Dirty Jobs (2005) s01e20 Episode Script
Mushroom Farmer
I'm Mike rowe, and this is my job.
I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty What's on the other side of the door? Sewage, raw sewage.
Let's open the door.
hardworking men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.
Now, get ready to get dirty.
Coming up on "dirty jobs," growing mushrooms takes a lot of compost That smells bad.
and a lot of hard work.
Generally, right before I pass out, I start to forget things.
Then my career goes down the storm drain This is terrible down here.
Horrible.
as I tidy up the filthiest hole in the world.
Nearly lost a perfectly good cameraman down here.
And later Rowe: We're gonna learn to make a drain.
Yes.
at this swingin' hot spot.
Bear: That's right now 2,000 degrees.
Things are really shaking.
I keep telling you they're still hot.
Captions by vitac captions paid for by discovery communications [ Bagpipes play "amazing grace" .]
I'd like to tell you that I'm in Scotland and the morning mist is rolling across the moors.
Sadly, that's not the case.
I'm in escondido, and steam is billowing from giant pee-soaked piles of compost.
And mushrooms, I'm sorry to say, don't grow in little blue boxes.
Nope here at the mountain Meadow mushroom farm in California, they grow mushrooms in compost, a mixture of poo, pee, and lots of straw.
The compost pile is where farm manager Roberto Ramirez begins my lesson on growing this edible fungus.
It smells like a toilet, Roberto.
You think it smells bad here, wait until you get up there.
Up there? Is it just for the view, or is there a job to do up there? Well, this is where our process actually begins.
This is where everything starts.
The composting process? The composting process.
Well, what's gonna happen? What do you want me to do when I get to the top of this thing? Well, we got to take this bag of urea and spread it on top, and then we got to take this hose and water the hay.
What is urea? Urea is basically 46% nitrogen, which is what the mushrooms need to grow.
What else is in there? Is it just more poo? Basically, yes.
All right, you want me to take a bag of poo and walk up on top of a hay pile that's soaked in pee and then squirt water on it? That's right, and it will start warming up.
This is a ridiculous job.
[ Grunts .]
All the way to the top.
Oh! Careful.
The straw comes from the stables at a nearby racetrack.
It's covered with the pee of thoroughbreds, and the mushroom farmers are happy about that Make sure you spread it really well all over the pile.
because the uric acid in the pee has already started to break down the straw, making it that much easier to turn into compost.
What do you think of that technique? That's good.
Haven't seen that one before.
Yeah, we have 10 more bags to go, so you might want to come down now.
10 more bags.
Urea good to the last drop.
Urea speeds up the composting process that the horse pee has already started.
Unfortunately, my spreading technique, or lack of it, slows everything down.
[ Groans .]
I have urea in my pants.
Is that natural? What could possibly be good about urea? Mushrooms.
Mushrooms, shmushrooms.
You got diarrhea, gonorrhea, pyorrhea, urea.
It can't be good.
Look at that.
[ Laughter .]
What are the odds of that? Now make sure you water everything really, really well.
Water it well.
You got it.
You ready? Ready.
Oh! Oh! That's not water.
Yes, it is.
No.
Recycled water.
Oh, god.
He's gonna be mixing the pile right now, so make sure you put the water in the dry spots.
This so-called water is the runoff from the mushroom farm.
Instead of going down the drain, they use it again and again And again and boy, does it smell like it.
You want to go back and forth, back and forth.
Right.
It might look like I'm just squirting a hose into a bunch of hay, but this is actually science.
I'm making compost, specifically using this reconstituted, recycled water to help the chemical breakdown of something called urea, which, I understand, is 54% nitrogen.
It's complicated.
Careful.
There you go.
I thought these were rocks.
No, they're actually leftover mushrooms.
What's gonna happen to these little guys? They go into the compost pile.
They get recycled.
So no one ever really escapes the compost? Nope.
Not even Mike rowe.
[ Chuckles .]
Well, I got to tell you, my friend, that's a disgusting job right there.
I like the way you don't disagree with me.
When I'm right, I'm right.
You got to admit.
10 days later, the great big pile of pee-soaked hay is halfway through the composting process, and this is what it looks like.
In another 10 days, the process will be complete.
The compost will be 180 degrees fahrenheit The perfect temperature at which to eat it if you're a mushroom.
Presently, we're at 135 degrees A bit undercooked.
When the compost is cooked to perfection, the poo, the pee, and the straw have all decomposed.
The heat of the pile has killed off all the bad bacteria, and what's left is basically nitrogen-rich soil.
This is dumped outside the mushroom house, a temperature-controlled building where the mushrooms are grown.
So we got giant piles of steaming compost, and that's being loaded into What's this thing called? A hopper.
A hopper, okay.
And the compost gets dumped on this conveyor belt, and that's basically what the beds themselves are made from.
Right, this is the actual food for the mushrooms.
So, this is a surprisingly sophisticated operation at this point.
They've got some track laid down here onto which the hopper can slide into the room.
There are 14 beds total, 7 on each side, and they run the whole length of the thing, and each one of them is filled up with this compost.
And to make it a little more civilized, the machine allows them to offload straight into the bed so you don't have to walk in with the whole bucket routine from the outside, but for the life Roberto! Up here.
Oh.
Okay.
So how does one get up there? Come up.
Quite a view you got here, Roberto.
Good workout, huh? Not bad at all.
So this is this is like an unmade mushroom bed.
Yes, this is an empty bed.
An empty bed.
And what is, actually, a bed made of? Fundamentally, we're looking at, what, two-by-fours? That's right.
That's all you have.
These slats just come in and out? How often do you change these? About once every two years or so.
What is that stink in the air that smells different than regular compost? It's ammonia that you're smelling, and that means the compost is ready.
That means it's ready? Yeah.
Ammonia comes from pee in the compost.
And it obviously rises.
It really burns your eyes, clears your sinuses a little bit.
It sure does.
Okay.
You ready? Yeah.
This is one of the worst jobs at the mushroom farm.
It's called a filler.
Basically, the guy stands up here in the rafters with a pitchfork, waits for this fellow to come by with the machine.
He starts pumping out the compost, and the filler He picks up his pitchfork and starts spreading it around.
It's not an incredibly complicated task, but it's hot, and you're bent over and cramped up, and if you're not careful, you could break a sweat.
You got to get this one before it falls.
Otherwise, you'll be working double time today.
Right, right, right.
That happens a lot.
This is It's just a glove.
It's a glove.
It could be worse, I guess.
There could be a hand in it.
Okay.
So what I've just done here is I've slowed your man down, right? By talking and trying to be vaguely amusing, I have once again retarded the basic process of work.
Here comes the compost.
All right, I think we probably have enough there.
You know what I noticed, though? It's funny.
You don't have a pitchfork.
That's why we brought you here.
Supervisor.
[ Laughter .]
We have 14 more to go.
14 more to go.
After the harvest, this compost won't be rich enough for mushroom farming, but it'll still be good for other kinds of plants, so it's given to landscapers and tomato farmers in the area.
They love to get free fertilizer.
[ Breathing heavily .]
Bed filler on a mushroom farm That's a dirty job.
Now that I've made some new beds for the mushrooms, it's time to plant the mycelium spores and mix them into the soil.
Next, I add a layer of casing dirt on top of the bed.
Everything we need is in here right now.
That's right.
