North Naples is not a city. It is the unincorporated stretch above the Naples line that takes in Naples Park, Pelican Bay, Pine Ridge and the communities along Vanderbilt Beach Road. Because none of it is incorporated, every permit goes to Collier County. It also gets described as new construction, which is wrong often enough to cause real problems. Naples Park lots opened in 1951. Pelican Bay was laid out in the seventies and built through the eighties. Pelican Marsh broke ground in 1993. That is a great deal of housing sitting directly on top of the years when polybutylene was the pipe of choice.
There is no City of North Naples. The area is unincorporated Collier County, so plumbing and gas permits are issued by Collier County Growth Management on Horseshoe Drive. That is a different office, a different portal and a different inspection queue from the City of Naples a few miles south, even though the mailing address says Naples on both.
Collier also runs a contractor licensing board that covers unincorporated Collier, the City of Naples and the City of Marco Island under one shared agreement. Because we carry a Florida state certified license rather than a local competency card, county registration is voluntary for us rather than a prerequisite to work.
Polybutylene went into American homes from 1978 until 1995. Pelican Bay was developed straight through that stretch. Pelican Marsh started in 1993. Naples Park predates the window entirely but has been repiped in pieces over seventy years, which is how a single house ends up with three generations of pipe in it.
Poly-B is usually gray, sometimes blue or black, and it feels soft next to PEX. It degrades from the inside where nobody can see it, and it tends to let go at the fittings rather than mid run. We do not charge to identify it. A look under a sink and at the water heater connections is normally enough to settle the question.
Citizens Property Insurance, the state backed insurer of last resort, will consider a dwelling twenty years old or newer with polybutylene piping only where there is no sign of leaks, unrepaired water damage or disrepair. Every home built during the polybutylene window is now well past twenty years old. For new business, that combination is not insurable.
Citizens also requires a four point inspection on any property more than twenty years old, and plumbing is one of the four points alongside roof, electrical and HVAC. At that point a repipe stops being only a plumbing decision. It is what stands between the house and an insurance problem.
A lot of North Naples is vertical. Florida law requires residential condominium associations to carry out a structural integrity reserve study on a recurring schedule, and plumbing is one of the named components that study has to cover, alongside the roof, the load bearing walls, the electrical and the waterproofing.
We are the contractor who does the work a study like that identifies. We are not the engineer who performs it, and we would not claim to be. If your association has a report on the table with plumbing line items in it, we can price that work and stage it around residents rather than emptying a building.
A-1 Plumbing & Gas helped with our bathroom renovation. They were so helpful answering all of our questions and making sure that we were clear on the fixtures we selected. We were so happy that we hired them to install a whole home water filtration system, new water heater, and had them add a water line where an exterior bib was disconnected previously. They're the only plumbing company we trust!
Kristin Van Heukelom, Naples, FL