Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.156 | feat. Joey Ruffino from Sewercuse Plumbing

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Sewercuse’s Joey Rafino on Drain Clogs, Flushable Wipes, and Growing a Syracuse Drain Business Host Noah Chrysler interviews Joey Rafino of Syracuse Drain Solutions (“Sewercuse”), a Syracuse-based drain-cleaning specialist handling clogs in sinks, tubs, dishwashers, and main sewers. Joey says homeowners most often damage drains by putting the wrong things down them—especially “flushable” wipes (an everyday problem), grease that solidifies in cold pipes, and food/oils rinsed off plates; Syracuse’s old pipes also invite tree-root intrusions that can cause basement backups through floor drains. He explains how he differentiates from typical plumbers by doing camera inspections and descaling with a flex-shaft chain knocker rather than just snaking a hole through. Joey discusses recording jobs for Instagram/TikTok, learning what drives engagement, and using myths like eggshells “sharpening” disposals to spark comments. He warns Drano can work but may damage old lines, describes disposing bacon grease with tinfoil, shares a story of helping a cash-strapped resident by coordinating free city excavation, and says his next step is hiring help for calls and workload. 00:00 Meet Sewer Cuse 01:01 Common Drain Mistakes 01:09 Wipes Grease Roots 02:09 Basement Backup Signs 02:32 Origin Story and Name 03:32 Instagram Growth Playbook 06:02 Real Drain Pro Tools 07:57 Customer Win Story 08:52 Plumber Hot Takes 10:24 Draino and Water Heaters 12:17 Ban Flushable Wipes 12:49 Whats Next for Business 13:43 Wrap Up and Thanks

Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler. I am here today with Joey Rafino from Sewardcuse. Joey, welcome to the pod. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Joey, we want to hear a little bit about Seward Cuse and what you do over there at Seward Cuse. So, yeah, so Syracuse Drain Solutions is the full name. Everybody calls me Seward Cuse. I started as a drain cleaning business pretty much with a little bit of residential plumbing repairs, you know, drain line repairs, maybe a hot water tank. but my main thing is drain cleaning. So you have a clogging your drain, call sewer queues. Beautiful.

Okay, fantastic. Just any sort of drain, a bathtub, a sink. A tub, sinks, main sewer. Gotcha. Okay. Dishwashers? Yeah. Cool.

A lot of dishwashers. A lot of dishwashers. Fantastic. Cool. What do Syracuse homeowners get wrong about drains and sewer lines all the time? What they can put down them. Okay. That's the biggest thing.

What's the weirdest thing you've pulled out of a drain? The weirdest thing, the thing I pull out the most, which is like an epidemic in the city, are those flushable, like, cleaning wipes. Sure. Every day. Every day. It's insane. Cool.

We got some dude wipes in the bathroom. Have you seen that? I got it. Okay. They say flushable, you can flush them, but they get stuck. Gotcha. Yeah. How can they sell a product that, like, is, that claims one thing and then, like, does not

break down in the pipes? Like, I mean, that seems insane. When they say flushable. that that covers it because it does flush yeah but that's it yeah cloggable down it gets stuck yeah that's they're covered on their end okay so you're pulling out a lot of uh like like flushable wipes anything else what what other grease people just you know they cook they fry something pour it down the drain hits that cold pipe solidifies grease a lot of tree roots in the city interesting yeah a lot of old pipes in the city of syracuse so those joints break inside the line tree roots get right inside interesting

What kind of problem occurs? Like, how is that visible? Like, what does the homeowner call about? Is it like a water buildup in the... Yeah, so usually, like, you have your... I don't know if you're in the basement of your house. You see where you have, like, that floor drain. So, you know, if water runs in the basement, it goes down.

If the drain's clogged, it comes right out of there. It'll fill your basement up real quick. Oh, fun. Cool. And then they call Joey. Yeah. Gotcha. Cool, cool, cool.

Got it. How did you end up taking pride in this kind of work? You know, if you scroll on your Instagram, there's a lot of gross, nasty videos and lots of cool stuff there but like you know I mean it's a weird thing to be like this is my brand this is a very weird thing i've been i've been in a like property management so a lot of apartments in the city so i've been doing this kind of work probably i started when i was like 15 and it is kind of weird but i always enjoyed it things don't gross me out a lot so when i always tell people like when you're doing it and you're getting it's almost like fishing and you pull it back and you're like oh what did i

find on the end and i always like it was just like always the adrenaline rush of what can what could find on the end and then about a couple years ago now my buddy you know everybody says sewers right it was kind of like this you know this thing on the city oh it's sewer cues we live in sewercuse and I'm like well that'd make a great name for a business and I always enjoyed doing it so I'm like I was really good at it I would do it here and there as side jobs and I'm like I'm going to make a business out of that cool the rest of this history I love it no that's awesome cool so yeah so tell me about your Instagram right so your Instagram journey seems like like it's taken off, you know?