But they won't grow without the casing? Well, they will grow, but it would take a long time.
So the mycelium eats the compost, thereby getting enough energy to flower, and when it blooms, that's the mushroom.
That's right.
And here I was just thinking the things grew, you know, like, next to tree stumps and stuff.
Mushroom farming It's a dirty job.
With the casement soil spread evenly over the beds, the mushrooms should sprout in about 20 days.
The mushroom house, and who's this? This is renaldo.
He's one of our fastest pickers.
Hi, renaldo.
Hey.
So, it looks pretty straightforward here.
Just pull the mushrooms out of the dirt and what exactly Is he just cutting the stems off? That's right, but it's not so much of pulling.
What you want to do is you want to grab it from the top, and he's twisting.
He's getting the mushroom, and then he's cutting the stem.
So he's got a couple of different baskets here.
How come? He has the small mushroom, medium mushroom, large mushroom, and this is what we call the number-two mushroom.
What's the number two mean? Sometimes if you cut the wrong angle, cut the mushroom in half so people don't like it, or it's open.
You say "number two" on this show, I think you're talking about something else.
If I understand what you're saying, he's doing these three at a time, but a couple of things are happening.
He's looking at it, he's determining how big it is, he's cutting the stem off, it's falling in, and then he's placing it in the proper container.
He's doing all that in about a half a second.
And he's doing three at a time, which I still don't understand.
So that would be like He would grab it.
He would grab these three.
Let's just try two at a time.
He comes over here, cuts these off just like that, and then that would go small, and that's medium.
Hop in there and do this again.
Let me watch what you're doing.
This is mushroom picking at its absolute finest.
Renaldo here can pick over 1,000 pounds of mushrooms in a day.
That's a 10-hour shift.
That's roughly 980 pounds more than I can pick in the same period of time.
They raise about 100,000 mushrooms here every week.
That's about 5.
2 million every year.
All of them are hand-picked.
Good thing you're not doing the whole house.
Good thing for you.
Well, I'm covered with pee, I smell like a horse, but 10 hours later, there they are My mountain Meadow mushrooms, seal-wrapped in a stylish, blue, styrofoam tub, and I got dirty.
Look at my pants.
See? Filthy dirty, and I couldn't have done it without Roberto.
Thank you very much.
What do you sell these for? $1.
79 a package.
You mind if I owe you? No, you deserve it.
Take it home.
You'll understand if I wash them first? Not every sidewalk in L.
A.
is star-studded.
Some are studded with other things, things you might want to go out of your way to avoid.
Fortunately for me today, I'm not concerned with what's on the sidewalks of Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, I'm concerned with what's under them.
Even though it's illegal, tons of trash is thrown into the storm drains of Los Angeles every day.
These drains aren't part of the sewer system, so the trash flows untreated right into the ocean.
40 tons of contaminated trash and debris end up on county beaches every year.
The city of L.
A.
maintains a fleet of 21 vacuum trucks in an attempt to clean trash from the drains.
So, here we are.
This is Johnny to my left, Robert to my right.
Below me is a storm drain, and apparently, they're all over the place.
You clean 'em, huh? Yes, I do.
Now, a storm drain is not a sewer.
It is not a sewer.
Is that a good or a bad thing? That's a good thing.
Well, that's something, I suppose.
What exactly I mean, in a storm drain, it seems like everything but waste? Everything but waste, that's correct.
Trash, typewriters, small televisions, small computers, clothing, automobile parts You name it, it ends up in our storm drains.
Well, how exactly are we gonna get the stuff in the drains out? I'm gonna use my vactor truck, which is a vacuum cleaner, and I'm gonna suck it out.
You're gonna suck small tvs and typewriters and computers and clothing and rats and all that? That's correct.
If it's down there, it's coming out.
And these are just attachments for the main hose? Main suction tube.
All right, what do we got here? This is a drainage for when we suck up water.
And that's a drain pump.
Are we gonna be pumping water in the drain as well as sucking stuff out, or mainly sucking? We're mainly sucking, but I have 500 gallons of water that'll be ejected through a high-pressure water gun.
Man, this is high-tech.
And the big, blue part in the middle That's where all the trash is gonna accumulate.
Yes.
Man, oh, man, and look at this.
This is the business end.
This is the business end.
This is the main suction tube on entrance to our debris tank.
So in terms of sucking power, tell me again how much this has in real, you know, numeric terms.
On a scale from 1 to 100, 100.
There you go.
All right, let's suck some garbage.
Before the vacuum can be used, the trash has to be softened up with water to minimize wear and tear on the vacuum hoses.
The vacuum boom is remote-controlled.
You got to love that.
Going down.
This is not your mother's vacuum cleaner.
It'll suck the trailer hitch off a buick.
Holy crap.
Is this the part where you're going to tell me I've got to go in the hole? You're gonna go down in there with the rake, and you're gonna rake everything to this hole so it can be vacuumed up.
Couldn't we avoid this by having a different sort of attachment on the vacuum Jack, or whatever this thing is again? No, we cannot.
You'll have to go down in there.
You don't blame me for asking, though.
No, I don't.
Going in the storm drain.
Sure, sure, it stinks Oh, yeah, like a sewer.
Oh.
This is terrible down here.
Horrible.
Now here's your rake.
Thanks.
Go to work.
Some rakes wind up in a garden.
This one had a slightly different destiny.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Ow.
If this isn't a sewer, it's the closest thing to it.
Aw! Good idea to keep your mouth shut when you're down here.
[ Laughs .]
Oh, god.
You having fun in there? Yeah, my eyes are burning.
Are you sure this isn't a sewer? All right, Johnny, start sucking.
Now, if memory serves, Johnny will be lowering the giant vacuum into the hole to suck up some of the garbage and crap that I pushed under it.
As vacuums go, it's a good one.
Los Angeles has 40,000 storm drains and 21 crews to clean them.
You got my rake.
Oh, no! [ Laughs .]
I almost got the camera.
Nearly lost a perfectly good cameraman down here.
Oh, are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding.
That is horrible.
That's right.
A storm drain is a bad place.
It's a bad place, but this job has to be done.
Otherwise, the rats will take over.
All right, now what? There's still some crap in here.
Well, we're gonna go to the other end, and I'm gonna flush the lateral from that basin over here, and that's gonna run everything out.
That's gonna be clean.
So if I understand what Johnny's telling me, he's gonna flush the lateral, and that's the lateral over there.
There's a hole, and I guess more garbage will come out, and I'll kind of pull it toward me, but he's given me this shovel because oftentimes rats will come out, and a man wants to be able to defend himself in some small way in a situation like that.
Who knows? Maybe I'll kill me a rat before the day's over.
It wouldn't be the first time.
I work in television.
I'm flushing the lateral where Mike is.
All right, here it comes.
It's gonna blow wide open.
A little bit later, we'll go to the beach.
What the hell is this? Here comes the vacuum.
Aah! A syringe And a glove.
There must be doctors down here.
You tired of squatting? Everything hurts.
Everything hurts from my ankles to my larynx.
Couple hours, you'll be okay.
Couple hours.
Well, at least a real rat's down there.
How we doing? We're done.
Let's go to the next basin.
34 years you got in the hole, right? That's correct.
What's the craziest thing you've ever found under these streets? You really want to know? I do.
A femur bone.
A femur? Femur bone.
