Plumber in Hawthorne, FL

This is our town. We’re licensed, locally owned, and we answer our own phone. Leaks don’t stand a chance.

Rather text? Send a photo of the problem to 352-377-9447 and we’ll tell you what it sounds like.

Licensed Florida Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748

Based in Hawthorne, FL. The shop is on SE 221st Street. Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor, valid statewide.

Service call, waived on larger jobs

$ 69

Leak detection, flat. Find it or you don't pay

$ 375

Parts and labor warranty, manufacturer warranty on top

2 yr

First Choice Plumbing is a licensed, locally owned plumber based in Hawthorne, FL. We handle leak detection, water lines, water heaters, drain clearing, repipes, well water filtration, iron and sulfur removal, and septic installs, drain fields and locating across east Alachua County. The service call is $69 and leak detection is $375. If we don’t find your leak, you don’t pay. Licensed contractor CFC1430748. Call 352-377-9447.

What makes plumbing in Hawthorne different from plumbing in town?

Hawthorne is a small city with a lot of country around it. Inside the city limits you might be on the city water and sewer system. A mile out, you’re on your own well and your own septic tank, and there’s nobody to call about it but a plumber. That one split changes everything about how a job gets diagnosed, priced and permitted, and it’s the reason a plumber who only works Gainesville tends to get quiet when you say the word “well.”

The housing out here runs older and more varied than it does in town. Site built homes from the fifties and sixties with cast iron drains. Manufactured and mobile homes with ABS drain pipe, which is the black pipe you see under most of them. Farm houses that have been added onto three times, each time with whatever pipe was on the truck that day. Camp houses and weekend places around Lochloosa and Orange Lake that sit empty for months and then get asked to run full blast on a holiday weekend.

Then there’s the water itself. The City of Hawthorne system draws from the Floridan Aquifer and chlorinates it, and aquifer water in this part of Florida runs hard. Private wells pull from the same limestone and pick up iron and sulfur on the way, which is why so much of what we do out here is filtration instead of fixtures. Our shop is on SE 221st Street, the same street as City Hall. We’re not servicing Hawthorne from forty minutes away. We live in it.

On a well? On septic? Both? That’s most of our week. Well water filtration

What do you call a Hawthorne plumber for?

Leak detection

Our flagship. $375 flat to come out and find it, and if we don’t find it, you don’t pay. Slabs, walls, yard lines, under the house. We write the whole thing up so you have it for the insurance claim.

Slab and underground leaks

Most Florida homes sit on a slab with the supply lines running through the concrete, so there’s no crawlspace to go look. We locate it before anybody breaks anything.

Water lines from the well or meter to the house

Out here that run can be long, old, and buried under a driveway somebody poured over it in 1994. We find it and we repair or replace it.

Water heaters

Tank and tankless, electric, natural gas and propane. Repair when repair makes sense, replace when it doesn’t. We’ll tell you honestly which one you’re looking at. Water heater repair

Drain clearing

One clog, one visit, usually in and out in about an hour and a half. That’s a service call, not a project.

Drain cleaning and descaling

Different animal. A machine with chains and diamond bits mills the inside of the pipe back to bare wall. That’s a one to two day job on old cast iron.

Camera inspection

Before you spend money guessing, we put a camera in the line and you watch the screen with us.

Repipes

Polybutylene, galvanized, failing CPVC. We repipe in PEX or copper, and we patch every hole we cut. Polybutylene and galvanized replacement

Well water filtration

Iron, sulfur, hardness, sediment. Air injection and chlorine free systems, softeners, and media tanks sized to your water, not to a catalog.

Water testing

Free. If the water’s fine, we’ll tell you that and you keep your money.

Septic

New tank installs, replacements, drain fields, locating a tank nobody has seen in twenty years, and abandonment when a property goes onto city sewer.

Farm and acreage plumbing

Horse waterers, feeder lines, hose bibs that actually hold pressure, outdoor kitchens and pool lines.

$69 service call, waived on larger jobs. The price comes before the work starts.

Are you on city water or a private well in Hawthorne?

On the city system. The City of Hawthorne runs its own water and wastewater utility, and the water comes out of the Floridan Aquifer and gets chlorinated. Aquifer water around here carries a lot of dissolved mineral, so what we see on service calls is scale: water heaters that lose efficiency years early, shower valves that stick, faucet aerators that clog, and glassware that never looks clean. A softener fixes most of that. An annual water heater flush handles the rest and costs almost nothing next to a new heater.

On a private well. Nobody tests it but you. The limestone under this county is porous, and groundwater picks up iron, hydrogen sulfide, sometimes nitrates and bacteria on its way to your pressure tank. That’s where the rotten egg smell comes from, where the orange staining in the toilet tank comes from, and why the laundry looks dingy no matter what you buy. It’s fixable, and the fix is not the same for every house, which is why we test first instead of selling you a system out of a truck.

One honest note. If your hot water is the only water that smells, that is usually the water heater’s anode rod, not your well. That’s a small job, and we’d rather tell you that than sell you a whole filtration train you don’t need.

