About Plumbing Connection

Plumbing Connection

Overview

Plumbing Connection is an Australian trade magazine for the plumbing industry, published quarterly in print and digital editions by Lanella Media from Mulgrave, in Melbourne's south-east. Founded in 1985, it is the oldest title in the "Connection" family of trade magazines and the publication around which the whole group was built: its founder, Jeff Patchell, started the business with this magazine before adding sister titles for builders and electricians. Plumbing Connection is written for licensed plumbers, plumbing contractors, and the manufacturers and suppliers who sell to them. Its own description of its purpose is to help Australian plumbers and manufacturers understand the emerging trends, technologies and opportunities the market offers, and its editorial character — practical, standards-focused and outspoken on product quality — has been consistent for four decades.

The title is in active publication. Its website carried industry news dated October 2026 when reviewed, and the digital-editions archive on the site lists Issue 1 and Issue 2 of 2026 alongside all four issues of 2025, published in the page-turning digital format the group uses across its magazines. The magazine passed its 40th anniversary in 2025.

History

Plumbing Connection was launched in 1985 by Jeff Patchell, whose company traded as Patchell Publishing (through QUATSID Pty Ltd). The publishing company adopted the name Connection Magazines in June 2000, by which time the single plumbing title had become the base of a small stable of trade magazines produced from Melbourne. The magazine established its editorial identity early: in a publisher's message published on its website, Patchell recalled that the magazine had first written about Legionnaires' disease back in 1987, two years after launch, and health risks in water systems have remained a recurring subject ever since. The same message illustrates the founder's hands-on style — readers wanting advice about attending ISH, the international plumbing trade fair, were invited to ring him personally.

Advocacy has been a defining thread. The magazine has campaigned, in its own words, for more than twenty years against non-compliant and falsely certified plumbing product — what it calls "crook product", with unsubstantiated performance claims, false compliance documents and shabby quality — and Patchell has used his editorials to argue for point-of-sale enforcement of the WaterMark certification scheme so that non-compliant product cannot reach the shelf. Writing on the subject, the magazine has argued that regulation achieves little if it is not policed, pointing to evidence of non-approved product being installed even on government construction projects, and to the growing number of legal cases in which technical expert witnesses are called where specification or installation has gone wrong. The group also runs industry events: the magazine's annual Plumbing Supply Forum was in its second year in 2010, when it was held at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, bringing the trade together around quality and regulation, and the publishing group is a member of the World Plumbing Council.

In 2019 the Connection Magazines business was sold through a management buy-out to Lanella Media Pty Ltd, which has published the titles since. Editorial leadership of Plumbing Connection has changed over the years: Justin Felix was editor until about 2021, when John Power — himself a former editor of the magazine — returned to the chair, announcing in his first editorial that he was succeeding Felix. Power is the editor named in the magazine's Winter 2022 and Spring 2023 mastheads. Founder Jeff Patchell remains involved as an editorial consultant.

Content and Coverage

The magazine's content is built around the technical and commercial working life of plumbers. Its features explain Australian standards, codes and regulation in plain language; its regular subject matter includes water supply and drainage, hot water and heat-pump technology, backflow prevention and cross-connection control, pipe systems, tools and test equipment, and product news from manufacturers and merchants. Health and safety coverage — Legionnaires' disease and legionella control in cooling towers and water supply lines among it — has run since the magazine's earliest years, alongside updates on the national Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards (WELS) scheme. Business content covers the running of plumbing firms, licensing, training and apprenticeships, and industry advocacy.

A panel of long-running industry contributors appears in the magazine's mastheads alongside its staff writers — names such as Enzo Alfonsetti, Paul Cott, Jon Palfrey and Ken Sutherland among them — with staff writers including Anna Hayes and San Williams in recent editions. The magazine also argues the industry's workforce case: its Spring 2015 edition, for example, took up the national shortage of plumbers, the difficulty employers face finding fully licensed plumbers and committed apprentices, and the need for the trade to represent itself well to school-leavers weighing a university path against a trade. Under editor Justin Felix in the late 2010s, its coverage extended to the digitisation of construction work, including paperless plan management on site. Between quarterly issues, the website publishes trade news on a rolling basis: industry announcements, product launches, regulatory changes and association news directed at the same readership.

Audience and Reach

Plumbing Connection is distributed nationally to Australia's plumbing trade: licensed plumbers and plumbing contractors first of all, and around them the manufacturers, wholesalers, merchants and trainers who make up the industry. The publisher has worked to extend that reach into training: in November 2017 Connection Magazines announced a programme with TAFE NSW under which 50 TAFE NSW colleges teaching building, plumbing or electrical services received bulk copies of the group's three trade magazines, Plumbing Connection among them, delivered quarterly — an arrangement TAFE NSW's industry liaison manager Greg Cheetham said gave teachers and students access to current industry thinking and product developments beyond the set curriculum. No audited circulation figure for the title was found in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, plumbingconnection.com.au, combines a frequently updated news service with the complete text of the print magazine, published as page-turning digital editions: the site's archive holds the four issues of 2025, Issue 1 and Issue 2 of 2026, and seasonal editions from earlier years, with flipbook editions on the site reaching back to 2015. The site sits on the web platform the publisher shares across its trade titles, and the magazine maintains social channels under its own name, including Facebook and X accounts. News stories, features and magazine content are published to the site between issues, keeping the title in front of its readers on a near-daily basis; blog directories list the title's news feed with its location given as Mulgrave, Victoria.

Ownership and Organisation

Plumbing Connection is published by Lanella Media Pty Ltd, which acquired the Connection Magazines business in a 2019 management buy-out. The group's office is at 2/18-22 Lexia Place, Mulgrave, Victoria — the Melbourne base this directory records. The Spring 2023 masthead of the magazine lists Jeremy Sweet as general manager, Jeff Patchell as editorial consultant, and John Power as editor, with Sean Carroll credited as "Editor – Across the Trades" for the group; more recent group mastheads credit Carroll with editorial responsibility across the stable's trade titles. The magazine is one of three sister trade titles — with Building Connection for builders and Electrical Connection for electricians — produced by the same small team from the Mulgrave office, supported by its panel of industry contributors.

Contact and Availability

Plumbing Connection is published quarterly and distributed to the plumbing trade throughout Australia; the current issue and recent back issues can be read free as digital editions at plumbingconnection.com.au. Subscriptions are handled by the publisher on 1800 623 214, and the magazine's subscription manager, Brigitta Novosell, is listed in its mastheads on 03 9542 9005. The publisher's address is Lanella Media Pty Ltd, 2/18-22 Lexia Place, Mulgrave, VIC 3170.