Galway Plumbing Solutions founder and proprietor Tom Murphy has been consistently delivering unbeatable plumbing and heating services in and around Galway city for 21 years and counting. Building Ireland headed west and touched base with Tom to find out more.
Tom Murphy boasts vast experience of every aspect of commercial and domestic plumbing and heating installations, repairs, upgrades and maintenance work. The Galway man has been working extensively in the trade for 21 years and in 2017 established his own mechanical contracting company: Galway Plumbing Solutions.
Backed by experience, expertise and dependability – with the focus invariably on stellar service, quality workmanship and prompt, efficient delivery – Galway Plumbing Solutions has enjoyed steady growth since its inception and is today rated as the best in the west.
“We’re tipping away and getting busier all the time.” Tom notes modestly. “I started out on my own and today I have a team of eight plus myself, so the business has grown steadily.”
Reputation is everything in plumbing and it’s not by accident that Tom and Galway Plumbing Solutions have gone from strength to strength. “Service, hard work and dedication have been key,” he says. “If you type in ‘Galway plumber’ into an online search engine, Galway Plumbing Solutions will come up first and all the reviews are positive. That’s because I look after people and always give the best possible customer service.”
As Galway’s No.1 rated plumbing and heating contractor, Galway Plumbing Solutions gets a steady stream of work through positive referrals and word of mouth – still the best advertising of all! Tom and his team also benefit from a high volume of repeat work from satisfied customers, including Duffy Property Group.
“We’re working on a number of residential sites for Duffy Group as well as the occasional one-off new build,” Tom confirms. “We do a lot of oil boiler changes and upgrades as well as a lot of commercial work in hotels, pubs, restaurants and schools. We’d have broad experience of a vast range of commercial and domestic plumbing and heating work, so we cover everything really.”
From leaking taps to bathroom or kitchen renovations, oil boilers to heat pumps, underfloor heating systems or solar panels, Galway Plumbing Solutions is the first port of call for all repair, installation, upgrade or retrofit requirements! At the heart of the business is Tom’s innate work ethic and indefatigable hands-on approach, while the industry-leading mechanical contractor has also surrounded himself with a trusty team:
“I’m physically hands-on all the time and I don’t ever ask any of the lads to do something that I don’t do myself. I’m a firm believer that you are only as good as your team. It’s taken a while to assemble a great team but we are there now. The nature of it is that you will go through five or six lads to get one good lad; when you get that one good lad you have to hold onto him.
“That’s just a generational thing and it’s nobody’s fault. We had the crash and then Covid hit and it left a shortage across all of the trades for this generation. As a result, it’s not easy to get decent staff. Once you have good men, if you don’t look after them, somebody else will snap them up.”
Tom prides himself on that fact that with Galway Plumbing Solutions there are never any callbacks. By using only the best products and materials and insisting on top-class workmanship, each finished project not only meets but exceeds client expectations.
Renewable energy has of course changed the industry massively and the Galway man has experience of underfloor heating and heat pumps going back to 2005 when he started out on his heating and plumbing journey. “A lot of new builds are going with it now. I’ve been doing underfloor since ’05 and it was all ground source heat pumps back then. I spent a couple of years travelling around England and Ireland doing up Smyths Toy Stores and I got good experience in a lot of stuff, including fitting a lot of ground source heat pumps. 99 per cent of them now are air-to-water heat pumps. Air-to-water has completely taken over.
“Back them, because of all the travelling, I wasn’t seeing my wife and kids nearly enough and I was thinking about giving up plumbing completely at one point, but I felt I had something to offer and went out on my own and it has worked out well so far anyway.”
Today, the work is much closer to home as Galway Plumbing Solutions is in big demand locally – in Galway city predominantly and beyond that within a 20-minute radius. “A lot of the work is around us and I’ll go up to 30 minutes for a one-off house. Outside of that, if somebody recommends you to a customer and they are a bit further away and stuck, you will always try to help them out as best you can.
“Family is very important. Behind every successful business, there is a wife and family at home to support you. I’m very lucky to have great family support and whatever you do, you’re doing it for them at the end of the day. It all starts at home. You are working for your kids and for their future. When you get up happy in the morning to go out to work, that’s the best start to the day.”
Going back to heat pumps, Tom adds: “I fit a lot of high-end Daikin stuff and that way you won’t get any callbacks. If you go with the best products, there will be no issues. In all my years fitting Daikin, I’ve only ever experienced one issue and that was completely covered by the warranty. Nobody can come in after you and say you’ve put in a bad product. Similarly, when I’m fitting oil boilers, I tend to go for Grant Vortex – again, the level of quality is second to none.”
In a nutshell, Tom eats, sleeps and breathes plumbing and heating. In between phone calls, emails, early-morning directions to the team’s WhatsApp group, late-night additions to the smartphone calendar, sourcing materials – all of this on top of the actual onsite work itself! – an inordinate amount of time goes into planning, organising and preparing for the daily tasks, so there is rarely an opportunity to switch off.
“Ideally, I’d like to step back from it a little bit if I could, but realistically that isn’t going to be easy,” he concludes. “When something is your own, you are far more inclined to make sure you do it right. We have a good name so we want to keep doing what we’re doing and keep building the business up.”
Galway Plumbing Solutions,
Roscam,
Galway.
Tel: 085 1720646
Email: [email protected].
Web: galwayplumbingsolutions.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, August 2026, Vol 12 No 8
featured, Galway Plumbing Solutions
