About First Choice Plumbing

A locally owned shop out of Hawthorne, working across Gainesville and Alachua County.

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

Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748

Locally owned, out of Hawthorne. Will runs every estimate himself. Licensing and insurance

Flat service call, waived on larger jobs

$ 69

Flat leak detection. Find it or you don't pay

$ 375

Parts and labor warranty on our work

2 yr

First Choice Plumbing is a locally owned plumbing company based in Hawthorne, Florida, serving Gainesville and Alachua County. Owner Will Harrod is a Florida certified plumbing contractor, license CFC1430748, and he still runs the estimates himself. The shop is known for leak detection, repipes, water heaters, drain work, well filtration and septic. Service calls are a flat $69 and the work carries a two year parts and labor warranty.

Why does every plumbing website sound the same?

Open five of them.

Not one of them tells you who holds the license, who is driving the truck, or what it costs to get somebody to your door. So you end up picking on a coin flip, and you already know how that goes. The tech shows up, the number is triple what you expected, and the person quoting it is not the person doing it. Then it happens again in eighteen months, because whatever they did did not hold.

You should not have to guess. A plumbing company is asking you to hand over a key, a wall, and a few thousand dollars. The least it can do is tell you its license number, name the people coming to your house, and put a price where you can see it before you pick up the phone. That is the entire reason this page exists.

Is First Choice Plumbing licensed and insured?

Yes. Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor, license number CFC1430748, held by Will Harrod.

We carry general liability and workers compensation coverage. Do not take our word for it. Go to myfloridalicense.com, search the number, and read it yourself. It takes about forty seconds. Do the same thing to every plumber who hands you a quote, because in Florida a lot of trucks with lettering on the side do not have a number behind them.

The CFC prefix matters too. It means state certified rather than county registered, which is why we can work anywhere in Florida instead of being boxed in at one county line.

Here is why any of that should matter to you and not just to us. Unlicensed work usually cannot be permitted. Unpermitted work shows up later, at the worst possible time, when you sell the house or file an insurance claim on a water loss and the adjuster asks who did the job. A water heater changeout needs a permit in Alachua County. So does altering, repairing or replacing a plumbing system. We pull them.

Who owns First Choice Plumbing?

Will Harrod. One owner, no partners, no private equity group in another state deciding what your repair costs.

Will came up in the trade the long way, working under other people’s trucks before he ever put his name on one. He earned his Florida certification, CFC1430748, and built this company on the thing most plumbers hand off or guess at: finding leaks nobody else can find. That is still the part he likes best. In his words, “I like looking and finding things that other people can’t find.”

He runs every estimate himself. If you are getting a repipe, a new water heater, a filtration system, a septic install or a lining job, Will is the one standing in your house pricing it. That is on purpose. When the owner is the one quoting the job, there is nobody to blame later and nothing to renegotiate when the truck shows up.

It also means you get a straight answer. If the smaller repair is the right call, he will tell you that, even though the bigger job pays better. We would rather have your next four calls than your one big one.

His name is on the license. His number is on the truck. That is the whole point.

Who actually shows up at your house?

This is a locally owned shop. Between Will, Mike and Kim, the people who answer your call are the people who do the work.

That is the whole crew. Small on purpose. You will not get a different stranger every visit.

Will, owner and licensed plumbing contractor.

Estimates, repipes, new construction, remodels and the hard diagnostic work. If it is a big job, he priced it and he is watching it. Florida license CFC1430748.

Mike, service technician.

Everybody calls him Big Mike. He runs the service calls and the drain calls, which means he is the one most homeowners actually meet. Mike has seen the inside of more Alachua County drain lines than he cares to count, and he is background checked before he ever walks through your door.

Ben, technician.

Will's right hand on the bigger jobs. Repipes, sewer work, excavation and lining. Learning fast and already trusted with real work.

Kim, office and dispatch.

She answers the phone, she books the jobs, and she is the reason the schedule makes sense. She groups the day by area so Mike is not driving Hawthorne to Gainesville and back three times, which is how you get a same-day slot when a bigger company tells you Thursday.

Why is the crew this small?

Because we chose it.