And if you look, I mean, you've got tons and tons of engagement and stuff. Tell me about that. Yeah, that's kind of the fun part. So that's like my, almost my second job, I tell my wife, you know, I record pretty much everything I do. I got like, like, meta glasses and stuff. And, you know, I always try to tell the homeowners like, hey, I'm going to record. But yeah, when I get home, I just kind of find the stuff that I know is going to gross

people out, which is kind of easy. Sure. And, yeah, I've kind of been working, you know, I go on TikTok, you know, learn how to edit. And then along the way, kind of learn what gets the clip. in the engagement. And now, I mean, I've racked millions of views. Fantastic. Yeah.

What have been some of the learnings that you've taken away from that, right? What gets that, what gets those views? What gets that engagement? So I do kind of this one thing. Like I'll record something. Like I showed you earlier, like in the trap, there's eggshells in the trap. And then putting on there like, so I'll say like, customer said this. I put my eggshells down the drain to sharpen the garbage disposal, right?

And I'll just show that it doesn't work. And people just see that, oh, I do this. day. So getting people to comment saying, hey, that's actually not right when I know it's right, but just getting them to say stuff on the videos. What do you mean? So you've deliberately put in, like, false stuff? Well, I put it in is correct, and they, but people think that what they're doing, they've been doing it for years, right? Like, I've been putting eggshells down. My, my, my grandma told me that eggshells sharpen the garbage disposal blades, but really it just clogs it up. Sure. It doesn't work. So just stuff like that where I know people are going to comment, be like, oh, I've been doing this for

years. It works fine. Gotcha. Yeah. Cool. little engagement bait. Yeah. Gotcha. The engagement rage bait is really, that's, yeah. I love it. I always find that so fascinating, right? It's like, I think, I think that when things do really well on social media consistently, right, because you've consistently popped off. I feel like it says something about like human nature, right, where it's like, there's a reason people want to consume this. Why is that? So, yeah. Trying to figure that out. That's kind of the fun part. Yeah. Yeah. And some I'll do the same thing. I'll get like 500 views. And I'm like, what the heck?

Yeah. It should have worked. Right. And it's right. And it's. didn't. Oh, that's so funny. Isn't that wild? And then, like, I don't know. Have you ever used Instagram's, like, trial reels before? No, I've heard about that. I haven't tried that.

Yeah, you should try it. I've heard that that's really helpful. And if you do, you can do multiple variations of the same video. And then one of them can, like, pop off. And then, yeah, pretty cool. Because if you change the text or you change the hook, then it could potentially, you know, go super well. Cool. What separates a real sewer expert from a guy that just does basic plumb?

So you can just, you know, you can call any plumber. Most plumbers. So when I say plumbers, I mean guys that are like, you know, commercial plumbing, they want to go and they want to repipe a house. Brand new water lines, brand new drain lines. But a customer calls and say, hey, I need my drain line snaked, right? They don't really want to do it. And I enjoy doing it, which is weird.

People think I'm weird, but I do enjoy doing it. They'll just go in and they'll snake it out real quick. I go in, I snake it out. I have a camera. I do full camera inspections. Do pipe, like de-scaling. It's the same kind of thing. So I put a machine in that fully descales it.

Cool. So I go above and beyond for the customers. What is descaling? What does that machine actually do? So it's called a, it's like a chain knocker. So it goes in, it's called like a flex shaft chain knocker. And when it spins, it expands the chains. So it's knocking the hole inside of the pipe.

Instead of just sticking a hole through what's there and just kind of pulling it back and calling it a day. Cool. I'm going to make sure that the whole line is clear. Yeah, I've seen those things. Those are pretty cool. Very cool. Cool.

When did you realize that your personality and brand, could help grow the business? Probably like right when I started. I mean, it was, you know, it was kind of, it was fun to start at first. And then I realized like, you know, really engaging with the customers. It was something I was actually like really good at because I'm actually like pretty introverted. So then when I show up at that house, though, it's like the switch the flips. Like, oh, I'm like actually really good at this.

And I just, I love that part of it. I love it. Do you have any like, or specifically though, when, what, what caused you to post that first video? Just like, this is crazy and you just post it? The tone out one? I mean, that one or just anything. Like, you know, what caused you to start, like, posting? Yeah, so I started the social media page, probably like a couple months after.

I was like, I'm just going to throw this out and see what it does. And I was on vacation and like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Cool. All right, this is what people like. Yeah, and it took off. Yeah. Very cool. All right, cool.

Tell me like a story. You got like a customer story, weird story sticks out in your memory. Yeah, I got a few. I mean, the one, as far as, like, helping a customer out, I had this one lady who I was there, and, you know, you can have the city of Syracuse come and try to do it, and then if they can't get it, they tell people to call me. This one lady, she had, you know, no money, nothing. She just needed help out.

And I couldn't get the line. I couldn't get it. So I was actually able to call a supervisor from the city, and they came and they actually dug up her hold yard. I was able to talk to them and get it done for free, which for her. So that was really great to help the customer out. Yeah. As far as helping people out, that was one thing I really take pride in.

Absolutely. Yeah. Very cool. I'm sorry, you dug up her whole yard. You didn't. I got the city actually came and dug it up water. So that was nice to help somebody out, you know, the whole thing free of charge. No, that's wonderful.

