Plumber in Alachua, FL

A licensed, locally owned shop that answers its own phone and prices the job before the work starts.

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

Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor, valid statewide. Locally owned, owner on the job. Licensing and insurance

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 serving Alachua, FL. We handle leak detection, whole house repipes, polybutylene and galvanized replacement, water heaters, drain clearing and descaling, well water filtration, iron and sulfur removal, and septic installs, drain fields and locating. 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 Alachua different from plumbing in Gainesville?

Alachua is its own city, and it acts like one. The City of Alachua runs its own water, wastewater and reclaimed water systems, so the utility answering your questions inside the city limits is not the same utility everybody in Gainesville deals with. Drive a few minutes past the edge of town, toward LaCrosse or out along the Santa Fe, and there’s no utility at all. It’s your well and your septic tank and whoever you can get to come look at them.

Then there’s the age split. Historic Main Street and the older blocks around it have houses and small commercial buildings with cast iron drains that have been in the ground a long time. Turkey Creek, the big community out on 441, built out from the late seventies into the nineties, which is a completely different set of problems: supply pipe from an era that has not aged well, and slabs with the water lines running through the concrete.

Here’s the part most companies won’t put in writing. We’re based in Hawthorne, on the other side of the county. We’re not around the corner from you and we’re not going to pretend we are. What we will do is tell you the truth about when we can be there, because Kim batches the schedule by geography instead of promising everybody the same thirty minute window. A real answer beats a fake one every time.

Not sure if you’re on city water or your own well? That answer changes the whole job. Get your water tested, free.

How do I know if my Alachua house needs a repipe?

Turkey Creek is roughly eleven or twelve hundred homes out on 441, and it built out from the late seventies through the nineties. That window matters. Homes from that era around here commonly have one of three things behind the drywall: polybutylene, which is gray plastic supply pipe with crimped fittings, early CPVC that has gone brittle, or cast iron on the drain side. We don’t guess which one you have. We open a small access point, look, and show you.

The tells are boring and easy to miss. Pinhole leaks that keep showing up in different rooms. A patch on the ceiling from something a previous owner fixed. Water pressure that drops when two fixtures run. Rusty or cloudy water on the first draw in the morning. Any of those on a house of that age is worth twenty minutes of somebody’s time before it’s worth a restoration company’s time.

A repipe sounds worse than it is. Most houses take a few days, not weeks. We run PEX or copper, we cut only where we have to, and a professional drywall contractor patches every hole we open. We don’t paint, and we’ll tell you that up front instead of letting you find out. Financing through Wisetack is available from about $500 if you’d rather spread it out.

And if you call us out and the honest answer is that your pipe has another decade in it, that’s what we’ll tell you. We’d rather have the callback in ten years than the review this month.

Not sure what’s in your walls? We’ll open one access point and show you before you spend a dollar. Whole house repipe

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 back and forth across the county.

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.

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

On the city system. The City of Alachua operates its own potable water, wastewater and reclaimed water utility, and the water comes out of the Floridan Aquifer. Aquifer water in this part of Florida runs hard, and what we see on service calls is scale: water heaters losing efficiency years early, shower valves that stick, aerators that clog, and glassware that never looks clean. A softener handles 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, so groundwater picks up iron, hydrogen sulfide, sometimes nitrates and bacteria on its way to your pressure tank. That’s the rotten egg smell, the orange staining in the toilet tank, and the laundry that comes out dingy no matter what you buy. It’s fixable, and the fix is different for every house, which is why we test first instead of selling you a system off the truck. Testing is free.

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

Get your water tested, free.

Iron staining

The orange staining in the toilet tank and the laundry that comes out dingy no matter what you buy.

Rotten egg odor

Hydrogen sulfide the groundwater picks up moving through limestone. If it's only in the hot water, it's usually the anode rod.

Hard water scale

Water heaters losing efficiency years early, shower valves that stick, aerators that clog. A softener handles most of it.

Sediment and low pressure

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

What do you call an Alachua 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 leaks

Most homes out here sit on a slab with the supply lines running through the concrete. There’s no crawlspace to crawl into and no attic run to trace. We locate it before anybody breaks anything.

Whole house repipe

PEX or copper, done in a few days, and every hole we cut gets professionally patched. This is the single most common big job in Alachua’s late seventies through nineties housing.

Polybutylene and galvanized replacement

If you’ve got gray plastic supply pipe with crimped fittings, or galvanized steel, you’re on borrowed time. We’ll show you what you actually have before we quote anything.

Water lines from the meter or well to the house

Long runs, old pipe, and somebody’s driveway poured over the top of it in 1994. We find it, then repair or replace it.