It belonged to a lady whose body had been dismembered, and it was in the basin along with our trash.
What did you do? Well, in situations like that, we notify LAPD When we find guns, weapons, counterfeit money, which I've found a total of six guns.
All six of them were used in robbery/murders.
I found $4 million in counterfeit money $50s, $100s, and $20s.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You found a bag with $4 million in it? $4 million in it.
You didn't know it was counterfeit when you found it.
I had an inkling, and I'm gonna tell you what gave it away.
It was in a white pillowcase, and it was in one of our basins that normally has water in it all the time, and the green ink had faded on the white pillowcase.
That was my first clue.
I can't top that.
Now, this basin that we're going to I found $5 in an old pair of tux pants once.
[ Chuckles .]
There's no telling what we might find.
That's a dirty drain.
Yes, it is.
Not as dirty as the other one, though.
But deeper, and that's what we want.
Yeah.
Now, see, I could be comfortable working down there.
Well, not, you know I mean if I had to go in, I'd be comfortable.
I'm going back in the hole.
Okay.
[ Coughs .]
Come on.
Rake.
Rake, rake.
Got to rake.
That's good.
Oh, yeah, this is This is much more civilized than the other one.
In fact, this is nice.
For a drain, it's nice.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Aw, who throws a loaded diaper down the drain? Diapers, cigarettes, stuff I can't describe.
So, bottom line, we don't get this out now, that loaded diaper's gonna end up on some surfer's head, or maybe that piece of broken glass down there on some little girl who's wading in the surf.
Lots of bad things can happen.
What we're doing down here in the drain is we're saving lives.
You are a lifesaver.
See? Saving lives.
Get out of my way.
There's a storm drain under every street in Los Angeles county, running from the mountains 51 miles to the ocean.
Suck it! Yeah, suck it! Aah! Aah! Aah! Diapers.
That's how you change a diaper.
Yeah, you've brought me to some fantastic places, and I am grateful for it.
It's nice, though I mean, they all start dirty, and when you're done with them, they're clean.
They're clean Until next time.
There's always a next time, isn't there? There's always a next time.
The inspiration for a dirty job can come from just about anywhere, and after a long, hard day in the field, I ask myself questions Questions like "who makes the drain in my shower?" I mean, somebody's got to make a drain, right? Yep, somebody does make drains, right here at Lincoln foundry in erie, Pennsylvania.
It's a cozy little drain factory they got here Full of molten metal, loud noises, and lots of stuff being thrown around.
I'm lost in a foundry.
Fortunately, I had plant manager Nick riazzi to watch my back.
How you doing, Mike? I'm good.
Where the hell am I? You're at Lincoln foundry, here in erie, Pennsylvania.
Well, it's a beautiful place you got here.
Well, thank you.
Where specifically am I? We're in the process of making a sand-casting start.
If all goes as planned, we're gonna learn to make a drain.
Yes.
Anytime you walk into a building and you go in the restroom, you look down on the floor, there's a drain everywhere.
If it goes down the drain, Lincoln foundry might have had something to do with it.
It might have.
This is where we mix the sand with the water, the clays, bentonites, which gives us our consistency of the sand that we need to work with.
Water, Clay, and bentonite make the sand that we're gonna work with.
The sand makes the mold, the mold makes the casting.
Somewhere along the line, we're gonna pour hot, liquid, molten something or other, and at the end of the day, we're gonna have a drain? You got it.
Go around.
Oh, there we go.
In order to achieve the right consistency for mold casting, we needed to mix 800 pounds of sand with wood flour, water, and bentonite, an additive that keeps the sand fluffy.
And how many drains can you get out of 800 pounds of sand? We could probably make about a dozen molds out of that.
And each mold has how many drains? The one pattern has six on it, and the other has four on it 'cause there's two parts.
We don't really know how many drains we're gonna make, do we? No, but I got an order, so we're gonna keep you here as long as we can.
Okay.
After the sand has been mixed, it's sent to the molders for casting.
Who's this? This is Steve.
He's one of my molders.
How you doing, Steve? Mike.
Holy cow, you're a dirty guy.
Heck, yeah.
All right, so the sand that Nick and I just made over there in the muller That's coming down through these hoppers? Right, it runs on a belt Up the elevator onto the belt And then into the hoppers.
And you can control how much of it goes into this mold, and basically from there, you're full steam ahead.
Right.
What do I do? Okay, cope is the top.
Bottom's the drag.
Oh, you know what's confusing me? When you point to this, you're saying it's the bottom.
The whole thing is a flask.
But it's all upside down.
Now it is, yes.
So we got an upside-down flask.
The cope is the top.
The drag is the bottom.
Except now the drag is on the top because the whole thing's upside down.
Right, you have to make the drag first.
You've got to riddle the cope.
Riddle the cope.
The cope is the bottom.
The cope is the top.
Cope is the top.
God! [ Laughs .]
That's good, good.
Yeah? Yeah, you like that? All right.
That's called a riddle? Yes, this is a riddle.
Why is it called a riddle? We just call it a riddle.
It's a screen to me.
See, it's a riddle.
Ha ha ha! This is a peener.
We call that a peener.
What the hell's with the names, man Riddles and peeners? You go all the way around it.
Peener goes there.
Now you fill it up all the way.
More sand.
Keep coming.
Okay.
Now spread it around.
Okay, you're good.
Now you got to squeeze it.
Oh! What's this thing called? Squeeze head.
Squeeze head, vibrators, peeners, riddles, flasks, copes, and drags.
That's right.
It's a lot to remember.
Now you got to blow it all off, all the loose sand With the air hose there.
Oh.
Now you got to hit that vibrator pedal.
[ Buzzes .]
Vibrator.
[ Buzzes .]
Yeah, baby.
All right.
Oh, look at that.
Look at what I've done.
[ Laughs .]
Man, that could have been what you call a You see, what happened was you were cocked, you were cocked a little bit.
You lifted the whole mold.
Don't tell me about cocked.
I know where I was standing.
Yeah, that's good.
That's good.
That's plenty.
That's pretty good.
Rowe: So that looks all right, huh? You did all right.
Must be the teacher.
It sure as hell wasn't the pupil.
You got a little bit of dirt in there, probably from when you lifted the whole thing up.
Is this usable? No, I would throw that away.
You'd just trash this.
I'd throw that away.
Dump it.
How many drains have you made in your life? I used to make, easy, 5,000 a week.
Over how many years? I'd say probably for five or six years, I ran that constant.
That's, like, 5,000 Man, you made hundreds of thousands of drains.
I wish I had a dollar for every mold I made right now.
I wish you did, too.
I could retire.
What's the worst thing that's happened to you over the years operating this thing? Smashed my finger Smashed something else personal.
You got something personal caught in this thing? Yeah, yes, sir.
Oh, man! Don't like to think about that one.
That's what happens when you get cocky.
Now it's time to take a step back and let Steve show me how it's done.
[ Buzzes .]
[ Buzzes .]
That's one.
I don't know what you're doing, but you're pretty fast at it.
I had 25 years.
25 years of making molds? Yes, sir.
All I know is I got to pump them out if I want to make some cash.
You get paid by the piece? Yeah.
Well, that explains all the crazy speed.
Right.
Well, look, man.
You're a master.
Thank you.
I appreciate it A master mold maker.
Nice to meet you.
Yeah.
You're a dirty guy.
Thank you.
