Plumber in Gainesville, FL

Licensed, locally owned, and answering 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

Owner run, locally operated. Kim answers the phone, so you get a person instead of a call center in another state.

Service call, waived on larger jobs

$ 69

Leak detection, or free if we don't find it

$ 375

Parts and labor warranty, manufacturer warranty on top

2 yr

First Choice Plumbing is a licensed, locally owned plumber serving Gainesville, FL and the rest of Alachua County. We handle leak detection, slab leaks, water heaters, drain clearing, descaling, repipes and trenchless sewer lining. 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.

Why do Gainesville houses have so much plumbing trouble?

Because this town was built in waves, and every wave left different pipe in the ground.

Start northeast. The Duckpond and Pleasant Street go back to the 1890s through the 1930s, and both are protected historic districts. Beautiful houses. Under them you get the oldest drain lines in the city, mature oak roots that have had a hundred years to find a crack, and supply piping that has often been patched three or four times by three or four different people. Nothing about those homes is standard, which is why guessing costs so much there.

Then came the big one. Gainesville grew hard from the 1950s through the mid 1970s as the university expanded, and the city’s own mid-century survey covers exactly that stretch. If your house went up in that window, and a great many houses in the northwest and southwest quadrants did, assume original cast iron drain lines until a camera says otherwise. Cast iron rusts from the inside out. By year fifty the pipe can be half the diameter it started at, and it never tells you until a Sunday.

The newer neighborhoods have their own version. Homes built or repiped roughly between 1978 and 1995 sit in the polybutylene window. Gray plastic supply line, usually fine for years, then it fails at the fittings with almost no warning.

Sitting under all of it is slab-on-grade construction. Your water lines run through concrete. There’s no crawlspace to crawl into and no basement to check. When one lets go under there, you don’t get a puddle. You get a warm patch on the floor, a bill that doubled, and water running at midnight with every tap shut off.

None of that is your fault. It’s what this town is made of, and all of it is fixable once somebody actually looks.

Neighborhood build dates are drawn from the City of Gainesville historic district designations and the city’s mid-century architectural survey. They are general guidance about your home’s likely era, not a diagnosis of your plumbing.

Is there a plumber in Gainesville who actually answers at 2 a.m.?

That’s what the emergency line is for. Call 352-377-9447 and tell us what’s happening. We’ll tell you honestly whether it needs somebody tonight or whether it can wait until morning, because sometimes the truthful answer saves you an after-hours rate you didn’t need to pay.

While you wait, three things. Then take photos. If this turns into an insurance claim, the pictures you take in the first ten minutes are worth more than anything anybody writes down later. See how our emergency calls work

1. Shut the water off.

In most Gainesville homes the main is either at the meter box near the street or on the outside wall closest to the street side of the house. Turn it clockwise until it stops. If you've never found yours, go find it now, before you need it in the dark.

2. Kill power to the water heater if the leak is at the tank.

Breaker off for electric, gas valve to off for gas. Then shut the cold inlet on top of the tank.

3. Stop using the drains if a drain is what's backing up.

Every flush and every load of laundry adds to what's already coming back. That includes the washing machine, which is the one people forget.

Then call 352-377-9447.

Tell us what's happening. We'll tell you honestly whether it needs somebody tonight or whether it can wait until morning.

What can you actually fix at my place?

Leak Detection

Hidden leaks under slabs, inside walls, and out in the yard. We find the spot, mark it, photograph it, and write it up for your insurance company. $375, and if we don’t find it you don’t pay.

Slab Leak Detection

Warm spot on the floor, pressure that dropped, a bill that jumped for no reason. We locate it electronically instead of opening the floor to guess.

Emergency Plumbing

Burst line, no water, a toilet overflowing at 2 a.m. Call and a person picks up.

Water Heater Replacement

Tank and tankless, gas, propane and electric. We pull the permit, we haul the old one off, and we don’t leave you to deal with the inspector.

Water Heater Repair

No hot water, not enough hot water, or a tank that’s started talking to you. Often a repair, sometimes not, and we’ll say which.

Drain Clearing

A clog today, cleared today. Usually in and out inside an hour and a half.

Drain Cleaning and Descaling

A different job entirely. A milling machine with chains and diamond bits scrubs the inside of old cast iron back to bare metal.

Sewer Camera Inspection

The hour that settles the argument about what you actually have under the house. Worth doing before you buy the place, not after.

Trenchless Pipe Lining

As a NuFlow Certified Contractor we can line a failing sewer line from the inside. Cutting up your house is not the only way.

Whole House Repipe

Cast iron, galvanized or polybutylene out, PEX or copper in, and every hole we cut gets professionally patched.

