Compliance is more than geysers (Part 2)

By Maryna Landman, MBA, director of Strategy & Compliance at Alpha Plumbing

The compliance-sensitive scope of plumbing extends far beyond what the market currently acknowledges. This is part two of a two-part series, written by Maryna Landman, director of Strategy & Compliance, Alpha Plumbing.

…Continued from part one.

Supplied by Maryna Landman

South Africa cannot afford this kind of stupidity

Let me make it plainer.

In a water-scarce country, shortcut plumbing is not clever – it is expensive stupidity.

South Africa is officially recognised as water-scarce, with average rainfall far below the global average and increasing pressure on water infrastructure. The South African government’s own water information makes that plain enough. That should make us more disciplined about plumbing standards, not less.

Still, some of the worst plumbing shortcuts still fly under the radar because they are buried, hidden, cheap or unlikely to be challenged immediately.

That complacency looks even more reckless against South Africa’s present-day water reality. The Department of Water and Sanitation has repeatedly used the Blue, Green and No Drop processes to show that municipal water and wastewater performance is deteriorating. In its 2024/25 annual report, the Department states that 105 out of 144 water services authorities are experiencing a water service delivery crisis.

That is not background noise. It is the context in which shortcut plumbing decisions are being made.

Consider stormwater that is improperly connected to sewer infrastructure. Local wastewater by-laws make it clear that stormwater and sewer are not meant to be mixed casually or unlawfully.

The fact that it ranks among the worst “habits” in the industry illustrates the market’s confusion of “not immediately challenged” with “acceptable” (because “CoCs are for geysers”).

Yes, it may get a job over the line cheaply, and it may disappear underground without drama that day.

Yes, it may slide by if nobody checks closely or asks enough questions.

But a shortcut that hides the problem is still a shortcut, and a buried contravention remains a contravention.

And let’s be clear, it’s not harmless – it’s a cheap fix that imposes costs somewhere else, later, by adding pressure to already strained infrastructure. It is the kind of move that gets normalised in weak compliance cultures: if it works for now and no one checks, it becomes “practical”.

Even worse, it becomes common. That is not the same thing as right.

And the consequences are not abstract. When stormwater enters sewer systems, it adds extraneous flow that wastewater infrastructure was not designed to carry. That can overload sewers and treatment works, increase the risk of sewer overflows, drive up pumping and treatment costs, and reduce the overall reliability of wastewater systems. A South African Water Research Commission report identifies direct stormwater connections into sewers as a key source of this problem, and a major metropolitan public notice has warned residents that stormwater entering the sewer system contributes to overflowing sewers. The damage does not stop at one property line. It pushes pressure into the wider system.

Competence matters before paperwork enters the room

Another uncomfortable truth: compliant plumbing is not something that starts when a form gets filled in.

It starts much earlier.

It starts when the person doing the work knows what they are doing.

South Africa’s building regulations are not based on the assumption that anyone with tools, confidence and a WhatsApp profile can perform plumbing work properly. Regulation A18 is explicit: no person may perform the trade of plumbing unless they are a trained plumber or work under the adequate control of a trained plumber or approved competent person.

This principle extends beyond geysers. It applies to the trade itself.

It highlights that the real compliance question is not only whether a certificate exists. It is about whether the work was executed with the competence, supervision, care, testing and judgement that compliant plumbing requires.

That applies to sanitary drains.

It applies to sewer work.

It applies to buried decisions that nobody sees once the site is closed up.

And that is why this issue matters so much: the market still overweighs visible proof and underweighs invisible competence.

Compliance is culture before it is paperwork

This is the heart of it.

Compliance is culture before it is paperwork.

It is a culture of doing the job properly, even when the customer will never see it, and of taking drainage and sanitation seriously, not just the work that is commonly inspected, claimed for, photographed or argued about.

It is a culture of understanding that plumbing standards are not there to make the trade feel important. They exist because plumbing impacts health, safety, infrastructure and water integrity.

And in South Africa, where water pressure, municipal performance and infrastructure stress are all real issues, that culture is not a luxury. We need it.

Not in slogans. In practice.

A country under water pressure cannot afford to treat compliance as a niche concern limited mainly to geyser replacements.