Be careful out there.
Yeah, yeah, I will.
The next step of drain-making required a little change of costume.
It's the gorton's fisherman from hell.
We call it a tombasil.
Tombasil? So it's white brass, it's nickel? It's a nickel, yes.
The guy I'm talking to now is called "bear.
" He's going to show me how to melt some metal.
We'll turn it up a little bit.
All right.
Okay, what you want to do is put your shield down.
All right.
And then submerge that in.
Put your end in and then set it down in easy so it doesn't drop or splatter all over.
Don't throw it in.
No, then I'm running.
That would be bad.
Right now, it's probably about 2,000 degrees.
[ Laughs .]
It's really hot.
We start with the tombasil ingot.
Tombasil is a fancy name for nickel.
Wow.
Bear: We bring it up to a flare, and that brings it up to about 2,250 degrees.
It's still melting right now? Right now it's still melting.
All right.
What we'll do is we'll turn this up a little more.
When it flares real good, then we're ready to pour.
Once the ingot was melted, it was time to scrape the slag.
This is what we call a scraper bar.
What we do is we let it warm up just a little bit.
You don't want to submerge nothing cold into this hot metal.
Why? What would happen? It'll explode on us.
You've seen that happen here once or twice? Once or twice from rookies.
See, 'cause I'm kind of a rookie, so That's why I'm here to help you out.
I got you covered.
It wouldn't be the first time I blew something up on accident.
You want to scrape it, which gets all the slag off the wall.
Now you can pull it out.
Slag is a residual by-product of the heating process.
See right here? That's the slag you get off the pot.
That looks really hot.
[ Bell ringing .]
Okay, grab your door, pull your pin out.
Now it's time to move the graphite-Clay crucible of molten metal to the casting department.
Line up the beam to beam.
Oh, I see so the whole ceiling is basically a grid that allows us to take it wherever you want.
Right.
The ceiling has interlocking rails which allows the hot crucible to be moved anywhere in the factory.
You want me to show you how to pour the first one, and then I'll let you go? [ Voice vibrating .]
So, bear, what am I standing on right now? [ Voice vibrating .]
We're standing on a shaker table, which, after the molds are poured, our castings come out and go down the shaker table.
We have a guy down there that pulls them out.
What you want to do is you want to take your hand here, push this here, hold on there, and push it all the way up.
I like the way it feels, standing on a shaker table.
Oh, baby.
[ Normal voice .]
But the idea is pour all this stuff into that.
Okay, yeah.
Now I got it.
Finding the hole.
[ Normal voice .]
Pour it in a little harder.
The thing's slipping right out of my hands here.
You're full.
Now, see, look at all those.
Little sloppy, but Just a little sloppy, but you're safe.
I think I'm going to hire you.
You're not doing too bad the first time.
Typically, I get worse as I go.
[ Laughs .]
There you go.
Now start to ease up.
Oh, no.
Oh, yeah.
There we go.
Aw, jeez.
After pouring the metal into the molds, it was finally time to see the fruits of my labor.
I was getting a little worried.
I thought the ingots were gonna just start coming out of the pot.
You're saying it got cold 'cause I was going a little slow.
You got it.
There you go.
If you were neater in the pouring, this wouldn't happen.
Just roll it down.
Oh, roll it? Roll it! Roll it! God's sakes, I'm on a conveyor belt.
Now, the moment of truth.
Riazzi: Well, there's six there, but, no, we're a little shy on a couple of them.
Not all there.
We got some faulty drains here.
That's what we call a misrun.
What's the big deal? Tell that to the customer.
Get any good ones yet? No, all bad.
They're still warm.
Yeah, you think? Great job, Mike.
Yeah, you like it? I like it.
We're going to able to sell those parts.
I keep telling you they're still hot.
You haven't learned.
Well, this is good.
This is good.
Now we need to get these over and get them cut off.
Not now, I'm bragging.
Oh, you're bragging.
It's going to get hot.
[ Laughs .]
Now the drains are sent down the conveyer belt to the cutting department.
Oh, yeah.
So, basically, I poured 12 molds and with 6 drains in each mold, that's 72 total pieces.
Half of those are the gasket for the drain, the other half are the drain itself, so the bottom line here, Nick, is I got 4 good drains out of 36.
That's all you ended up with? Yeah, batting about one for 10 Not good.
One for 9.
Not good.
But first time around We need to clean these up now.
We need to get all the sand off, get all the burn off them, and that's what this machine will do.
What's the machine called? It's called a wheelabrator.
A wheelabrator? Come on.
Yeah, it's a glorified shotblast machine.
Shotblast? Wheelabrator how's it work? Throw them on in.
They're the only four good ones I got.
I feel like I want to baby them.
I just hope we get them all out of there.
What's all this stuff down here? Oh, that's some of the shot that falls on the floor Nice, little, round steel bbs.
So it's called "shot" like shotgun? Like shotgun, exactly.
Normally we'd run 200 or 300 at a time in here.
We only got four, so it shouldn't take that long.
We should be out of here in a minute.
All right, I turned the abrasive on.
You can hear that.
Now that shot is beating on that casting as that casting's going in there and tumbling up and down.
It's basically like a washing machine.
You're washing the castings? Yeah, power wash.
Power wash.
Oh, they're beautiful! Look at that, like a vision.
Now they're back to color.
Oh, they fit.
Now we got to go over and drill them and assemble them.
Now back up.
Beautiful! Now we're ready for polishing.
For the rest of its long life, this drain will never be this clean again.
Well, there it is, my day at Lincoln foundry in erie, Pennsylvania Hot on the inside, cold on the outside, but I leave with a perfect drain.
Mike, Mike one more thing.
We're not done yet.
We're not done yet.
What did you have in mind, Nick? It's an hour show.
Where the hell is everybody? Well, everybody's gone for the day, but last one out cleans the pit.
The pit? The pit.
Why is there always a pit? The pit contains all the sand from all the molds that come off the shaker tables.
Cleaning the pit has nothing whatsoever to do with the making of drains.
Always a pit.
But it has taught me a valuable lesson.
In the drain factory, never be the last one out the door.
That's a dirty hole.
It's a clean hole now, right? Cleaner.
Cleaner.
Everybody's gone.
Can we be done? We can be done.
Nick, you're a dirty, dirty man.
All right, Mike.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, there it is, my day at the Lincoln foundry Hot on the inside, chilly on the outside.
But I leave with a brand-new, shiny drain headed to a bathroom near you.
Don't even think about it, Nick.
Look, if you have a dirty job or know somebody who does, we want to know about it.
Go to discovery.
Com/dirtyjobs and tell us all about it.
If it's dirty enough, I'll come out, and we'll get dirty together.
Sound like fun? My name is Mike rowe.
This is my job.
This is my, uh, thoughtful, understanding look.
This is my "how about that?" Look.
Hmm.
Johnny: The cameraman is still in there.
Robert: Are you serious? [ Laughter .]
Did you think we left you? Come on, Brenda.
Get your purse.
We got more drains to get to.
My name's Mike rowe, and I've put a pig on a pedestal.
Why? Because even though he works in the dirt, this noble creature is the embodiment of hard work, self-sacrifice, and a good-natured willingness to get the job done, no matter how dirty.
Day after day, he goes about his business without complaint.
And night after night, he brings home the bacon.
[ Pig snorts .]