Get your water tested, free. Iron and sulfur removal · Water softeners · Well water filtration

Who handles septic work around Hawthorne?

Most properties outside the city limits are on septic, and a lot of those systems are older than the people living on them. The signs are the same every time: a soft or wet spot in the yard over the drain field, grass that’s greener in one strip, slow drains all over the house at once instead of just one, or a smell outside after heavy rain. Florida’s onsite system rules live with the state, and permitting in this county still runs through the county health department, so this is not a job to hand to somebody working without a license.

What we do: new tank installs, tank replacement, drain field installation and replacement, locating a tank or field nobody has laid eyes on in twenty years, and abandonment and decommission when a property gets tied into city sewer.

What we don’t do, and who we’d send you to: we don’t pump tanks and we don’t do septic inspections. We work with a local pump-out company and we’ll give you their name, no charge and no markup. Same answer if you need a tank taken out of the ground. We’d rather point you to the right outfit than fumble your job to keep it.

See all septic services

What do I do while I'm waiting for the plumber?

Call first, then do these three things. Then call us and tell us what you’re looking at. We’ll tell you straight whether it needs somebody tonight or whether it can hold until morning without costing you more. Being ten minutes up the road from most of Hawthorne is the whole point. 24/7 emergency plumbing

1. Kill the water.

On city water, the shutoff is usually at the meter box near the road, and it takes a meter key or a good pair of channel locks. On a well, cut the breaker to the pump, then open a faucet to bleed the pressure off the tank. If there's a valve where the line enters the house, that one is faster.

2. Kill the power to the water heater if the heater is what's leaking.

Breaker off for electric, gas valve to pilot or off for gas. An element firing in an empty tank ruins the heater on top of the mess you already have.

3. Get water off the floor and pictures on your phone.

Photos of the standing water, the wet drywall, the ceiling stain, all of it, before anybody cleans up. If this turns into an insurance claim, that phone is worth more than anything we can write later.

Then call us: 352-377-9447

Tell us what you're looking at. We'll tell you straight whether it needs somebody tonight or whether it can hold until morning without costing you more.

Do I need a permit to replace a water heater in Hawthorne?

Yes. Florida treats altering, repairing, replacing or converting a plumbing system as permitted work, and a water heater changeout counts. Where it gets filed depends on whether the property sits inside the Hawthorne city limits or out in unincorporated Alachua County, and septic work goes through the county health department on top of that. You do not need to sort that out. We confirm the jurisdiction, pull the permit under our license, and meet the inspector.

Skipping the permit is how a cheap install turns expensive. It shows up when you sell the house, when an insurance adjuster asks, or when the next inspector opens a panel and finds work nobody signed for.

What happens if you let it go?

A slow leak under a slab doesn’t stay a plumbing problem for long. It becomes wet insulation, then a flooring bill, then drywall, then a mold remediation quote that costs several times what finding it would have. A well line seeping underground can run for months and you’d never know, because there’s no water bill out here to spike and warn you.

Iron and sulfur left alone eat fixtures, stain everything, and shorten the life of a water heater you paid good money for. A drain field that’s failing rarely fails politely, and it always seems to go on the weekend somebody’s family is in town.

None of that is a scare tactic. It’s the order things happen in, and every one of those steps is cheaper at the front end. If you’re not sure whether what you’re seeing is urgent, call and ask. We’ll tell you the truth even when the truth is that it can wait.

The difference is in the details

Nobody’s perfect and we won’t pretend to be. We’re a small crew, so on a busy day you might wait a few hours instead of thirty minutes. What you won’t get is a stranger reading a script in your kitchen. See financing options

First Choice Plumbing	Typical Big-Name or Out-of-Town Plumber
Based in Hawthorne. The shop is on SE 221st Street.	Listed for Hawthorne, dispatched from another city or another state.
The owner holds the license and still runs estimates himself.	You meet a salesperson. The license holder is a name on a wall.
Kim answers the phone and dispatches. A local person, every time.	A call center that routes your address to whoever paid for the lead.
$69 service call, published on the website, waived on larger jobs.	No price published anywhere. You find out when they're standing there.
Leak detection $375 flat. Don't find it, don't pay.	Hourly diagnostics with no ceiling and no guarantee.
Wells, filtration, iron and sulfur, septic installs and drain fields, all in house.	City fixtures only. Well and septic work gets subcontracted or declined.
We patch every hole we cut, with a professional drywall contractor.	The holes are your problem after they leave.
2 year parts and labor warranty, plus the manufacturer warranty.	Often 30 days to a year, if it is written down at all.
Financing available from about $500 through Wisetack.	Financing that starts high, or nothing at all.
We'll tell you when the smaller fix is the right one.	Every visit somehow ends at the biggest option on the sheet.

Who actually shows up?

Will Harrod owns First Choice Plumbing and holds Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor license CFC1430748. A “CFC” certification is a state license, good statewide, and it belongs to a person, not a franchise. Will runs the estimates, the repipes, the new construction and the remodels himself. Mike runs service and drain calls and has been background checked. Ben is coming up behind them and catching on fast. Kim runs the office and the schedule, and she batches jobs by geography so nobody’s burning an afternoon driving Hawthorne to Gainesville and back.