Commercial Plumbing

Restaurants, salons and older downtown buildings that can’t afford to close for a week.

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

My GRU bill doubled and nothing looks wrong. Now what?

That’s usually water going somewhere you can’t see, and it’s the call we take more than any other.

Here’s the quick check you can do yourself tonight. Turn off every fixture in the house, then go look at the meter. If the little triangle or dial is still creeping, water is moving somewhere with nothing running. That’s a leak, and it has been running long enough to show up on a bill.

From there we pressure test the system, listen electronically through concrete and tile, and narrow it down until the noise lands on one spot. We mark it, photograph it, and write the whole thing up in one file so your insurance adjuster isn’t chasing three people for paperwork.

The part worth knowing: GRU will consider a leak adjustment on the water and wastewater side of a bill that got wrecked by a hidden leak, but only after the leak is repaired and only when you can document the repair. So the write-up isn’t busywork. It’s the piece of paper that gets you considered. Ask GRU about it once the repair is done. That’s their money to give back, not ours, and you should go get it.

Leak detection is $375 flat, and you’re guaranteed we’ll find it. If we don’t find it, you don’t pay.

GRU reviews leak adjustment requests case by case and applies them only after a verified repair. Details and the current form are on gru.com.

Read how leak detection works, step by step

My GRU bill doubled and nothing looks wrong. Now what?

That’s usually water going somewhere you can’t see, and it’s the call we take more than any other.

Leak detection is $375 flat, and you’re guaranteed we’ll find it. If we don’t find it, you don’t pay.

GRU reviews leak adjustment requests case by case and applies them only after a verified repair. Details and the current form are on gru.com.

Read how leak detection works, step by step

Is Gainesville tap water hard, and does it matter?

Moderately hard, yes, and it matters more to your equipment than to you.

What’s actually in it

GRU pulls from the Floridan Aquifer and treats it at the Murphree plant. Published hardness runs around 140 milligrams per liter as calcium carbonate, which is roughly 8 grains per gallon, at a pH near 8.6. That’s safe, well-tested water. It’s also water that leaves scale behind. Over ten or fifteen years that scale settles in the bottom of a water heater, coats the elements, and quietly costs you both capacity and lifespan. It’s why a tank in Gainesville often gives up sooner than the sticker on the side suggests, and it’s why an annual flush is not an upsell.

The rotten egg smell that isn’t the city’s fault

If your hot water smells like rotten eggs and the cold doesn’t, that’s almost never the supply. GRU’s own guidance points at the house: a dirty garbage disposal, a rarely used fixture, or the magnesium anode rod inside your water heater reacting with the water and giving off hydrogen sulfide. Swapping that rod to aluminum usually ends it.

We’ll tell you that on the phone for free. If it’s the anode rod, that’s a small job, and we’d rather you know it’s a small job than sell you something bigger. If you’re outside the city on a private well, that’s a different animal and we handle those too.

Water heater repair and replacement

Do I need a permit for plumbing work in Gainesville?

Usually yes, and more often than people expect. Florida requires a permit to alter, repair, replace or convert a plumbing system, and a water heater changeout counts. So do repipes, fixture relocations and gas piping.

What trips people up in this town is which desk it goes to. If your address is inside the Gainesville city limits, the permit runs through the City of Gainesville Building Division, not the county. If you’re outside the city line in unincorporated Alachua County, it goes through the county’s building division instead. Same job, same code, different office, different fee schedule. Plenty of homes on the edge of town are not where their owners assume they are.

We handle that part. We pull it under our license, we post it on the job, and we’re there to meet the inspector. It isn’t optional and it isn’t an upsell. A permit is what makes the work provable later, and later is when you’re selling the house or filing a claim and somebody asks for it.

If a contractor offers to skip the permit to save you money, that’s your signal to keep calling.

What happens if I live with it a while longer?

Sometimes nothing at all. A dripping hose bib can wait a month, and we’ll be the first to tell you so.

But a slab leak doesn’t hold still. It runs, and you keep paying GRU for water you never used, and given enough time it saturates the ground under the slab and turns a plumbing repair into a flooring and drywall repair. A cast iron line that has already scaled shut backs up on the worst possible weekend, and once it comes back into the house you’re dealing with a restoration company instead of a plumber.

The quiet one is the six month delay. Somebody gives you a number so high that you put the whole thing off, and by the time you get a second opinion the job is bigger than it was. Get a real diagnosis first. Then decide what to do about it, on your schedule.

The difference is in the details

We’re not the cheapest call you can make in Gainesville, and we’re not trying to be. We’re the one that finds the actual problem the first time and puts the price in front of you before we start.