I am sorry I said that.
What's on your pedestal?
I explore the country looking for people who aren't afraid to get dirty What's on the other side of the door? Sewage, raw sewage.
Let's open the door.
hardworking men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us.
Now, get ready to get dirty.
Coming up on "dirty jobs," growing mushrooms takes a lot of compost That smells bad.
and a lot of hard work.
Generally, right before I pass out, I start to forget things.
Then my career goes down the storm drain This is terrible down here.
Horrible.
as I tidy up the filthiest hole in the world.
Nearly lost a perfectly good cameraman down here.
And later Rowe: We're gonna learn to make a drain.
Yes.
at this swingin' hot spot.
Bear: That's right now 2,000 degrees.
Things are really shaking.
I keep telling you they're still hot.
Captions by vitac captions paid for by discovery communications [ Bagpipes play "amazing grace" .]
I'd like to tell you that I'm in Scotland and the morning mist is rolling across the moors.
Sadly, that's not the case.
I'm in escondido, and steam is billowing from giant pee-soaked piles of compost.
And mushrooms, I'm sorry to say, don't grow in little blue boxes.
Nope here at the mountain Meadow mushroom farm in California, they grow mushrooms in compost, a mixture of poo, pee, and lots of straw.
The compost pile is where farm manager Roberto Ramirez begins my lesson on growing this edible fungus.
It smells like a toilet, Roberto.
You think it smells bad here, wait until you get up there.
Up there? Is it just for the view, or is there a job to do up there? Well, this is where our process actually begins.
This is where everything starts.
The composting process? The composting process.
Well, what's gonna happen? What do you want me to do when I get to the top of this thing? Well, we got to take this bag of urea and spread it on top, and then we got to take this hose and water the hay.
What is urea? Urea is basically 46% nitrogen, which is what the mushrooms need to grow.
What else is in there? Is it just more poo? Basically, yes.
All right, you want me to take a bag of poo and walk up on top of a hay pile that's soaked in pee and then squirt water on it? That's right, and it will start warming up.
This is a ridiculous job.
[ Grunts .]
All the way to the top.
Oh! Careful.
The straw comes from the stables at a nearby racetrack.
It's covered with the pee of thoroughbreds, and the mushroom farmers are happy about that Make sure you spread it really well all over the pile.
because the uric acid in the pee has already started to break down the straw, making it that much easier to turn into compost.
What do you think of that technique? That's good.
Haven't seen that one before.
Yeah, we have 10 more bags to go, so you might want to come down now.
10 more bags.
Urea good to the last drop.
Urea speeds up the composting process that the horse pee has already started.
Unfortunately, my spreading technique, or lack of it, slows everything down.
[ Groans .]
I have urea in my pants.
Is that natural? What could possibly be good about urea? Mushrooms.
Mushrooms, shmushrooms.
You got diarrhea, gonorrhea, pyorrhea, urea.
It can't be good.
Look at that.
[ Laughter .]
What are the odds of that? Now make sure you water everything really, really well.
Water it well.
You got it.
You ready? Ready.
Oh! Oh! That's not water.
Yes, it is.
No.
Recycled water.
Oh, god.
He's gonna be mixing the pile right now, so make sure you put the water in the dry spots.
This so-called water is the runoff from the mushroom farm.
Instead of going down the drain, they use it again and again And again and boy, does it smell like it.
You want to go back and forth, back and forth.
Right.
It might look like I'm just squirting a hose into a bunch of hay, but this is actually science.
I'm making compost, specifically using this reconstituted, recycled water to help the chemical breakdown of something called urea, which, I understand, is 54% nitrogen.
It's complicated.
Careful.
There you go.
I thought these were rocks.
No, they're actually leftover mushrooms.
What's gonna happen to these little guys? They go into the compost pile.
They get recycled.
So no one ever really escapes the compost? Nope.
Not even Mike rowe.
[ Chuckles .]
Well, I got to tell you, my friend, that's a disgusting job right there.
I like the way you don't disagree with me.
When I'm right, I'm right.
You got to admit.
10 days later, the great big pile of pee-soaked hay is halfway through the composting process, and this is what it looks like.
In another 10 days, the process will be complete.
The compost will be 180 degrees fahrenheit The perfect temperature at which to eat it if you're a mushroom.
Presently, we're at 135 degrees A bit undercooked.
When the compost is cooked to perfection, the poo, the pee, and the straw have all decomposed.
The heat of the pile has killed off all the bad bacteria, and what's left is basically nitrogen-rich soil.
This is dumped outside the mushroom house, a temperature-controlled building where the mushrooms are grown.
So we got giant piles of steaming compost, and that's being loaded into What's this thing called? A hopper.
A hopper, okay.
And the compost gets dumped on this conveyor belt, and that's basically what the beds themselves are made from.
Right, this is the actual food for the mushrooms.
So, this is a surprisingly sophisticated operation at this point.
They've got some track laid down here onto which the hopper can slide into the room.
There are 14 beds total, 7 on each side, and they run the whole length of the thing, and each one of them is filled up with this compost.
And to make it a little more civilized, the machine allows them to offload straight into the bed so you don't have to walk in with the whole bucket routine from the outside, but for the life Roberto! Up here.
Oh.
Okay.
So how does one get up there? Come up.
Quite a view you got here, Roberto.
Good workout, huh? Not bad at all.
So this is this is like an unmade mushroom bed.
Yes, this is an empty bed.
An empty bed.
And what is, actually, a bed made of? Fundamentally, we're looking at, what, two-by-fours? That's right.
That's all you have.
These slats just come in and out? How often do you change these? About once every two years or so.
What is that stink in the air that smells different than regular compost? It's ammonia that you're smelling, and that means the compost is ready.
That means it's ready? Yeah.
Ammonia comes from pee in the compost.
And it obviously rises.
It really burns your eyes, clears your sinuses a little bit.
It sure does.
Okay.
You ready? Yeah.
This is one of the worst jobs at the mushroom farm.
It's called a filler.
Basically, the guy stands up here in the rafters with a pitchfork, waits for this fellow to come by with the machine.
He starts pumping out the compost, and the filler He picks up his pitchfork and starts spreading it around.
It's not an incredibly complicated task, but it's hot, and you're bent over and cramped up, and if you're not careful, you could break a sweat.
You got to get this one before it falls.
Otherwise, you'll be working double time today.
Right, right, right.
That happens a lot.
This is It's just a glove.
It's a glove.
It could be worse, I guess.
There could be a hand in it.
Okay.
So what I've just done here is I've slowed your man down, right? By talking and trying to be vaguely amusing, I have once again retarded the basic process of work.
Here comes the compost.
All right, I think we probably have enough there.
You know what I noticed, though? It's funny.
You don't have a pitchfork.
That's why we brought you here.
Supervisor.
[ Laughter .]
We have 14 more to go.
14 more to go.
After the harvest, this compost won't be rich enough for mushroom farming, but it'll still be good for other kinds of plants, so it's given to landscapers and tomato farmers in the area.
They love to get free fertilizer.
[ Breathing heavily .]
Bed filler on a mushroom farm That's a dirty job.
Now that I've made some new beds for the mushrooms, it's time to plant the mycelium spores and mix them into the soil.
Next, I add a layer of casing dirt on top of the bed.
Everything we need is in here right now.
That's right.
But they won't grow without the casing? Well, they will grow, but it would take a long time.