That’s the whole company. It’s small on purpose. When you call, you’re talking to the people who will be at your house.

How does it work?

Call or book.

Tell us what’s happening in your own words. You don’t need the right terms. Kim will get you on the schedule, and if it’s an emergency she’ll say so out loud.

We find it and price it before we touch anything.

$69 to come out, waived on larger jobs. Leak detection is $375 flat and free if we don’t find it. You get the number before the work starts, not after.

We fix it and clean up behind ourselves.

Two year parts and labor warranty. Every hole we cut gets professionally patched. Financing is there if you want it.

What does this look like when it's handled?

The water runs clear and it doesn’t smell like anything. The laundry comes out white. Hot water shows up when you turn the handle and keeps showing up until you’re done. The yard is dry, the drains all move at the same speed, and the toilet tank isn’t orange anymore.

You know the name of the plumber who did it, and you have his number in your phone instead of a search result. When your neighbor’s water heater goes out, you know exactly who to tell them to call. That’s how most of our work comes in out here, and it’s why we treat every job in this town like the whole business depends on it. Because it does.

What towns around Hawthorne do you cover?

Hawthorne is home, so the ring around it is the easiest work we do. Cross Creek, Lochloosa, Island Grove, Rochelle, Grove Park, Windsor and the lake properties on Orange Lake and Lochloosa Lake. North to Waldo. East to Melrose, Keystone Heights and Interlachen. West to Micanopy and on into Gainesville.

If you’re not sure whether you’re in the ring, call and ask. We’d rather tell you yes or no in thirty seconds than have you wonder.

Plumbing Services in Alachua County, FL

Based in Hawthorne, FL

The shop is on SE 221st Street, the same street as City Hall.

Licensed Florida Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748

A state certification valid statewide, and the company carries general liability coverage.

$69 service call, waived on larger jobs

The price comes before the work starts.

Find the leak or you don't pay

$375 flat leak detection, written up so you have it for the insurance claim.

Frequently asked questions about plumbing in Hawthorne, FL

Is there actually a plumber based in Hawthorne, FL?

Yes. First Choice Plumbing is based here, at 6940 SE 221st St in Hawthorne. Most of the listings you'll find searching for a Hawthorne plumber are national lead sites dispatching from somewhere else. We're the shop in town.

How much does a plumber charge to come out in Hawthorne?

Ours is $69, and it's waived on larger jobs. You get the diagnosis and an upfront price before any work starts. Leak detection is priced separately at $375, and if we don't find the leak you don't pay.

Do I need a permit to replace a water heater in Hawthorne?

Yes. Florida treats a water heater changeout as permitted plumbing work. Whether it files with the city or with unincorporated Alachua County depends on where the property sits. We confirm that, pull the permit under our license, and meet the inspector.

Why does my well water smell like rotten eggs?

Usually hydrogen sulfide, which groundwater picks up moving through limestone. If every faucet smells, it's the water and filtration fixes it. If only the hot water smells, it's usually the anode rod in the water heater, which is a much smaller job. We test before we recommend anything.

Is Hawthorne on city water or private wells?

Both. The City of Hawthorne runs a water and wastewater utility inside the city limits, drawing from the Floridan Aquifer. Outside the limits most properties are on a private well and a septic system. The fix for a water problem is different depending on which one you're on.

Do you install septic drain fields around Hawthorne?

Yes. We install and replace tanks and drain fields, locate systems nobody has seen in years, and handle abandonment and decommission when a property ties into city sewer. We don't pump tanks and we don't do septic inspections, and we'll hand you the name of a local company that does.

How fast can you get to Cross Creek, Island Grove or Lochloosa?

Faster than anybody dispatching from Gainesville or Ocala, because we start here. Call and we'll tell you honestly where you sit on the day's schedule instead of promising a window we can't hold.

Is First Choice Plumbing licensed and insured?

Yes. Will Harrod holds Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor license CFC1430748, a state certification valid statewide, and the company carries general liability coverage. The license number appears in the footer of every page on this site. Licensing and insurance

You're not calling a call center. You're calling your neighbors.

Wells, septic, city water, old pipe, new construction. Anywhere in Hawthorne and the country around it. $69 to come out, the price before the work, and a 2 year warranty behind it. Leaks don’t stand a chance.

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First Choice Plumbing | 6940 SE 221st St, Hawthorne, FL 32640 | 352-377-9447 | License CFC1430748

Tell us what's going on and we'll take it from there

You get a real person, a $69 visit, a flat price before we start, and a company that patches what it cuts and answers the phone when you call back. If a smaller fix is the right call, we’ll tell you that too.

First Choice Plumbing is a locally owned, owner led plumbing company working Gainesville, Hawthorne and Greater Alachua County. Leak detection, repipes, water heaters, drains, trenchless lining, well water filtration and septic. We find it, we fix it, we guarantee it.

Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748

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