This company used to run six and seven guys. On paper that looked like growth. In the driveway it looked like work Will had not seen, done by people he had not trained, on houses he had never walked. Callbacks went up. Quality went sideways. So he cleared the deck and started over with people he would send to his own house.

That is a strange thing to admit on an About page. We are telling you anyway, because it explains the thing you actually care about: why the owner is at your estimate, why the same tech keeps coming back, and why the job you booked is the job you get.

We are growing again, carefully. More trucks, more techs, same rule. Nobody works in your house who Will would not stand next to. A bigger company can send you somebody today. We would rather send you the right somebody, and most weeks we can still do that today.

What is First Choice Plumbing actually known for?

Leak detection

Our flagship. $375 flat to come out and find it. If we do not find it, you do not pay.

Insurance claim leaks

We find it, we document it the way the adjuster needs it documented, and we do the repair. One company, one file, no finger pointing.

Repipes and pipe repair

CPVC, copper, cast iron, galvanized, PEX, PVC, polybutylene and the black ABS drain line you find in older mobile homes. Every hole we cut gets professionally patched.

Water heaters

Tank and tankless, gas, electric and propane. Repair, replacement and annual tankless flushes done with vinegar instead of chemicals.

Drain clearing and drain cleaning

Two different things, and most companies blur them. Clearing is a service call: you have a clog, we clear it, we are out in about an hour and a half. Cleaning is a job: a milling machine with chains and diamond bits scours the inside of the line back to bare pipe. Drain cleaning and descaling

Trenchless pipe lining

First Choice Plumbing, NuFlow Certified Contractor. We line cast iron and sewer lines from the inside with epoxy, which means cutting up your slab is not the only way to fix the pipe under it.

Well water filtration and softeners

Air injection, chlorine free systems, iron and sulfur removal, softeners. Free water testing.

Septic

Locating, new installs, drain fields, replacements, abandonment and decommission.

Farm and agricultural plumbing

Horse waterers, feeders, hose bibs, outdoor kitchens and pool lines.

Commercial

Restaurants, salons, older buildings and multi-story properties, with lining and descaling that keep your doors open.

Leaks. That is the short answer, and it is how most people find us. The rest of the list grew out of it.

What we do not do

A one-stop shop is a good thing right up until a company pretends to be one. So here is the honest list.

We do not do tile and we do not paint. On a bathroom remodel we price and run the plumbing and bring in a tile partner, because we are not a general contractor and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

We do not pump septic tanks. We install, replace, locate, abandon and decommission, and we hand pump-outs to a partner who does it every day. We do not do septic inspections yet, because the certification is pending, and we will not do one until it is not.

We do not do backflow certification, HVAC or electrical. We do not install undersink reverse osmosis, because the leak risk under a cabinet is not worth what the unit does.

If your job is on that list, call anyway. We will tell you who to call.

What is different about hiring us?

You are probably getting two or three quotes. Good. Here is what to compare, line by line, on every one of them.

What to compare	First Choice Plumbing	Typical Franchise or Big-Name Plumbing Brand
Who prices your job	The owner, on site, with his license number on it	A commissioned salesperson working from a flat-rate price book
Who shows up	The same small crew every time	Whichever tech the dispatch board assigns that morning
What it costs to come out	$69 flat, waived on larger jobs	Often free, then priced back into the job
Leak detection	$375 flat. Find it or you do not pay	Quoted after the tech is already in your driveway
Prices published	On the website, before you call	Almost never
After a repipe	Every hole we cut gets professionally patched	Patching is your problem, or a change order
Warranty	2 year parts and labor, then the manufacturer warranty on top	Commonly 1 year, sometimes labor only
Drain work	Clearing and cleaning priced as the two different jobs they are	Both sold as one line item
Cast iron under a slab	Lined from the inside where the pipe allows it	Cut the slab
Who you talk to when something goes wrong	Kim, then Will	A call center in another state

Every line in that middle column is something you can hold us to on the phone before you ever book.

Where does First Choice Plumbing work?

We are based in Hawthorne, on the quiet side of Alachua County, out where the lakes are and most houses are on a well. That is not a marketing detail. It is why we know what your water is doing.

