The problem
Irish homeowners had no reliable way to verify a gas installer before letting them work on their boiler
Gas installation work in Ireland is legally required to be carried out by an RGI-registered contractor under the Gas Networks Ireland scheme. The RGII register is publicly searchable, but it is a raw tool built for contractors, not homeowners. There was no place to browse local gas installers by county, verify their registration number at a glance, and understand what the work should cost.
For plumbers more broadly, the Irish directory space was dominated by low-quality listing sites with no verification layer, paid-first results, and outdated contact details. Homeowners had no way to know whether the plumber they called was qualified, insured, or even still trading.
The opportunity was a single platform that combined RGI verification, a full plumber directory, and a practical knowledge base built specifically for the Irish regulatory environment.
What I built
A directory with a verification layer and a 26-guide knowledge base
3,770 plumber profiles across 26 counties
Every active plumber in the RGII and Gas Networks Ireland datasets, each with their own URL, contact details, registration status, and county. Profiles are structured to rank immediately for contractor name searches.
Separate RGI gas installer directory
1,733 RGI-registered gas installers listed and verified, each profile showing their registration number so homeowners can cross-check against rgii.ie independently. This is the only Irish plumbing directory that surfaces RGI numbers publicly.
26 editorial guides across four categories
Troubleshooting, Heating and Boilers, Installs and Water, Costs and Rules. Each guide targets a specific search query: burst pipe, boiler service cost, SEAI heat pump grant, how to find an RGI plumber. Written specifically for the Irish market, not adapted from UK content.
2026 pricing transparency
Detailed cost tables with urban and rural splits, emergency rate premiums, and per-job benchmarks. Prices shown net of applicable SEAI grants. Homeowners can judge whether a quote is reasonable before committing, reducing friction at the most common drop-off point.
SEAI grant integration throughout
Grant amounts for heat pumps, boiler upgrades and retrofits are woven into relevant guide pages, not siloed into a single grants page. Visitors researching a boiler replacement see the grant information at the exact point they need it.
Master contractor database powering the network
The contractor data lives in a Postgres database on VPS with 19,000+ scraped records across 8 tables. This same database powers the other sites in the trade network, so future platforms can launch with full national coverage from day one.
Data infrastructure
19,000+ contractors. One database.
A master Postgres database of scraped contractor records across 8 trade categories powers every site in the network. plumbersinireland.ie was the first live deployment.
The SEO architecture
Editorial and directory working as one system
Most trade directories launch with listing pages and no supporting content. They earn no organic traffic until they have reviews or backlinks, which takes months. plumbersinireland.ie launched with 26 editorial guides already indexed, giving it surface area on informational queries from day one.
The guides feed authority into the county directory pages. The county pages link down into contractor profiles. A homeowner searching for "burst pipe Dublin" lands on the troubleshooting guide, finds local plumbers in the sidebar, and can call directly without any further navigation.
Technical decisions
Why a scraped database beats manual data entry
Full coverage from day one
3,770 plumber profiles and 1,733 gas installer profiles were populated from a master Postgres database scraped from public register data. No waiting for contractors to sign up, no thin county pages with two listings. Every county launched with real, complete data.
A reusable platform for the whole network
The same database schema, build pipeline, and site component library that powers plumbersinireland.ie is being used to launch electriciansinireland.ie, wallinsulationireland.ie, and future sites. Each new trade site takes days to launch, not months.
Static generation at scale
5,500+ pages built at deploy time from structured data. No runtime database, no API calls, no server to maintain. Deployed on Cloudflare Pages for sub-100ms response times globally. The site handles any level of traffic without infrastructure scaling.
RGI verification as a trust signal
Every gas installer profile surfaces the contractor's RGI registration number with a direct link to the RGII public register for independent verification. This is the one thing homeowners want before they call, and no other Irish plumbing site provides it.
Want something like this built for your sector?
I design and build fast, SEO-first platforms and websites for Irish businesses. Get in touch and I will tell you straight whether it makes sense.
