Twenty-one years on the tools,from apprentice to a teamof five engineers

Craig Hobbs started plumbing at 18, working for a bathroom fitter. A year later he moved to a gas engineer to learn the heating side properly, then spent three years at a large plumbing company running sites. After that he went out on his own and took his own gas qualification.

21 years on, C Hobbs Plumbing and Heating Limited is a team of 5 plumbers and heating engineers working for homeowners, landlords and small commercial properties across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, from our base in Caddington, Luton.

The specialism is heating and renewables with full plumbing alongside it: boiler installation as a Worcester approved installer, air source heat pumps under Craig's Worcester heat pump qualification, full central heating systems, power flushing, bathroom installations and day-to-day plumbing repairs. Ground source heat pumps are the one thing we do not install, and we say so rather than take the job on.

Harpenden, St Albans, Luton are the core patch, with Dunstable, Bedford and Milton Keynes covered just as regularly. Because every quote is written by someone who has done the work himself, the price accounts for your pipework, your access and your property rather than a standard package.

The outcome customers actually want is simple: heat and hot water that work, a price that does not move, and a house left clean. That is what the business is organised around.