So the mycelium eats the compost, thereby getting enough energy to flower, and when it blooms, that's the mushroom.
That's right.
And here I was just thinking the things grew, you know, like, next to tree stumps and stuff.
Mushroom farming It's a dirty job.
With the casement soil spread evenly over the beds, the mushrooms should sprout in about 20 days.
The mushroom house, and who's this? This is renaldo.
He's one of our fastest pickers.
Hi, renaldo.
Hey.
So, it looks pretty straightforward here.
Just pull the mushrooms out of the dirt and what exactly Is he just cutting the stems off? That's right, but it's not so much of pulling.
What you want to do is you want to grab it from the top, and he's twisting.
He's getting the mushroom, and then he's cutting the stem.
So he's got a couple of different baskets here.
How come? He has the small mushroom, medium mushroom, large mushroom, and this is what we call the number-two mushroom.
What's the number two mean? Sometimes if you cut the wrong angle, cut the mushroom in half so people don't like it, or it's open.
You say "number two" on this show, I think you're talking about something else.
If I understand what you're saying, he's doing these three at a time, but a couple of things are happening.
He's looking at it, he's determining how big it is, he's cutting the stem off, it's falling in, and then he's placing it in the proper container.
He's doing all that in about a half a second.
And he's doing three at a time, which I still don't understand.
So that would be like He would grab it.
He would grab these three.
Let's just try two at a time.
He comes over here, cuts these off just like that, and then that would go small, and that's medium.
Hop in there and do this again.
Let me watch what you're doing.
This is mushroom picking at its absolute finest.
Renaldo here can pick over 1,000 pounds of mushrooms in a day.
That's a 10-hour shift.
That's roughly 980 pounds more than I can pick in the same period of time.
They raise about 100,000 mushrooms here every week.
That's about 5.
2 million every year.
All of them are hand-picked.
Good thing you're not doing the whole house.
Good thing for you.
Well, I'm covered with pee, I smell like a horse, but 10 hours later, there they are My mountain Meadow mushrooms, seal-wrapped in a stylish, blue, styrofoam tub, and I got dirty.
Look at my pants.
See? Filthy dirty, and I couldn't have done it without Roberto.
Thank you very much.
What do you sell these for? $1.
79 a package.
You mind if I owe you? No, you deserve it.
Take it home.
You'll understand if I wash them first? Not every sidewalk in L.
A.
is star-studded.
Some are studded with other things, things you might want to go out of your way to avoid.
Fortunately for me today, I'm not concerned with what's on the sidewalks of Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, I'm concerned with what's under them.
Even though it's illegal, tons of trash is thrown into the storm drains of Los Angeles every day.
These drains aren't part of the sewer system, so the trash flows untreated right into the ocean.
40 tons of contaminated trash and debris end up on county beaches every year.
The city of L.
A.
maintains a fleet of 21 vacuum trucks in an attempt to clean trash from the drains.
So, here we are.
This is Johnny to my left, Robert to my right.
Below me is a storm drain, and apparently, they're all over the place.
You clean 'em, huh? Yes, I do.
Now, a storm drain is not a sewer.
It is not a sewer.
Is that a good or a bad thing? That's a good thing.
Well, that's something, I suppose.
What exactly I mean, in a storm drain, it seems like everything but waste? Everything but waste, that's correct.
Trash, typewriters, small televisions, small computers, clothing, automobile parts You name it, it ends up in our storm drains.
Well, how exactly are we gonna get the stuff in the drains out? I'm gonna use my vactor truck, which is a vacuum cleaner, and I'm gonna suck it out.
You're gonna suck small tvs and typewriters and computers and clothing and rats and all that? That's correct.
If it's down there, it's coming out.
And these are just attachments for the main hose? Main suction tube.
All right, what do we got here? This is a drainage for when we suck up water.
And that's a drain pump.
Are we gonna be pumping water in the drain as well as sucking stuff out, or mainly sucking? We're mainly sucking, but I have 500 gallons of water that'll be ejected through a high-pressure water gun.
Man, this is high-tech.
And the big, blue part in the middle That's where all the trash is gonna accumulate.
Yes.
Man, oh, man, and look at this.
This is the business end.
This is the business end.
This is the main suction tube on entrance to our debris tank.
So in terms of sucking power, tell me again how much this has in real, you know, numeric terms.
On a scale from 1 to 100, 100.
There you go.
All right, let's suck some garbage.
Before the vacuum can be used, the trash has to be softened up with water to minimize wear and tear on the vacuum hoses.
The vacuum boom is remote-controlled.
You got to love that.
Going down.
This is not your mother's vacuum cleaner.
It'll suck the trailer hitch off a buick.
Holy crap.
Is this the part where you're going to tell me I've got to go in the hole? You're gonna go down in there with the rake, and you're gonna rake everything to this hole so it can be vacuumed up.
Couldn't we avoid this by having a different sort of attachment on the vacuum Jack, or whatever this thing is again? No, we cannot.
You'll have to go down in there.
You don't blame me for asking, though.
No, I don't.
Going in the storm drain.
Sure, sure, it stinks Oh, yeah, like a sewer.
Oh.
This is terrible down here.
Horrible.
Now here's your rake.
Thanks.
Go to work.
Some rakes wind up in a garden.
This one had a slightly different destiny.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Ow.
If this isn't a sewer, it's the closest thing to it.
Aw! Good idea to keep your mouth shut when you're down here.
[ Laughs .]
Oh, god.
You having fun in there? Yeah, my eyes are burning.
Are you sure this isn't a sewer? All right, Johnny, start sucking.
Now, if memory serves, Johnny will be lowering the giant vacuum into the hole to suck up some of the garbage and crap that I pushed under it.
As vacuums go, it's a good one.
Los Angeles has 40,000 storm drains and 21 crews to clean them.
You got my rake.
Oh, no! [ Laughs .]
I almost got the camera.
Nearly lost a perfectly good cameraman down here.
Oh, are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding.
That is horrible.
That's right.
A storm drain is a bad place.
It's a bad place, but this job has to be done.
Otherwise, the rats will take over.
All right, now what? There's still some crap in here.
Well, we're gonna go to the other end, and I'm gonna flush the lateral from that basin over here, and that's gonna run everything out.
That's gonna be clean.
So if I understand what Johnny's telling me, he's gonna flush the lateral, and that's the lateral over there.
There's a hole, and I guess more garbage will come out, and I'll kind of pull it toward me, but he's given me this shovel because oftentimes rats will come out, and a man wants to be able to defend himself in some small way in a situation like that.
Who knows? Maybe I'll kill me a rat before the day's over.
It wouldn't be the first time.
I work in television.
I'm flushing the lateral where Mike is.
All right, here it comes.
It's gonna blow wide open.
A little bit later, we'll go to the beach.
What the hell is this? Here comes the vacuum.
Aah! A syringe And a glove.
There must be doctors down here.
You tired of squatting? Everything hurts.
Everything hurts from my ankles to my larynx.
Couple hours, you'll be okay.
Couple hours.
Well, at least a real rat's down there.
How we doing? We're done.
Let's go to the next basin.
34 years you got in the hole, right? That's correct.
What's the craziest thing you've ever found under these streets? You really want to know? I do.
A femur bone.
A femur? Femur bone.
It belonged to a lady whose body had been dismembered, and it was in the basin along with our trash.
