Naples is where our trucks start the day, and it is also the one place on our map where the permit does not come from Collier County. The City of Naples runs its own building department. That matters the moment a job needs an inspection, because the application, the portal and the inspector are all city, not county. The housing here spans more than a century. A cottage off Third Street South may still have galvanized supply lines and cast iron drains. A Port Royal remodel two miles away wants a tankless conversion and high end trim. Both are normal weeks for us, and the approach is not the same.
Inside the city limits, plumbing and gas permits are issued by the City of Naples Building Department on Riverside Circle, and applications go through the city's own online system. Collier County handles permitting for the unincorporated areas that surround Naples, but it does not handle the city itself. Two houses four blocks apart can answer to different building departments.
We hold a Florida state Certified Plumbing Contractor license, which is what the CFC prefix on our license number means. A certified license is issued by the state and is good statewide. That is different from a registered license, which only works in the jurisdiction that granted the local competency card. In practice it means we can pull a permit in the City of Naples, in unincorporated Collier County and across the line in Lee County without waiting on a local exam.
The City of Naples water service area is bigger than the city itself. It reaches well past the city line, so a house can be a City of Naples water customer while sitting in unincorporated Collier County for every other purpose. Customers outside the city pay a surcharge on the rate.
This catches people out constantly, and it matters on a job. The utility boundary tells us who to call about a meter or a service line. The municipal boundary tells us who issues the permit. They are two different maps and they do not line up.
The Naples Historic District covers roughly five hundred acres of the original town, and the development inside it dates from 1887 to 1937. Palm Cottage went up in 1895. Houses of that age were plumbed long before polybutylene existed, so poly-B is not what we find there. It is galvanized steel supply line that has closed up with rust from the inside, and cast iron drain line that has gone thin along the bottom of the pipe.
Galvanized rarely bursts. It strangles. Pressure drops at the furthest fixture first, hot before cold, and the water runs tinted in the morning. By the time anyone calls, the pipe has usually been narrowing for years.
Hurricane Ian pushed water levels in the Naples area six to seven feet above mean higher high water in September 2022, a record for the city, and it destroyed the Naples Pier. The visible damage got dealt with in the first year. The plumbing consequences take longer to surface.
Water heaters that stood in salt water kept running and then quit months later. Gas appliances that were submerged need more than a dry out before they are safe to run. If your home took water in 2022 and the water heater is the same one it had then, it is worth looking at before it picks its own moment.
A-1 Plumbing came to our rescue when we thought we had exhausted all chances of restoring water to our condo complex over a weekend when all other plumbing companies said it couldn't be done! Unbelievable dedication and clearly knowledgeable about plumbing! And time of day did not matter. They showed up! Couldn't ask for better service and we will be hiring them again!
Barbara von Mehren, Naples, FL