Eco-Flow Plumbing has been based in Santa Cruz since 2008. Scott Liess and his crew aren't passing through — they surf here, raise families here, and know every neighborhood, every hillside, and every old house with galvanized pipes from Westside to the mountains.
Scott Liess didn't plan to end up in Santa Cruz. He grew up in New Jersey, spent his childhood going on plumbing jobs with his uncle's crew, and eventually worked his way through trade school on the East Coast. When California called — the surfing, the mountains, the Pacific — he answered.
Eventually, he settled in Santa Cruz in his early 30s, got his California contractor's license, and in 2008 opened Eco-Flow Plumbing with one truck and a set of tools. The timing was terrible — the Great Recession had just hit — but he drove throughout the Bay Area to find work, kept his costs low, and built his reputation one job at a time. Eighteen years later, Eco-Flow is the highest-rated plumbing company in Santa Cruz County.
Outside of work, Scott surfs, snowboards, does CrossFit, and cares deeply about what he calls "the human potential." His daily routine starts with a sauna and cold plunge before coffee. He's as Santa Cruz as it gets — even if he still has a slight Jersey accent.
Notably, in April 2023, Lookout Santa Cruz sat down with Scott for an in-depth interview about his career, his path into the trades, how he started Eco-Flow during the worst economic climate in a generation, and what he thinks the future of plumbing looks like. It's the most complete telling of his story, in his own words.
In short, eighteen years of service calls means we know Santa Cruz's housing stock intimately — which neighborhoods have clay sewer lines, which ones still have galvanized pipes, where the mature fig trees cause the most root intrusion. Here's what we've learned.
Being local isn't a marketing line. Here's what it actually means when you call Eco-Flow.
Sewer lateral inspections, permit applications, meter connections for ADUs — consequently, we've done these dozens of times. We know the contacts, the timelines, and the requirements. That saves you delays.
We don't arrive at a Westside Victorian and guess at what we'll find. Instead, we already know the era, the likely pipe material, and the common failure points before we open the floor. That saves diagnostic time.
122 Hubbard St is central to every neighborhood in Santa Cruz. Therefore, when you have a kitchen backup during dinner service or a burst pipe at 8am, being 10 minutes away instead of 40 minutes matters.
Above all, if something isn't right after a job, you can find us. We're not routing calls through a regional dispatch center. Scott's team — the same people who did the work — will come back and make it right.
Santa Cruz has one of the highest ADU permit rates in California. We've done enough ADU water line and plumbing installations to know the city's process, the common design questions, and how to sequence the work with your contractor.
Scott has been here through the 2008 recession, the 2017 and 2020 flood events, post-COVID supply chain chaos, and the ADU building boom. That history gives context that new-to-market competitors simply don't have.
Everything you want to know about the company, the people, and the work we do in Santa Cruz.
18 years local, 4.9 stars, 150+ reviews — call the team that actually lives here.