What did you do? Well, in situations like that, we notify LAPD When we find guns, weapons, counterfeit money, which I've found a total of six guns.
All six of them were used in robbery/murders.
I found $4 million in counterfeit money $50s, $100s, and $20s.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You found a bag with $4 million in it? $4 million in it.
You didn't know it was counterfeit when you found it.
I had an inkling, and I'm gonna tell you what gave it away.
It was in a white pillowcase, and it was in one of our basins that normally has water in it all the time, and the green ink had faded on the white pillowcase.
That was my first clue.
I can't top that.
Now, this basin that we're going to I found $5 in an old pair of tux pants once.
[ Chuckles .]
There's no telling what we might find.
That's a dirty drain.
Yes, it is.
Not as dirty as the other one, though.
But deeper, and that's what we want.
Yeah.
Now, see, I could be comfortable working down there.
Well, not, you know I mean if I had to go in, I'd be comfortable.
I'm going back in the hole.
Okay.
[ Coughs .]
Come on.
Rake.
Rake, rake.
Got to rake.
That's good.
Oh, yeah, this is This is much more civilized than the other one.
In fact, this is nice.
For a drain, it's nice.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Aw, who throws a loaded diaper down the drain? Diapers, cigarettes, stuff I can't describe.
So, bottom line, we don't get this out now, that loaded diaper's gonna end up on some surfer's head, or maybe that piece of broken glass down there on some little girl who's wading in the surf.
Lots of bad things can happen.
What we're doing down here in the drain is we're saving lives.
You are a lifesaver.
See? Saving lives.
Get out of my way.
There's a storm drain under every street in Los Angeles county, running from the mountains 51 miles to the ocean.
Suck it! Yeah, suck it! Aah! Aah! Aah! Diapers.
That's how you change a diaper.
Yeah, you've brought me to some fantastic places, and I am grateful for it.
It's nice, though I mean, they all start dirty, and when you're done with them, they're clean.
They're clean Until next time.
There's always a next time, isn't there? There's always a next time.
The inspiration for a dirty job can come from just about anywhere, and after a long, hard day in the field, I ask myself questions Questions like "who makes the drain in my shower?" I mean, somebody's got to make a drain, right? Yep, somebody does make drains, right here at Lincoln foundry in erie, Pennsylvania.
It's a cozy little drain factory they got here Full of molten metal, loud noises, and lots of stuff being thrown around.
I'm lost in a foundry.
Fortunately, I had plant manager Nick riazzi to watch my back.
How you doing, Mike? I'm good.
Where the hell am I? You're at Lincoln foundry, here in erie, Pennsylvania.
Well, it's a beautiful place you got here.
Well, thank you.
Where specifically am I? We're in the process of making a sand-casting start.
If all goes as planned, we're gonna learn to make a drain.
Yes.
Anytime you walk into a building and you go in the restroom, you look down on the floor, there's a drain everywhere.
If it goes down the drain, Lincoln foundry might have had something to do with it.
It might have.
This is where we mix the sand with the water, the clays, bentonites, which gives us our consistency of the sand that we need to work with.
Water, Clay, and bentonite make the sand that we're gonna work with.
The sand makes the mold, the mold makes the casting.
Somewhere along the line, we're gonna pour hot, liquid, molten something or other, and at the end of the day, we're gonna have a drain? You got it.
Go around.
Oh, there we go.
In order to achieve the right consistency for mold casting, we needed to mix 800 pounds of sand with wood flour, water, and bentonite, an additive that keeps the sand fluffy.
And how many drains can you get out of 800 pounds of sand? We could probably make about a dozen molds out of that.
And each mold has how many drains? The one pattern has six on it, and the other has four on it 'cause there's two parts.
We don't really know how many drains we're gonna make, do we? No, but I got an order, so we're gonna keep you here as long as we can.
Okay.
After the sand has been mixed, it's sent to the molders for casting.
Who's this? This is Steve.
He's one of my molders.
How you doing, Steve? Mike.
Holy cow, you're a dirty guy.
Heck, yeah.
All right, so the sand that Nick and I just made over there in the muller That's coming down through these hoppers? Right, it runs on a belt Up the elevator onto the belt And then into the hoppers.
And you can control how much of it goes into this mold, and basically from there, you're full steam ahead.
Right.
What do I do? Okay, cope is the top.
Bottom's the drag.
Oh, you know what's confusing me? When you point to this, you're saying it's the bottom.
The whole thing is a flask.
But it's all upside down.
Now it is, yes.
So we got an upside-down flask.
The cope is the top.
The drag is the bottom.
Except now the drag is on the top because the whole thing's upside down.
Right, you have to make the drag first.
You've got to riddle the cope.
Riddle the cope.
The cope is the bottom.
The cope is the top.
Cope is the top.
God! [ Laughs .]
That's good, good.
Yeah? Yeah, you like that? All right.
That's called a riddle? Yes, this is a riddle.
Why is it called a riddle? We just call it a riddle.
It's a screen to me.
See, it's a riddle.
Ha ha ha! This is a peener.
We call that a peener.
What the hell's with the names, man Riddles and peeners? You go all the way around it.
Peener goes there.
Now you fill it up all the way.
More sand.
Keep coming.
Okay.
Now spread it around.
Okay, you're good.
Now you got to squeeze it.
Oh! What's this thing called? Squeeze head.
Squeeze head, vibrators, peeners, riddles, flasks, copes, and drags.
That's right.
It's a lot to remember.
Now you got to blow it all off, all the loose sand With the air hose there.
Oh.
Now you got to hit that vibrator pedal.
[ Buzzes .]
Vibrator.
[ Buzzes .]
Yeah, baby.
All right.
Oh, look at that.
Look at what I've done.
[ Laughs .]
Man, that could have been what you call a You see, what happened was you were cocked, you were cocked a little bit.
You lifted the whole mold.
Don't tell me about cocked.
I know where I was standing.
Yeah, that's good.
That's good.
That's plenty.
That's pretty good.
Rowe: So that looks all right, huh? You did all right.
Must be the teacher.
It sure as hell wasn't the pupil.
You got a little bit of dirt in there, probably from when you lifted the whole thing up.
Is this usable? No, I would throw that away.
You'd just trash this.
I'd throw that away.
Dump it.
How many drains have you made in your life? I used to make, easy, 5,000 a week.
Over how many years? I'd say probably for five or six years, I ran that constant.
That's, like, 5,000 Man, you made hundreds of thousands of drains.
I wish I had a dollar for every mold I made right now.
I wish you did, too.
I could retire.
What's the worst thing that's happened to you over the years operating this thing? Smashed my finger Smashed something else personal.
You got something personal caught in this thing? Yeah, yes, sir.
Oh, man! Don't like to think about that one.
That's what happens when you get cocky.
Now it's time to take a step back and let Steve show me how it's done.
[ Buzzes .]
[ Buzzes .]
That's one.
I don't know what you're doing, but you're pretty fast at it.
I had 25 years.
25 years of making molds? Yes, sir.
All I know is I got to pump them out if I want to make some cash.
You get paid by the piece? Yeah.
Well, that explains all the crazy speed.
Right.
Well, look, man.
You're a master.
Thank you.
I appreciate it A master mold maker.
Nice to meet you.
Yeah.
You're a dirty guy.
Thank you.
Be careful out there.