Gainesville is our biggest service area, and city water there is a different animal than well water fifteen minutes east. GRU water runs moderately hard, around 8 grains per gallon, and that hardness is what quietly shortens the life of a water heater. Out in the county the aquifer hands you iron and sulfur instead, which is the rotten egg smell people call us about. Same county, two completely different plumbing problems, and we work both every week.

We cover Hawthorne, Gainesville, Alachua, High Springs, Newberry, Archer, Micanopy, Waldo, Melrose, Keystone Heights, Interlachen, Starke, Lake Butler, Williston and the farm country around Citra, Sparr and Fort McCoy.

Not sure whether you are in range? Call and ask. If you are past where we can get to you the same week, we will say so instead of booking you and canceling.

What happens when I call?

You talk to Kim.

Not a call center, not a menu. She asks what the water is doing, how urgent it is, and where you are, and she gets you on the schedule. If it is an emergency, she gets Will or Mike on it. Emergency plumbing

A licensed plumber comes out and finds the real problem.

$69 for the visit, $375 if it is a leak hunt. You get told what is actually wrong, in plain language, and a flat price to fix it before anybody touches anything.

We fix it and we stand behind it.

Two years, parts and labor. Every hole we cut gets patched. And you have our number for the next one, which is the whole business model.

What do you promise before I book?

We find it or you do not pay.

That is the leak detection promise and it is the one we are known for. $375 flat to come out and find it. No find, no charge.

You get the price before we start.

The $69 service call gets a licensed plumber to your door and gets you a real diagnosis. Then you get a flat price for the repair, and you decide. Nothing gets done that you did not agree to. On larger jobs, roughly $800 and up, the $69 goes away.

We patch every hole we cut.

A repipe means opening walls. A professional drywall contractor closes them back up. We do not paint, so you pick the color, but you are not left staring at a hole in your hallway wondering who fixes that.

Two years, parts and labor.

On top of whatever the manufacturer covers. If something we installed fails inside two years, we come back and it is on us.

And if money is the wall, financing is available on jobs from about $500 through Wisetack. Plumbing financing

Frequently asked questions about First Choice Plumbing

Who owns First Choice Plumbing?

Will Harrod. He is the sole owner and the license holder, Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748. There are no partners and no outside ownership group, and he still runs the estimates himself.

Is First Choice Plumbing licensed and insured in Florida?

Yes. License number CFC1430748, and we carry general liability and workers compensation. You can verify the license yourself at myfloridalicense.com in under a minute, and you should do that with every plumber who quotes you.

Is First Choice Plumbing locally owned?

It is. Will owns it, Mike runs the service calls, and Kim runs the office and dispatch. That is most of the company, which is why you tend to get the same faces every visit.

Where is First Choice Plumbing located?

We are based at 6940 SE 221st St in Hawthorne, Florida, and we work across Gainesville and Alachua County plus the surrounding counties. Hawthorne is home. Gainesville is where most of the work is.

What does First Choice Plumbing charge to come out?

A flat $69 service call, and it is waived on larger jobs. Leak detection is a separate flat $375, and if we do not find the leak you do not pay. You get a flat price for any repair before the work starts.

Does the owner really come out on jobs?

On estimates, yes, every time. Repipes, water heaters, filtration, septic, lining and new construction all get priced by Will in person. Day to day service calls and drain calls are usually Mike.

Do you work with insurance companies on leak claims?

Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. We locate the leak, document it the way an adjuster needs it documented, and handle the repair, so you are not stuck coordinating between a detection company and a plumbing company.

What does First Choice Plumbing not do?

No tile, no paint, no septic pump-outs or septic inspections, no backflow certification, no HVAC or electrical, no undersink reverse osmosis, and we are not a general contractor. If your job is on that list we will point you to someone who does it.

Now you know who we are. Tell us what the water is doing.

You get a real person on the phone, a licensed plumber at the door, a flat price before we start, and a company that patches what it cuts and picks up when you call back. If the smaller fix is the right call, we will tell you that too.

Book a Visit Online

First Choice Plumbing. Leaks don’t stand a chance.

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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