​The phone rings and it’s Ric on the line.
 
“Hey Tony, I just rented out the back on room via Airbnb and the boss is not happy that she’ll have a stranger in our part of the house using the bathroom!”“Can we put a toilet in the back bathroom or laundry?” he asked hopefully.

​​“Of course we can,” I said. “If you can stand the pain, I can stand the strain. Shall I grab my quote book and pop around for a coffee to see what we can do?”

​Plumbing is not something that the average person gets to talk about or investigate very much, beyond how it looks in the shop. To be be honest, plumbing is not that complicated.
​
To quote my father, Jack Young, "Plumbers only need to know two things - water runs downhill and payday is Friday!"

​I had a very pleasant visit to new customer Gavin’s home recently, where we discussed the ins and outs of hot water systems. It went a little something like this:

The Youngs Plumbing & Gas office phone rang at 4.18pm last Thursday, and a exasperated home owner explained that she has come home from work to find that a company named ATCO have been during the day while she was out and turned her gas off! 

​I petitioned my local Reece store for an update on what’s new and interesting in the plumbing game. I was initially met with blank looks all round…I think that they’re not getting enough sugar! When I prompted them with “what about commercial hot water?” suddenly Alex the assistant manager sprang to life.

Looking for interesting topics this week I asked around the office what should we be talking about?

​Fraser Young piped up and said that he had just come back from a job where a flexi hose in an apartment block had burst and entered the apartment below.

​We do not have to guess too wildly what the cost of energy is going to be in the future.

My prediction is that spiralling energy costs will have gas as a long term loser in the cost stakes as the market increasingly opts for solar photo voltaic cells (solar PV) as electrical equipment becomes cheaper to buy and more efficient, running on free PV energy during the day, or at night with solar battery cells, and with its low maintenance costs compared to gas. As consumption of gas declines, the price of gas per unit will increase.

​Youngs plumbing attended an emergency callout at Mrs P’s house in Applecross last weekend. There was hot water coming up through the paving near her hot water unit and her gas had stopped working.

​In the plumbing trade, it’s normal to either quote on work that can be identified and measured, or on a ‘cost plus’ basis, where work can’t be easily identified, such as underground or where there are unknowns.

​In March 1992, I was wildly excited to install the first of the "electronic" gas hot water units. It was a Rinnai Infinity 24 -- state of the art with hardwired temperature control bathroom touch pads. It was the first of its kind, and heralded the start of new breed of high efficiency hot water units. These small, highly efficient units have since been emulated by a host of manufacturers world wide.