John R. Nichols

John R. Nichols is a one-man plumbing operation on Nahant, and everything on public record about him stopped over a decade ago. Eight permits sit under his name, all between 2005 and 2013, and seven of the eight are on the island itself — a $40,000 kitchen relocation at 7 Summer Street Court in 2008, plumbing at 11 Winter Street in 2013, and water closets, lavatories and a floor-drain trap primer at a Peabody address back in 2005. That is a plumber who worked his own town, repeatedly, for the better part of a decade. Nothing has been filed since 2013. The licensing has aged the same way, and it needs saying plainly. BuildZoom shows a Master Plumber licence, #9989, and a second Massachusetts record, #19492, both carrying an expiration date of May 2016 the last time the directory checked them. A third entry, plumber licence #9989, is listed as inactive and, BuildZoom says, cancelled at some point. The page itself carries a warning that no active licence is on file. Those are the directory's records rather than a check run against the state here, but they point one way, and Massachusetts requires a current plumbing licence for this work. No customer has reviewed him anywhere. So the first question is not whether he is any good — it is whether he is still trading and still licensed. Call (781) 581-3105 and ask directly, then confirm the licence yourself with the state's E-Licensing board before he touches anything. If he is retired or lapsed, this is a name to cross off rather than a shop to compare.