One day Jose Luis Hernandez was surprised to get a call from the local zoo requesting his services. Hernandez is the owner, along with his wife Claudia Baker, of Fearless Contracting, a septic company in Tucson, Arizona, that provides pumping and installation services for residential and commercial customers.
The zoo itself is on city sewer but they needed someone to pump out the grizzly bear pool and the elephant pool on a regular basis — pools full of mud, sand and dung. The zoo currently has one grizzly bear and five elephants, including a baby. Hernandez believes they got the call for the job based on their good reputation and relationship with the city and county.
Hernandez accepted the job, which he now does twice a year. The whole team goes with him — Ruben Mendoza, Juan Suarez, Alex Suarez and Omar Villegas — and they take all three of their vacuum trucks.
He says the cleaning process is fairly straightforward. “The zoo personnel move the animals out so they’re contained in another area,” he says. “Then we pull in our pump trucks and our jetter, drain the pool, then remove all the sand and dung from the pool. We pressure-wash it and then the zoo people fill it back up.”
But it’s always challenging, he says. “It’s dirty. Elephants are beautiful but they can be quite messy. They play in the mud, then get in the pool. There’s mud mixed with poop and it goes up to our knees. We pump the water out and shovel whatever we can and then the zoo takes care of it.”
The project takes a couple days, he says. The elephant pool holds 40,000 gallons and the grizzly bear pool is 9,000 gallons. Their vacuum trucks have a combined capacity of 9,700 gallons. They make about 12 trips to the treatment plant.
The company does the work during visiting hours so they essentially become the entertainment. “People watch,” he says. “We’re the attraction.”
Read more about Fearless Contracting in this month’s issue of Onsite Installer magazine.
