The day's biggest signal is a market one. The BMF's Plumbing and Heating Merchants Index for Q2 shows value sales down just 0.2% year-on-year — but only because an 8.2% price rise is covering a 7.8% fall in the volume of material actually leaving merchants. Over the rolling 12 months to June, value is up 0.8% while volume is down 4.4%. Read alongside Arctic Hayes forecasting a wet, stormy El Niño winter driving demand for drainage, pumps and emergency call-outs from October, the shape of the next two quarters looks like a thin autumn followed by a weather-driven scramble. Worth planning stock and quoting terms around.
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Top Stories
PHMI: plumbing and heating merchant volumes fall 7.8% as prices mask the decline
Q2 2026 value sales were 0.2% below Q2 2025, with prices up 8.2% and volumes down 7.8% — merchants taking roughly the same money for substantially less product. Quarter-on-quarter, like-for-like value fell 9.2%. The 12-month picture is 0.8% value growth on a 4.4% volume decline. Data is drawn solely from P&H specialists (City Plumbing, James Hargreaves, Plumbfix, PTS, Williams & Co, Wolseley) with no overlap with the generalist BMBI.
Source: Professional Builders Merchant | Full piece
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Arctic Hayes braces for El Niño winter, tells trade to stock up now
A strong El Niño is expected to push UK weather milder, wetter and stormier from October. Arctic Hayes by DiversiTech UK expects demand for drainage kits, pumps, gauges, leak detection and water damage prevention, plus increased boiler servicing and emergency call-outs. The specific risk flagged is flash flooding — heavy rain on ground baked hard by a dry summer sheets off rather than infiltrating, overwhelming gullies and soakaways sized on the assumption the ground takes some of the load.
Source: Professional Builders Merchant | Full piece
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Also in Brief
- Lime Green joins The Pallet LOOP — and £8m of PayBack is unclaimed: The Shropshire lime and natural insulation manufacturer is moving onto LOOP's green reusable pallets. More than three million LOOP pallets have been issued and £1.5m paid back, with £8m still available. Returns earn £2-£4 per eligible green pallet through LOOP's nationwide collection service — money most sites are still skipping. Source: Professional Builders Merchant | Full piece
- New: impact driver buying guide. Filling the gap flagged in yesterday's watchlist — how the hammer-and-anvil mechanism actually works, why reaction torque disappears, which torque and IPM figures matter, sub-compact vs standard vs high-torque, and why standard screwdriver bits snap in an impact driver. Read the guide
- Milwaukee HEXON heated gear: still the strongest product story of the week — honeycomb carbon fibre heating elements, app-controlled independent zones, quoted maximum heat in under two minutes. Source: ITS Hub | Full piece
- Saniflo Saniboost Smart in Dublin: the low-pressure case study resurfaced in today's pack. Variable-speed mains boost, up to 97 l/min and 5.5 bar, adjustable from 1.5 bar. Source: Professional Builder | Full piece
- Saint-Gobain gas-fired EWI fixings, CUPA PIZARRAS slate fixing tool, Bobcat wet-weather boots: all three Professional Builder items from the 31 August batch appeared again unchanged. Existing coverage: gas-fired fixings, slate fixing tool, wet weather boots.
- Smoke breaks study: the Northerner-commissioned £8,400 figure is still in circulation. Brand-commissioned research from a nicotine pouch retailer, headline number not independently corroborated — noted, not written up. Source: Professional Builder
- Evergreen brand pages (no new information): Milwaukee's impact driver, impact wrench and battery/charger kit category pages, Makita's workwear site and battery transportation PDF, and ITS Hub's drill, drill bit, angle grinder and Makita gardening guides all resurfaced unchanged. Standing coverage exists for each.
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Watchlist
- Autumn demand recovery — or not. Two stories today point in opposite directions: PHMI shows volumes falling, Arctic Hayes expects weather-driven demand from October. The Q3 PHMI is the test. If a wet winter does not lift drainage and emergency categories, the volume decline is structural rather than seasonal.
- Pallet LOOP unclaimed PayBack. £8m outstanding is a story in itself — worth a practical piece on how sites are losing it, and whether waste contractors are quietly absorbing green pallets that carry a return value.
- Winter kit season building. HEXON was the opener. Expect a run of heated gear and winter workwear launches through September and October, and a comparison of the Milwaukee, DeWalt and Makita heated platforms is worth commissioning before the buying peak. Milwaukee UK still has not published HEXON RRPs or confirmed which garments carry it.
- Source registry maintenance — now urgent. Four feeds have failed for consecutive runs: Tool Advice (DNS failure), Professional Electrician & Installer (timeout), Powertool Superstore (403) and Power Tool World (403/bot challenge). Today's pack contained no independent power-tool news at all — every tool item was either a retailer blog or an evergreen brand catalogue page. The registry needs replacement or repaired sources before this becomes a coverage gap rather than an inconvenience.
- Duplicate task collision. The 4 September duplicate review is still outstanding for Jason — nine story pairs need one draft picking and the other binning, and the scheduling collision needs resolving if it has not been already.
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