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24/7 Emergency Service

Our work around Tampa

Septic systems, drain fields, sewer lines, repipes and commercial plumbing, photographed on the job.

Call (727) 626-0889

Every photo on this page is ours. Nothing here is stock, bought in, or lifted from a manufacturer's brochure.

What you won't find is a list of projects with names and figures attached. Some of these go back the better part of a decade and the details are long gone, and the people who hired us didn't do it so their crawl space could end up on a website. So they're sorted by the kind of work and left there.

Most of it is underground, inside a wall, or under a slab. That is the honest picture of this trade. The finished result is usually a yard that looks like nothing happened to it.

8 photos

Septic pumping and tank service

The side of the business most Tampa plumbers do not touch, and the reason a lot of our calls only need one company instead of two.

Tampa Bay Plumbers septic pump truck parked at the curb with suction hoses run across a front lawn to the tank — Hoses across the lawn, truck at the curb. A pump out is loud for an hour and then it is over.

Concrete septic tank lid slid aside with a green suction hose feeding down into the tank — The lid comes off first. What is under it tells you whether this is a pump out or something bigger.

Suction hose lowered into an open septic tank with the liquid level visible inside — Pumped on a schedule this is routine. Left until it backs up into the house, it stops being routine.

Open septic pump chamber showing a submersible pump, float switches and the discharge pipe — The pump chamber is where the alarm usually starts. Floats, pump, wiring, in that order.

Looking down into a septic pump tank at the float switches and PVC discharge fitting — A float stuck at the wrong height will run a pump to death and never trip the alarm.

Old in-ground tank lid uncovered in a muddy excavation before the tank is opened — Older tanks are rarely where the homeowner thinks they are. Finding it is half the job.

In-ground tank with the lid lifted clear, showing the channel and standing effluent before pumping — Before. This is the part of the system that only gets looked at when something has already gone wrong.

Looking down an opened green access riser with fine root growth coming through the wall — Roots find the smallest gap and then widen it. By the time it shows up indoors they have had years.

7 photos

New septic systems and drain fields

Tanks and drain fields, residential and commercial. These are the jobs that take a machine and a permit rather than a van and a wrench.

Precast 2,000 gallon concrete septic tank set into an excavation with a mini excavator working alongside — Two thousand gallons of precast concrete, set and leveled in one lift. There is no second chance at the depth.

Two new polyethylene septic tanks plumbed together with PVC outside a manufactured home in Tampa — New tanks staged and plumbed before they go in the ground. Mobile and manufactured homes get these a lot.

Drain field laterals wrapped in geotextile fabric with green distribution piping, excavator and work truck behind — Laterals down, fabric on, distribution box tied in. The yard goes back over the top of all of it.

Completed residential drain field with wrapped laterals and green distribution lines ready for backfill — A drain field that is failing shows up as soggy ground and slow drains long before it shows up as a smell.

Tampa Bay Plumbers technician raking sand between wrapped drain field laterals on a commercial site — Grading sand between the runs. Tedious, and the part that decides whether the field drains evenly.

Large commercial drain field with multiple rows of gravelless chambers laid out in sand, excavator and vans on site — Commercial fields run to this scale. Same principle as a house, several times the footprint.

Concrete lift station wet well being lowered into an excavation with a steel access lid fitted — Wet well going in. When one of these stops, every unit above it finds out at the same time.

7 photos

Sewer lines and drain repairs

Camera first, then dig only where the camera says to. Most of what goes wrong under a Tampa house is roots, cast iron, or both at once.

Sewer camera monitor showing the inside of a corroded pipe with root intrusion — This is the picture that settles the argument about whether a line needs patching or replacing.

Sewer camera monitor and drain cable reel set up on a driveway outside a Tampa home — Camera and cable out on the drive. Cheaper than digging to find out.

Mini excavator and a Tampa Bay Plumbers technician working in an open trench beside a house during a sewer line replacement — Open trench beside the house. Roots like the one in this hole are most of why Tampa sewer lines fail.

Floor opened inside a house down to a deep trench full of tree roots with a technician working on the drain line below — Inside the house, floor open, roots all through it. Cast iron under a slab usually ends up here eventually.

New white PVC spliced into an old corroded drain line in a wet excavation beneath a concrete slab — New PVC into old line. The join is the bit that has to outlast everything around it.

