Plumber & gasfitter in Paraparaumu.

Paraparaumu is home base — Tony lives and works here, so the run to your place is usually the shortest on the books. The housing is a real mix: original beach-town weatherboards from the sixties and seventies, brick-and-tile from the eighties, and newer subdivisions filling in behind the beach.

The older places tend to carry their age in the pipework. Galvanised supply lines and first-generation copper are reaching the end of their working life, and plenty of hot water cylinders from the nineties are quietly rusting in cupboards. Salt air does exterior tapware and cylinder relief lines no favours either — anything outdoors weathers faster this close to the beach.

A lot of the work here is renovation: original bathrooms and kitchens being brought up to modern standard. With the wall linings open, that is exactly the right time to replace tired pipework properly instead of patching around it.