Water heaters

Tank and tankless, electric, natural gas and propane. Repair when repair makes sense, replace when it doesn’t, and 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.

Trenchless pipe lining

We’re a NuFlow Certified Contractor. Cutting up your house is not the only way to repair a failing line.

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.

Septic

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

Not sure which one you need? Tell us what’s happening in your own words. You don’t need the right terms.

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 give you a real answer about when, not a hopeful one.

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.

The difference is in the details

Nobody’s perfect and we won’t pretend to be. We’re a small crew based on the far side of the county, so on a busy day you might wait longer than you’d like. 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
A real local number and a real person on it.	A toll-free number on a page with your city name pasted in.
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. Same 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.
We open an access point and show you your actual pipe before quoting a repipe.	A repipe number quoted off the year the house was built.
We patch every hole we cut, with a professional drywall contractor.	The holes are your problem after they leave.
Wells, filtration, iron and sulfur, septic installs and drain fields, all in house.	City fixtures only. Well and septic work gets subcontracted or declined.
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 handles septic work around Alachua?

Once you’re outside the city limits, most properties are on a well and a septic tank, 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.

Permitting for onsite systems in this county still runs through the county health department, and parts of this area sit inside springs protection zones tied to the Santa Fe River, which can mean extra treatment requirements on a new system. The health department has the final say on what your property needs. That 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.

1. Kill the water. On the city system, 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 first, 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 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. Nobody makes money off you panicking.

Call Now: (352) 377-9447 | 24/7 emergency plumbing

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

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 Alachua 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. A repipe is the same story on a bigger scale, and it is one of the first things a buyer’s inspector looks for in a house of that age.

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. On a well there’s no water bill to spike and warn you, so a line can seep underground for months while you pay nothing and lose everything.

Old supply pipe rarely gives you one clean warning. It gives you a pinhole in the guest bath in March, another one in the laundry in August, and a patched ceiling that a buyer’s inspector will find in two minutes. 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 never fails politely, and it always seems to go on a weekend.

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.

What does this look like when it's handled?

The pressure holds when two showers run. Nothing drips behind a wall you can’t see. The water runs clear and it doesn’t smell like anything, the laundry comes out white, and the toilet tank isn’t orange anymore. When you go to sell, the inspector’s report on the plumbing is one boring line.

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 two streets over starts finding pinholes, you know exactly who to tell them to call. That’s how most of our work comes in, and it’s the only marketing that has ever really worked for us.

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Turkey Creek and the late seventies through nineties subdivisions

Homes facing a repipe decision. We open one access point and show you what's actually in the walls.

Older homes near historic Main Street

Cast iron drains that have been in the ground a long time. Camera first, then descaling or lining.

Rural well and septic owners

The north and west edges of the city toward LaCrosse and the Santa Fe River. Wells, filtration, tanks and drain fields.

Small commercial on Main Street and the corporate park corridor

Same licensed crew, same price before the work starts.

Frequently asked questions about plumbing in Alachua, FL

Is there a licensed plumber who actually serves Alachua, FL?

Yes. First Choice Plumbing works Alachua, Turkey Creek, High Springs and LaCrosse regularly. A lot of what you'll find searching for an Alachua plumber is a national lead site with a toll-free number and your city name pasted into a template. We're a real Florida licensed contractor, CFC1430748, and the owner still runs the estimates.

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

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.

Does the City of Alachua have its own water system?

Yes. The City of Alachua operates its own potable water, wastewater and reclaimed water utility, and the source is the Floridan Aquifer. Outside the city limits most properties are on a private well and a septic system, and the fix for a water problem is different depending on which one you're on.

How do I know if I have polybutylene pipe?

Polybutylene is gray plastic supply pipe with crimped metal or plastic fittings, common in homes built or repiped from the late 1970s into the mid 1990s. You can sometimes see it at the water heater or under a sink. We don't guess. We open a small access point, look, and show you what's actually there before we quote anything.

How long does a whole house repipe take?

Most houses take a few days, not weeks. We run PEX or copper, cut only where we have to, and a professional drywall contractor patches every hole we open. We don't paint, and we say so up front. Financing through Wisetack is available from about $500.

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

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, and the testing is free.

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

What towns around Alachua do you cover?

All of it, and we run this side of the county in batches so the drive works. Turkey Creek and the 441 corridor, the neighborhoods off Main Street, and out toward Monteocha and the Santa Fe. North and west to High Springs and LaCrosse. South to Jonesville, Newberry 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

One call, a real answer, and a price before the work starts.

Repipes, leaks, water heaters, wells, septic, old pipe and new construction. Anywhere in Alachua and the country around it. $69 to come out, the price up front, 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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