That's awesome. Well, very cool. Okay, we're going to transition here to some hot takes, okay? Can you give us some plumber hot takes? Here we go. What's a plumbing rule homeowners swear by that you think is complete BS? That's a tough one. As far as drain lines go, I guess like I said before, like what you put down the drain,

I wouldn't put anything except soap, water, toilet paper. People think that once you put it down the drain, you don't see it, it's gone. And it goes and like it's right out. That's not true at all. If you can go in and inspect a line, even though your line's not backed up, stuff is still sitting there. So don't put anything down the drain. Good to know. Yeah.

Good to know. What's one normal thing people do in their house that plumbus? know is absolutely wrecking their pipes. I mean, we've kind of recovered that. Yeah, I mean, pouring grease down the drain. If you have like food on your plate, even rinsing food, like, even though the food's not going down the drain, you're still rinsing oils off. So get everything off. I mean, that's huge. That grease builds up so fast. Gotcha. This might be a silly question, but if I have a big pan of bacon grease, what do I do with that pan of bacon grease? Like, what should I do? I'll tell you what my wife does. It's actually pretty.

Race March. She taught me this and we got married. She takes tin foil, puts it in the like the basket of your sink there and pours it in and then just kind of wraps it up and sets it aside. Sweet. It's it hardened up and then throws it out. Sweet. Yeah. So she taught me that. That was I like that. Yeah. A little tinfoil grenade of bacon grease. I like that. Cool. What's your hottest take on Drano? Flushable wipes, garbage disposals and or tankless water heaters. Any hot takes on those items? Draino works, but it destroys your drain lines. Okay. It'll burn a hole right through especially in the city of Syracuse we have a lot of old drain lines a lot of galvanized drain lines cast iron and if it sits if there's like a belly in your

pipe and it sits it's going to eat right through even PVC I find PVC can handle it a little better but yeah you said tankless water heaters yeah I like them I have a very big house and actually when I bought my house I put one in it took probably two minutes to get hot water up to the top floor of my house so I took it out yeah okay I put a regular tank back in. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

Two minutes to just, like, go. It was brutal. It was brutal. Gotcha. What's something plumbers recommend all the time that you think is overrated or unnecessary? Plumbers recommend all the time. I think sometimes with water heaters, plumbers will recommend, and not that it's the worst thing in the world, you know, draining your tank out, shutting it off, draining the water,

changing the anode rods. But I find with a lot of the newer hot water tanks, they're not even lasting long enough for it to even matter. So, yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. How many years do you get on a hot water tank?

I swear it all depends these days. Sometimes, like, one year on some of the cheaper ones. You can go with, like, higher-end models, but it all depends on the condition of where the hot water tank is. If you have a lot of moisture, it's going to rust out. Damn. A single year is crazy. It is insane. Yeah, I have stories.

Now, let's hear of. Well, you got one? Yeah, so actually, I have some rental properties myself, and so we'll buy, like, you know, tanks from Home Depot or Lowe's. You know, you want to sometimes save money and put a cheaper one in. But yeah, I mean, a little bit of water, moisture. If it's a really damp basement, they'll just die in a year. And they'll start leaking, crack. And it's, yeah, it's a thing.

If you could ban one household plumbing habit or product tomorrow, what would it be in why? Definitely flushable wipes. Gotcha. Like I said, it's, it is an epidemic everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, cool.

It keeps me employed. I will say that. So I try to say it too much, but yeah, it's bad. Cool. Sounds good. So like would you're like your biggest sellout moment if you like, if you ever sponsored by like dude wipes or one of those slouchable wipe companies, we know that like they got you. Yeah. It's brutal.

Gotcha. It's bad. People don't know what it is. Cool. Joey, what's next for for Searcuse? What's on the horizon? That's kind of my next step. I kind of need to make that decision.

Like I am a one man company. You know, I am very busy and I handle it pretty well, but it would be nice to have some help. So hiring on at least one more person for now, maybe somebody to take the phone calls. I know they have those AI receptionists. Yeah. I'm driving my wife crazy. Oh, yeah, you're taking calls all the time? Just taking calls and then I have to go home and edit videos at night.

And yeah, it's a lot. All the office work, phone calls. Gotcha. It's a lot. Full-time gig for sure. Yeah, like two full-time jobs. Yeah. Yeah.

Damn. Now that makes sense, though, like a receptionist potentially or maybe a service. Just something to take the look. Maybe, yeah, I don't even know. Cool. I think they have that. You know, if you, they're probably specialized for plumbing services.

You can probably hire like a full-time, like, person to take your calls into things. That's great. Well, cool. Joey, hey, thank you so much for coming on. Seriously,

it was wonderful to learn more about plumbing. And I know what to keep out of my drains now. And I'm going to go home and make a little tinfoil birds nest and put some... Shout out to my wife for that. Oh, yeah. She's great. Beautiful. Well, hey, guys,

thank you so much for watching. Good News York. My name is Noah Chrysler. This is Joey Rafino with Syracuse. If you have any sewer problems, you call Mr. Seward Cuse and he'll help you out. Thanks so much for watching. Have a great day.