Fort Myers is the furthest point we regularly serve, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. It is worth the drive because the work here is interesting and because a lot of it is the kind nobody else wants. The city has been building continuously since the 1880s, which means there is no single answer to what is behind your walls. A house in Dean Park and a house east of I-75 have almost nothing in common under the drywall.
Inside the city limits, plumbing permits come from the City of Fort Myers Building Permits and Inspections office on Hendry Street downtown, not from Lee County. The city also requires contractors to register with it before pulling a permit, on top of whatever state license or county competency card they hold.
Outside the city line, in unincorporated Lee County, it goes back to the county. The boundary is not intuitive and plenty of addresses with a Fort Myers mailing address are not actually in the city. We check the jurisdiction before we quote, because the wrong assumption costs a week.
Dean Park was platted around 1916 and built out through the twenties. Edison Park followed in the same era. These are the oldest intact residential neighborhoods in the city and the plumbing history in them is layered: original galvanized steel and cast iron drain lines, copper added in a mid century update, and often a stretch of something newer from a bathroom remodel in the last twenty years.
Galvanized supply pipe rusts from the inside. By the time the pressure at the fixture noticeably drops, the interior diameter has already closed up considerably. Cast iron drain line fails differently, usually at the bottom of the pipe where it has been sitting in water for eighty years.
Repiping a historic home is not the same job as repiping a tract house. Plaster, original trim, and hardwood all have to be worked around rather than through, and the routing decisions get made before anyone opens a wall.
Because Fort Myers never stopped growing, every era of residential plumbing material is represented somewhere in the city. Galvanized downtown. Copper through the mid century. Polybutylene in the neighborhoods that went up between 1978 and 1995. CPVC and PEX in everything recent.
That is why we do not quote a repipe over the phone here. What we tell a homeowner in one neighborhood would be wrong two miles away.
Lee County took the worst of Hurricane Ian, and parts of the Fort Myers area are still working through it. Storm driven plumbing work has its own character: water heaters that were submerged and need replacing rather than drying out, fixtures and supply lines contaminated by floodwater, and gas appliances that need inspection before they are put back into service.
We are not an insurance adjuster and we do not pretend to be. What we can do is document what we find, replace what needs replacing, and pull the permits so the repair is on record.
Fort Myers is exit 101 on I-75, well north of our home base at exit 131. We schedule Fort Myers work in blocks rather than scattering it through the day, which means we can usually offer you a window rather than a vague half day.
For an emergency we come regardless. For planned work, a little flexibility on the date usually gets you a better window.
Eric from A-1 Plumbing did a fantastic job replacing my shut off valve. Arrived within time window. Cleaned up site. Professional and courteous. A plus for Eric and A-1.
Karen Rakow, Naples, FL