Water goes where you tell it.

Twelve weeks. One instructor to six. Forty soldered joints a day.A plumbing school that starts with copper, a torch and a bucket, and doesn't hand you a push-fit fitting until you can sweat a joint you can't see. Water is patient. It waits for the bad joint.

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01 · One joint

Six steps to a joint that holds.

0 / 40

joints today · this bench · all pressure-tested

MeasureTwice · the pipe once

CutWheel cutter · deburr

CleanWire wool · both faces

FluxThin · inside and out

SolderHeat the fitting · not the solder

Test3 bar · 10 minutes · dry

Measure twice. Cut the pipe once.The old line, because it's true. Centre to centre, minus the fitting's depth, plus the insertion. Write it on the pipe with a pencil. The pipe doesn't lie about it later.

A torch flame heating a copper pipe joint held in gloved hands

02 · The school

What twelve weeks gets you.

12 wk

full time, on the benches. Copper, then plastic, then a bathroom, then a boiler.

1:6

instructor to students. Every joint looked at. Every leak found before you find it in someone's kitchen.

joints a day in week one. By week three you stop counting. By week twelve you stop looking.

push-fit until week five. If you can't solder blind under a sink, you can't be trusted with the easy stuff either.

The ends of copper tubes stacked in a tight bundle

Water goes where you tell it.

That's the whole trade. Pressure, gravity, and a route you drew. Everything else is being neat about it and being honest about the joint you're not sure of.

Courses

Three courses. One bench.

Foundation for everyone, heating for the ones who stay, and a two-week refresher for the ones who've been doing it wrong for years.

12 weeks · full time · 8 placesFoundationCopper, plastic, a bathroom, a first boiler. Assessed on the bench.

The course. Weeks one to four are copper and a torch. Week five you're allowed a push-fit. Week twelve you fit a bathroom that has to pass a pressure test with the instructor watching.

£4,800 · tools included

6 weeks · after FoundationHeatingRadiators, pumps, zones, a full system commissioned

Wet systems from the cylinder to the last radiator. Balancing by hand with a thermometer and patience. Ends with a system you designed running hot.

£2,900

2 weeks · working plumbersJoints, againFor the ones who learned on push-fit and know it

Ten days of copper. Soldering blind, bending by hand, 22 mm and 28 mm. Most people arrive embarrassed and leave with forty good joints a day.

£1,100

What you learn

Five things a plumber knows.

Not the regulations. Those are in a book. These are the things that aren't.

A pair of red-handled water pump pliers lying on a rag

Heat the fitting, not the solderThe solder goes where the heat is. Heat the fitting, touch the solder to the joint, and it's pulled in by capillary action. Heat the solder and it drips on your boot.

Water finds the joint you skippedNot today. In three weeks, at two in the morning, into the flat below. Test every joint, especially the one you're sure about.

Fall, and where it goesWaste runs downhill at one in forty. Too steep and the water outruns the solids. Too shallow and nothing goes anywhere. Both smell.

Isolate before you cutFind the stopcock. Turn it. Open a tap. Wait. Then cut. Everyone skips a step once, and only once.

Neat is honestA pipe run that's straight, clipped and level is one you can check. A tangle hides the bad joint from the next plumber, who is usually you.

Apply

Apply for a place.

Eight places a course, four courses a year. Tell us why, and whether you've held a torch. Neither answer disqualifies you. We'll invite you in for a morning on the bench before either of us commits.

Apply for a place