DRUNKNORGY

They claim there is a chronic shortage of plumbers at the moment (and its going to get worse). Has anyone retrained as a plumber recently. What was involved ?, Is the pay as good as they claim, etc,etc. It has been on my mind for a couple of years now and am quite handy in this area, so I don't think its pie in the sky

Ash

marty_t3

I know where you're coming from here. I've been in IT since i left school and i'm going nowhere. The salaries for jobs like mine are actually dropping never mind rising with with inflation. I've though about training as an electrician (don't think i could stomach unblocking toilets for a living ).

As far as plumbing goes... i guess you'll be looking to become corgi registered. Loads of colleges provide the training for this but i'm not sure if it requires any sort of apprecticeship/on the job training or not. Good luck with it anyway.

Fosters

I'm thinking of doing this. Guilford college runs a 2 year evening course to become qualified and an extra year to become corgi registered. I think they expect you to be doing some sort of 'get some experience' type things though.

(i realise guilford may not be local to you, but check with your nearest college for these types of classes)

DRUNKNORGY

Its just all the Plumbers I know have a very high standard of living. They reckon that the average plumbers wage is in the region of 40-50k and thats not breaking into a sweat. The high tech and manufacturing sector jobs (which is where i am in at the moment) are falling because of there are so many graduates in high tech and manufacturing is going overseas. Even in the specialist part of manufacturing I am in, it is on its way down because the customer base has gone to the far east and they get the services we provide from Japan, etc, etc.
Even if the housing market collapses, people still need their boilers fixed, leaks mended etc, and people upgrade their existing properties rather than move(as happened in the early 90's).