Yeah, yeah, I will.
The next step of drain-making required a little change of costume.
It's the gorton's fisherman from hell.
We call it a tombasil.
Tombasil? So it's white brass, it's nickel? It's a nickel, yes.
The guy I'm talking to now is called "bear.
" He's going to show me how to melt some metal.
We'll turn it up a little bit.
All right.
Okay, what you want to do is put your shield down.
All right.
And then submerge that in.
Put your end in and then set it down in easy so it doesn't drop or splatter all over.
Don't throw it in.
No, then I'm running.
That would be bad.
Right now, it's probably about 2,000 degrees.
[ Laughs .]
It's really hot.
We start with the tombasil ingot.
Tombasil is a fancy name for nickel.
Wow.
Bear: We bring it up to a flare, and that brings it up to about 2,250 degrees.
It's still melting right now? Right now it's still melting.
All right.
What we'll do is we'll turn this up a little more.
When it flares real good, then we're ready to pour.
Once the ingot was melted, it was time to scrape the slag.
This is what we call a scraper bar.
What we do is we let it warm up just a little bit.
You don't want to submerge nothing cold into this hot metal.
Why? What would happen? It'll explode on us.
You've seen that happen here once or twice? Once or twice from rookies.
See, 'cause I'm kind of a rookie, so That's why I'm here to help you out.
I got you covered.
It wouldn't be the first time I blew something up on accident.
You want to scrape it, which gets all the slag off the wall.
Now you can pull it out.
Slag is a residual by-product of the heating process.
See right here? That's the slag you get off the pot.
That looks really hot.
[ Bell ringing .]
Okay, grab your door, pull your pin out.
Now it's time to move the graphite-Clay crucible of molten metal to the casting department.
Line up the beam to beam.
Oh, I see so the whole ceiling is basically a grid that allows us to take it wherever you want.
Right.
The ceiling has interlocking rails which allows the hot crucible to be moved anywhere in the factory.
You want me to show you how to pour the first one, and then I'll let you go? [ Voice vibrating .]
So, bear, what am I standing on right now? [ Voice vibrating .]
We're standing on a shaker table, which, after the molds are poured, our castings come out and go down the shaker table.
We have a guy down there that pulls them out.
What you want to do is you want to take your hand here, push this here, hold on there, and push it all the way up.
I like the way it feels, standing on a shaker table.
Oh, baby.
[ Normal voice .]
But the idea is pour all this stuff into that.
Okay, yeah.
Now I got it.
Finding the hole.
[ Normal voice .]
Pour it in a little harder.
The thing's slipping right out of my hands here.
You're full.
Now, see, look at all those.
Little sloppy, but Just a little sloppy, but you're safe.
I think I'm going to hire you.
You're not doing too bad the first time.
Typically, I get worse as I go.
[ Laughs .]
There you go.
Now start to ease up.
Oh, no.
Oh, yeah.
There we go.
Aw, jeez.
After pouring the metal into the molds, it was finally time to see the fruits of my labor.
I was getting a little worried.
I thought the ingots were gonna just start coming out of the pot.
You're saying it got cold 'cause I was going a little slow.
You got it.
There you go.
If you were neater in the pouring, this wouldn't happen.
Just roll it down.
Oh, roll it? Roll it! Roll it! God's sakes, I'm on a conveyor belt.
Now, the moment of truth.
Riazzi: Well, there's six there, but, no, we're a little shy on a couple of them.
Not all there.
We got some faulty drains here.
That's what we call a misrun.
What's the big deal? Tell that to the customer.
Get any good ones yet? No, all bad.
They're still warm.
Yeah, you think? Great job, Mike.
Yeah, you like it? I like it.
We're going to able to sell those parts.
I keep telling you they're still hot.
You haven't learned.
Well, this is good.
This is good.
Now we need to get these over and get them cut off.
Not now, I'm bragging.
Oh, you're bragging.
It's going to get hot.
[ Laughs .]
Now the drains are sent down the conveyer belt to the cutting department.
Oh, yeah.
So, basically, I poured 12 molds and with 6 drains in each mold, that's 72 total pieces.
Half of those are the gasket for the drain, the other half are the drain itself, so the bottom line here, Nick, is I got 4 good drains out of 36.
That's all you ended up with? Yeah, batting about one for 10 Not good.
One for 9.
Not good.
But first time around We need to clean these up now.
We need to get all the sand off, get all the burn off them, and that's what this machine will do.
What's the machine called? It's called a wheelabrator.
A wheelabrator? Come on.
Yeah, it's a glorified shotblast machine.
Shotblast? Wheelabrator how's it work? Throw them on in.
They're the only four good ones I got.
I feel like I want to baby them.
I just hope we get them all out of there.
What's all this stuff down here? Oh, that's some of the shot that falls on the floor Nice, little, round steel bbs.
So it's called "shot" like shotgun? Like shotgun, exactly.
Normally we'd run 200 or 300 at a time in here.
We only got four, so it shouldn't take that long.
We should be out of here in a minute.
All right, I turned the abrasive on.
You can hear that.
Now that shot is beating on that casting as that casting's going in there and tumbling up and down.
It's basically like a washing machine.
You're washing the castings? Yeah, power wash.
Power wash.
Oh, they're beautiful! Look at that, like a vision.
Now they're back to color.
Oh, they fit.
Now we got to go over and drill them and assemble them.
Now back up.
Beautiful! Now we're ready for polishing.
For the rest of its long life, this drain will never be this clean again.
Well, there it is, my day at Lincoln foundry in erie, Pennsylvania Hot on the inside, cold on the outside, but I leave with a perfect drain.
Mike, Mike one more thing.
We're not done yet.
We're not done yet.
What did you have in mind, Nick? It's an hour show.
Where the hell is everybody? Well, everybody's gone for the day, but last one out cleans the pit.
The pit? The pit.
Why is there always a pit? The pit contains all the sand from all the molds that come off the shaker tables.
Cleaning the pit has nothing whatsoever to do with the making of drains.
Always a pit.
But it has taught me a valuable lesson.
In the drain factory, never be the last one out the door.
That's a dirty hole.
It's a clean hole now, right? Cleaner.
Cleaner.
Everybody's gone.
Can we be done? We can be done.
Nick, you're a dirty, dirty man.
All right, Mike.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, there it is, my day at the Lincoln foundry Hot on the inside, chilly on the outside.
But I leave with a brand-new, shiny drain headed to a bathroom near you.
Don't even think about it, Nick.
Look, if you have a dirty job or know somebody who does, we want to know about it.
Go to discovery.
Com/dirtyjobs and tell us all about it.
If it's dirty enough, I'll come out, and we'll get dirty together.
Sound like fun? My name is Mike rowe.
This is my job.
This is my, uh, thoughtful, understanding look.
This is my "how about that?" Look.
Hmm.
Johnny: The cameraman is still in there.
Robert: Are you serious? [ Laughter .]
Did you think we left you? Come on, Brenda.
Get your purse.
We got more drains to get to.
My name's Mike rowe, and I've put a pig on a pedestal.
Why? Because even though he works in the dirt, this noble creature is the embodiment of hard work, self-sacrifice, and a good-natured willingness to get the job done, no matter how dirty.
Day after day, he goes about his business without complaint.
And night after night, he brings home the bacon.
[ Pig snorts .]
I am sorry I said that.
What's on your pedestal?