14 October 2025
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(L-R) Robert Lawton and PB Plumber
Third generation plumber and gas engineer, PB Plumber (PB), is shining a spotlight on maintenance tips that installers can share with their customers to help them better navigate the ‘silly season’ of soaring demand.
With millions of homes and workplaces turning their central heating back on and discovering issues, tradespeople are often faced with a deluge of emergency calls.
PB - Lawton Tubes’ ‘Copper Champion’ – knows only too well about the surge of enquiries in October and November.
This is confirmed by Lawton Tubes - a supplier of copper tube and fittings who sold more than 2.9 million metres of its domestic sized copper tube in October 2024, a 700,000-metre increase, compared to June 2024. The firm is expecting to match this rise again this year to cope with extra demand.
PB, who is an Ambassador for Lawton Tubes, said: “Being busy is obviously good, but at this time of year, installers can often be overwhelmed with calls around issues that could have been prevented if the end user had taken the right steps earlier.
“It’s often a question of education – and tradespeople up and down the land have a key role to play in this when they speak to their customers.
“One of the biggest causes of call-outs around this time of year is down to seals and valves in heating systems becoming stuck because they haven’t been turned on for months – so a handy tip to pass on to customers is to turn their central heating on for 20 minutes once a month in the spring and summer to prevent this from happening.
“It’s also worth pointing out to customers that if they have air at the top of the radiator then they can fix this themselves by bleeding it.
“Frozen condensate pipes are another prevalent call-out during extreme temperatures, so it is worth telling customers to try defrosting the outside of the pipe with a kettle of hot water before calling a plumber – as that can save time and money.
“And while on jobs with customers, it can be worth advising them that summer is the best time to have various trades working around each other on a project - such as a bathroom or kitchen installation. It means various trades can work around each other more efficiently for the customer, and also frees up their time to respond to calls in the winter.”
Lawton Tubes sold more of its small diameter copper pipes in the first half of this year than in the previous year, proving copper is still plumbers’ number one choice for household installation of radiators, gas hobs, combi boilers, heat pumps and water storage – a 300,000 metre increase versus the same period last year.
The firm is also gearing up to build a new £20 million state-of-the-art headquarters next year, opposite its existing base in Torrington Avenue, Coventry, to meet rising demand.
Robert Lawton, Director of Lawton Tubes added: “We are seeing major growth in offerings other than its copper pipe, where we recently launched more modern copper press fittings both for water and gas.
“Less known are our other activities like our copper cylinder fittings, made in our Redditch factory where we have manufactured and sold 14 million units.
“Combining all our brands we are expecting to double our fittings sales volume by the end of the year, and not just in copper.
“It is safe to say that we are heading into one of the busiest autumn and winter periods yet - which is a big claim as we have been supplying the trade for more than a century – and tradespeople themselves really do have a big role to play in managing the demand by handing out proactive, preventative advice to their customers on a day-to-day basis.”
