Dan researched real estate and weather trends, and Crystal researched job opportunities. Dan found the farthest west they could afford to purchase a home was the "Okanagan Valley" - but neither knew exactly what the "Okanagan Valley" was as neither had been to the area before. Crystal found there were quite a few jobs posted between Vernon and Penticton for a plumber and threw out a couple resumes. Dan looked at weather trends and he was sold. He flew up north for work the next day. He got a couple calls from prospective employers and decided to fly back home two days later and drive out to Kelowna and see what the area was all about. He and their oldest daughter Madison, who was then 14, made the trip out. Dan set up a couple interviews and by day 2 had a job lined up and a realtor looking into houses. They spent the next two days exploring the valley and simply fell in love with it. Long story short, they were able to sell their house in Saskatchewan in a Buyer's Market and buy a house in Kelowna in a Seller's Market. They ended up purchasing a house in the Glenmore area sight unseen. They were happy to even get a house with the market being what it was, but they could not get possession until October. As they wanted the kids to start school at the beginning of the year, they tried to find a place to rent temporarily. That proved challenging and they ended up living in a 81sq ft travel trailer in the overflow area of a campsite in Rutland for 5 weeks with 3 kids and black lab. It was hard, but being in that situation forced them to explore the area a lot more than if they had gotten the house right away just simply because they couldn't stand being cramped in the trailer any more than they had to. From having the thought to move out of province to driving into Kelowna was 7 short weeks.

Fast forward 3 years and here they are - loving and still exploring the Okanagan Valley and excited to make some community and business connections and continue the legacy of Wiener's Plumbing.

For more information, please feel free to contact Crystal at [email protected] or 306-230-0853. You can also visit their business webpage at: www.wienersplumbing.com or Crystal's personal blog that logged their adventure from SK to BC: https://prairiegirlintheokanagan.wordpress.com/author/prairiegirlintheokanagan/