Concrete patio broken open to expose a repaired drain line joined with a new PVC section and coupling — Concrete comes up, line gets fixed, concrete goes back. Nobody enjoys the first part.

Newly installed PVC sewer clean out with a green cap set in a trench beside a concrete walkway — A clean out put somewhere findable. The next plumber who comes out here will save an hour because of it.

4 photos

Water lines, repipes and heaters

Supply side work. New service lines, copper and PEX behind the wall, and the tank in the garage nobody thinks about until the morning it is cold.

New blue polyethylene water service line laid in a trench along the side of a house with a new meter box installed — A failing water service shows up as a wet patch in the yard and a bill that doubled for no reason.

Two Tampa Bay Plumbers crew members hand digging a trench between manufactured homes for a new main water line — Hand dug, because of what else is buried in a park this tight.

New brass shower mixing valve roughed in with copper risers through an opened block wall — Valve roughed in behind the wall. Get this wrong and the tile comes off again in two years.

Electric water heater newly connected with copper flex lines and a pressure gauge in an opened utility wall — Heaters do not usually warn you. They just stop, normally on the coldest morning of the year.

6 photos

Inside the house

Fixtures, faucets, toilets and the everyday calls. Smaller jobs, same license, same crew.

Tampa Bay Plumbers technician fitting a square rain shower head to a tiled bathroom wall — Fixture swaps are the small end of what we do, and they still get a licensed plumber.

Technician working at a bathroom vanity sink and faucet in a Tampa home — Half the vanity calls we take started as a drip somebody lived with for a year.

Tampa Bay Plumbers technician testing a pull down kitchen faucet with the water running — Running it afterwards, which is the only test that counts.

Technician lifting the tank lid from a toilet during a repair in a Tampa bathroom — A running toilet is the cheapest thing on this page to fix and the most expensive to ignore on a water bill.

Technician gloving up beside a braided supply line and pliers under a kitchen cabinet — Braided supply lines are a five dollar part that floods kitchens when they let go.

Pedestal sink and two handle faucet installed in a tiled Tampa bathroom — Pedestal sinks look simple and hide every bit of the rough in behind one column.

10 photos

Commercial and outdoor systems

Backflow assemblies, fire lines, lift stations and fixtures that get used a few hundred times a day instead of a few times.

Large commercial backflow prevention assembly with gate valves on a supply main outdoors — Commercial backflow. The test is annual, the paperwork is the part people forget until the county asks.

Bank of blue backflow preventers and gate valves on a concrete pad serving a commercial property — A row of them on one pad, all due in the same window.

Brass backflow preventer installed on PVC pipework against a house wall with a test tag attached — Tagged and dated. Keeps the drinking water on your side of the meter going the right direction.

Blue painted backflow prevention assembly installed outdoors in overgrown ground — Half of these in Tampa are behind a hedge somebody planted in front of them.

Pressure gauge on a fire protection sprinkler riser reading air and water pressure — Fire line gauge on a commercial riser. The number on it is somebody's certificate of occupancy.

New stainless steel bottle filling station and drinking fountain installed on a tiled wall at a school — Bottle filler in, old unit out. School plumbing gets used harder in a week than a house does in a year.

Old drinking fountain still in place beside a patched wall where the second unit was removed — Mid swap. The wall behind an old fountain is always worse than the fountain.

Drinking fountain covers removed to expose the chiller units and a drain line running into a bucket — Covers off, chillers out. Most of a fountain is the part nobody ever sees.

Tampa Bay Plumbers technician gluing PVC pipework at a tank style filter unit outside a Tampa home — Outdoor PVC. Sun and Florida summers are hard on anything left above ground.

Technician servicing an outdoor valve assembly mounted on PVC against the exterior wall of a Tampa home — Equipment on the side of the house that gets ignored until it leaks.

3 photos

The crew

Family run, and the same faces turn up year after year. That is most of why the review count looks the way it does.

Tampa Bay Plumbers technician carrying a tool bag from a branded company van — Marked van, licensed plumber, and a phone number that has not changed in years.

The Tampa Bay Plumbers crew gathered outside the shop for a morning briefing — Morning, outside the shop, before everybody scatters across the county.

Three Tampa Bay Plumbers crew members in branded shirts talking through a job on site — Working it out on the driveway before anybody opens anything up.

Something on this page look familiar?

If you have the same problem in your yard or under your floor, call and describe it. We will tell you what it usually turns out to be.

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Call (727) 626-0889