We first heard about Harts Services, based in Tacoma, Washington, a few years ago in the early days of COVID when plenty of PHCPPros were bringing groceries, toiletries and prescriptions while on their way to service calls to their home-bound clients.

“Our motto at Harts Services has always been ‘We Care More,’ and that rings true now more than ever as more families begin to shelter in place per Washington state’s stay at home order,” said Dan Hartsough, co-owner of Harts to a local online news service we picked up in 2020.

Unfortunately, we learned about Harts’ good deeds too late to be included in a roundup we published in the June 2020 issue of PHC News (bit.ly/45DsGot).

Harts provides a range of solutions, mostly residential, including kitchen and bathroom plumbing, septic tanks, water heaters, water filtration, sewer and drain clearing, sump pumps, partial and whole home repipes and more. The company serves most of western Washington, and recently expanded into Seattle.

Last year, however, we picked up news about how Harts was taking the concept of caring more to a different level by opening Harts Academy, its own in-house apprenticeship program. We posted a press announcement about the academy to our LinkedIn page, and the post went on to receive 19,000 impressions so we figured Harts was doing something right.

‘Grow People From Within’

“Everybody needs an opportunity,” Harts co-owner Richard Hart told us on a Zoom call earlier this year. “Everybody has ideas about how to address that shortage. Harts Academy is our solution. And the labor shortage not only affects our business, but it affects plenty of homeowners and businesses who need to know that the next generation of skilled trades is ready to do the work that needs to be done.”

Hart told us that as long as he and his boyhood friend Hartsough started the business in 2013, they had wanted to start an apprentice program.

“We knew we needed to grow people from within since we wanted to keep growing like we have,” he adds.  “Homegrown employees are committed employees. Committed employees make great employees and great employees make a great company. Plus, we don’t just want to feed our company with the academy, we need to help our industry hire qualified people, too.”

The Harts Academy includes eight weeks of paid comprehensive classroom education based in part on learning plans from Nexstar Network’s NexTech Academy. For further training, students can head to the academy’s 1,400-square-foot hands-on lab.

“The lab is raised up a few foot,” Hart adds, “so not only can they learn to repair finished bath, kitchen and laundry room plumbing, but also get into the crawlspace as it were to replumb and repipe and learn about drain work, too. Students can really apply their knowledge by taking everything apart and putting it back together.”

Along the perimeter of the lab is an array of tank and tankless water heaters, gas and electric, to learn how to install and troubleshoot these common appliances.

While learning, Harts Academy apprentices support plumbing leads in the warehouse and on jobsites while actively learning core skills.

Classroom sessions are followed by two to three years of supervised field training with licensed plumbers. Harts Academy also provides preparation assistance for the plumber licensing exam. 

This feature is part of our Plumbers Giving Back series.