What plumbing involves
Plumbing skills are used to provide a vast range of services and skills we rely on, in fact no modern community can exist without plumbing skills which cover key areas such as:
Provision, installation or maintenance of:
- Water pipework for drinking, services and irrigation
- Sanitary appliances (typically toilets, baths showers and sinks, etc)
- Water for fire fighting
- Space heating (boilers, etc)
- Gas appliances (cookers, boilers, etc)
- Air conditioning
- Leisure appliances (hot tubs, swimming pools, etc)
- Discharge pipework
- Weathering of buildings - lead work in or around roof structures
and this can all be applied to your home, as well as commercial settings such as offices, public buildings and farms.
The variety of tasks naturally leads to many plumbers specialising. Some plumbers do a huge variety of standard domestic work (installation of new bathrooms, unblocking toilets etc), through to the many plumbers currently planning work on Heathrow terminal 5 or even maintaining services in the oil rigs of the north sea
Well trained, British plumbers are respected for their high level of standards and expertise and are often able to find employment abroad.
Why be a plumber?
For some the desire to do a good job within a community or just having a flexible lifestyle (if you are self employed/contracted) can be enough. For those who are driven to push self employment to higher levels, management skills and good business management can lead to managing and employing many plumbers underneath you, creating an income which is far beyond the average.
Some plumbers lead lifestyle jobs - earning enough to have an enjoyable, flexible lifestyle with an above average salary. Others are able to use or acquire good management skills in order to employ other experienced plumbers and run highly successful plumbing companies. Do not forget that to do well, you need to know your chosen subject well, provide excellent levels of service, and work hard.
What Qualities/qualifications do you need to be a plumber?
You do not actually currently need to be qualified to be a plumber, but GetPlumbing! warns against anyone without thorough theoretical knowledge and practical training, to offer their services as a commercial plumber. Meddling with any water system can be dangerous and expensive as some over enthusiastic DIY-ers will attest. The meddling of gas supply or gas appliances is sensibly regulated by law such that only CORGI registered plumbers are allowed to touch gas systems or appliances.
How demanding is the job?
Being a plumber is a physical as well as a mental jobs - imagine:
- Crawling though small spaces, past spiders and other animals to get to water tanks
- Climbing onto roofs (often many stories high) to tackle errant lead weather proofings or soil stack vents
- Working alongside traffic fixing mains gas, water or sewage services
- Diagnosing circuit board failures in central heating systems
- Fixing a wide range of gas and oil fired heating systems
- Dealing with customers who are sometimes not as civil and acquiescent as we would prefer…
For most, the variety of skills required and the people you meet are a major part of the job. With increasing computerisation of key components and ever changing legislation largely driven by health and safety concerns, the role of a plumber will continue to evolve.
The rewards
Being a plumber is a rewarding job, in itself: often working on your own initiative, problem solving, working in different and varied environments, and many experienced plumbers progress to running their own businesses.
Best of all, this profession is always in demand, so you're unlikely to be short of work and, because of this, the salaries are very high: earning over £50,000 per year is not un-common for experienced or specialist plumbers.
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