The acronym ‘fight’ is missing the point

This is also why some of the industry’s noisiest debates confound me – too much oxygen gets consumed by acronym fights.

Which body?

Which system?

Which camp?

Some of those arguments are not meaningless. I’m not suggesting that forms, systems or institutional arrangements do not matter.

But if the debate becomes nothing more than a fight about acronyms while the compliance culture underneath remains weak, then we are missing the point completely.

That is a fight about labels rather than standards and responsibility.

The focus is on who controls the paperwork, rather than on whether the trade is fostering the compliance culture that this country desperately needs.

A culture where plumbers understand why compliance matters and where builders and property owners stop treating invisible plumbing work as if it does not carry standards just because it sits underground. A culture where “no one will notice” stops being a business model.

A weak culture with a preferred acronym is still a weak culture.

Fragmented arguments about proof detract from the fact that hidden plumbing still carries consequences, which is why compliance and CoCs should exist and be recognised beyond geysers.

The market still rewards what it can see

Part of the problem is that the market is still too easily impressed by visible outcomes.

Water runs. The pan flushes. The leak stops. The job is “done”.

That is not enough.

A plumbing culture that judges success only by immediate visible function is a culture that leaves far too much room for buried non-compliance. It allows wrong connections, bad routing, poor gradients, weak material choices and lazy shortcuts to slip through simply because they are not obvious today.

That is one of the most damaging mindsets in this industry. This is precisely why the geyser-only understanding of compliance is so dangerous: it trains customers to think that visible plumbing is the real plumbing and that hidden plumbing is merely a technical detail.

It isn’t.

Often, the hidden plumbing is the real story.

This argument is not about one form – it is about the trade

Let me be clear about what I am not saying.

I am not trying here to unpack who may sign what, when, under what conditions, or under which system. That is a different article.

I am not trying to run the full enforcement argument either. That also belongs elsewhere.

What I am saying, bluntly, is that with its focus on geysers, the market has shrunk the compliance conversation to such a point that it now misses core plumbing work that is clearly compliance-sensitive.

And until that changes, we will keep having a conversation about plumbing proof that is far too small for the trade itself.

The point we should stop missing

So yes, talk about geysers, but don’t make them the poster child of the whole compliance story.

They are one visible part of a much bigger discipline.

A discipline that includes sanitation, drainage, sewer work, hidden infrastructure, technical judgement and a culture of doing things properly even when nobody is watching closely.

If the public remains convinced that compliance begins and ends with geysers, then the market is not just misunderstanding a certificate.

It is misunderstanding the entire plumbing industry.

References:

1. City of Cape Town. Wastewater and Industrial Effluent By-law, 2013. Available at: https://resource.capetown.gov.za/documentcentre/Documents/Bylaws%20and%20policies/Wastewater%20and%20Industrial%20Effluent%20By-law%202013.pdf
2. Plumbing Industry Registration Board (PIRB). When must I issue a PIRB CoC? Available at: https://www.pirb.co.za/Support/when-must-i-issue-a-pirb-coc/
3. Republic of South Africa. Water Affairs. Available at: https://www.gov.za/about-sa/water-affairs
4. South African National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act regulations. Regulation A18. Available at: https://www.saflii.org/za/legis/consol_reg/rutnbrabsa1977693.pdf
5. World Health Organization and World Plumbing Council. Health Aspects of Plumbing. Available at: https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/43423/9241563184_eng.pdf?sequence=1
6. City of Cape Town. Residents to check for illegal stormwater-to-sewer connections as rainy season approaches. Available at: https://www.capetown.gov.za/Media-and-news/Residents%20to%20check%20for%20illegal%20stormwater-to-sewer%20connections%20as%20rainy%20season%20approaches
7. Water Research Commission. Stormwater ingress in South African sewer systems. Available at: https://www.wrc.org.za/wp-content/uploads/mdocs/1731-1-1.pdf
8. Department of Water and Sanitation. Annual Report 2024/25. Available at: https://www.dws.gov.za/Documents/AnnualReports/DWS_2024-25AnnualReport_30Sep2025_v27.pdf

Supplied by Maryna Landman