What matters	First Choice Plumbing	Typical franchise or big-name plumber
What it costs to come out	$69, published right here, waived on larger jobs	"Call for pricing," found out at the door
Leak detection risk	$375 flat, find it or you don't pay	Billed hourly whether or not it's found
Who answers the phone	Kim, in Alachua County, who knows the crew's route	A national call center behind an 888 number
Who shows up	A small local crew you'll see again, owner still runs estimates	Whichever tech the dispatch board assigns that day
After a repipe	Every hole we cut gets professionally patched	Drywall left open, "that's a different trade"
Insurance paperwork	Findings photographed and written up in one file for the adjuster	An invoice, and you assemble the rest
Warranty	2 years parts and labor, manufacturer warranty on top	Commonly 1 year, or parts only
Sewer line failures	Trenchless lining offered before excavation is recommended	Dig and replace quoted by default

Who am I actually hiring?

Will Harrod, Florida Certified Plumbing Contractor CFC1430748. He owns the company, he still runs the estimates, and on a big job in Gainesville you’ll see him on site rather than hear about him.

The rest of the crew is small and steady, and you see the same faces. Mike runs the service and drain calls. Ben is coming up behind him. Kim answers the phone and does the dispatching, which is why you get a person and not a queue.

We’re small on purpose right now. Will ran a bigger crew once and cut it back so the work would stay right. The way he puts it: we can run like a corporate office, but we’re down to earth where we care about you.

If you want to see the license for yourself, it’s a public record with the state, and the number is at the bottom of every page on this site.

What does working with you look like?

Tell us what's happening.

Call or book online. Kim will ask a few questions to work out whether this is a today problem or a this-week problem, and she’ll tell you straight which one it is.

We come out and diagnose it.

$69 for the trip, waived on larger jobs. You get the actual cause and an upfront price before anybody touches anything. If a smaller repair does the job, that’s what we’ll recommend, even when the bigger one pays us better.

We fix it and stand behind it.

Permits pulled, holes patched, 2 year parts and labor warranty. Financing is available on jobs over $500 if that helps you say yes today.

What you get on the other side of this

The GRU bill goes back to what it used to be. The floor is dry and it stays dry. The shower still runs hot on the second load of laundry, and the drain that gurgled every Sunday just drains. The permit is closed out and filed, so when you sell the house nobody has anything to argue about.

And you’ve got a plumber’s number in your phone that you can call without bracing for a sales pitch. That is the entire point of doing it properly the first time.

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.

Find the leak or you don't pay

$375 flat leak detection, marked, photographed and written up for your insurance company.

2 year parts and labor warranty

Manufacturer warranty on top.

Questions we get from Gainesville homeowners

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

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. Most companies in this market won't publish a number at all, which is exactly why we do.

Is there a 24 hour plumber in Gainesville?

Yes. Call 352-377-9447 and tell us what's happening. We'll tell you honestly whether it needs somebody tonight or first thing in the morning. Burst lines and backed up drains don't keep business hours, and neither does the rotation.

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

Yes. Florida treats a water heater changeout as plumbing work that requires a permit. Inside the city limits it goes through the City of Gainesville Building Division. Outside the city limits in unincorporated Alachua County it goes through the county building division instead. We pull it under our license and meet the inspector either way.

Why is my GRU water bill so high all of a sudden?

Shut off every fixture in the house and go watch the meter. If it's still moving, water is going somewhere you can't see. That's the point to call us. GRU will consider a leak adjustment after the leak is repaired and documented, so keep the write-up we give you and take it to them.

Is Gainesville tap water hard?

Moderately. GRU's published hardness runs around 140 milligrams per liter as calcium carbonate, roughly 8 grains per gallon, at a pH near 8.6. It's safe water. It also scales up water heaters and fixtures over the years, which is why an annual flush is worth the small money.

Does my house have cast iron drain pipes?

If it was built before about 1975 in this town, assume yes until a camera says otherwise. Gainesville's biggest growth ran from the 1950s through the mid 1970s, and cast iron was standard the whole way. A sewer camera inspection settles it in about an hour and shows you exactly how much pipe wall is left.

Who is responsible for the sewer line between my house and the street?

Generally the homeowner, from the house out to the connection point. The utility maintains the main in the street. That surprises people, and it's usually the sentence that comes right before an expensive weekend, so it's worth knowing before you need to.

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 is in the footer of every page on this site, which is exactly where Florida law says it belongs. Licensing and insurance

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

Anywhere in Gainesville, from a slab leak off Tower Road to a cast iron line under a 1920s house near the Duckpond. $69 to come out, upfront pricing, and a 2 year warranty behind the work. 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

Plumbing Services in Alachua County, FL | All service areas

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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