The majority of the time, the Lismore App Sunday Profiles focus on an individual and tell the story of their life and how they came to be enjoying living in Lismore and the Northern Rivers. Today, we focus on a business but not just any business, one that was established in 1903 and still exists today.

Sidney & Hacking is a name that every long-established Lismore resident knows. This year they celebrate 120 years as a family-owned company.

Sidney & Hacking Plumbing was founded in 1903 by Norman Sidney and Charles Hacking. It has been handed down from the Sidney family from father to son, the business is currently owned by Andrew Sidney, great-grandson of Norman with Andrew's son Taylor, a trade-certified plumber, representing the fifth generation.

We sat down with current owner Andrew Sidney to learn more about the life of this iconic business and what the future holds.

Originally, we were across the road in Keen Street, near the laneway.

Norm (Sidney) and Charlie Hacking started the business in 1903. Charlie was from England and went back about 10 years later.

Norm was from the South Coast and was working as a plumber and, I believe, he came up here to start a business. They moved into that building and traded for about 20 years before they bought the land and built the building where Daley's is now, you can still see the milk can at the top.

They initially built with one floor and then kept adding extra floors with the third level at the back. We added the second level in the late '70s, I remember that as a kid. It was added on to because of the floods.

Heaps of times when I was working you could pack your stuff up three times a year.

'74 was the big one when I was a kid but we didn't get much damage because we had all our stuff on the second floor.

We had plumbing fittings and all that so it was easy to move and we had a hoist out the back.

We only sold that building about 2-years ago to Matt Healy (from Daleys) and Michelle from LJ Hooker.

It wasn't hard to let it go, it was a disaster, the rates were unbelievably high down there. Anyone who thinks they're going to make money renting down there is a fool.

It was too noisy in town and we were getting semi-trailers stuck so we basically got told to pack our bags and leave. We sort of jumped as we were getting pushed.

We had this block about '87 (21 Habib Drive, South Lismore) so we built on it in '88.

In terms of what we sell and how things have changed throughout the years, people don't need what they were using back then.

When Sidney & Hacking first opened we were fixing parasols, and making grain cans and milk cans.

When I started in about '81, one guy was just retiring, he made rainwater tanks all his life in the back shed, galvanised tanks. That went on until poly tanks started coming in. That is just a better product, they don't rust, you can't get a leak through soldering and things.

Even plumbing supplies got phased out when Eagles moved to town, and then Reece moved to town and then you've got Bunnings of course. We weren't really supplying much in the last 20 years. We had a supply business but it was mainly for our own use.

Hooking up sewer pipes is one of the only parts of the business that hasn't changed. Shit still runs downhill.

As things changed we got into kitchens.

As restaurants got bigger they needed bigger exhaust hoods. Initially, you could make do with an exhaust canopy over the oven but now the commercial exhausts could be six metres long so we make commercial kitchens.

We supply RSL clubs, the Workers Club, Mary G's, we're going to redo their kitchen, the Metropole are going to do a bit of a kitchen upgrade, then there's nursing homes and regional hospitals. That's the fabrication we do out the back.

There were no air conditioning people here in town either so the first part of the job when I started, we were doing the air con as well. So, we were fridgies. When there's no one here doing it you just got on with it, with fridge gases, whatever we could get our hands on. It's very similar work. The old style was gas her up and run around.

We used to make the air-conducting metal but now it comes out of cases, they've got automatic machines that do laser cutting and sand it all up. That's next level up.

We do a lot of copper and brass work still. There's still demand for that.

With Sidney & Hacking, Charlie Hacking was always the plumber and Norman Sidney was a sheet metal worker then as the boys came through they got their plumber's licenses.

My grandfather Stan died in probably '76 and Artie died very young, a few problems there. My father Max and Brian were Stan's sons.

They took over when their father died. They had been working here so they knew the business.

I took over in 1999. I had to buy in so you put your whole house on the line, every cent you got goes into the company. I paid Mark out and paid my father off.

My son has been away for a few years but he's back working here for four years now. He's done his time here and could be taking over this very shortly.

(The fourth and fifth generation of Sidney & Hacking, Andrew (left) and Taylor, celebrating 120 years in business in Lismore)

My philosophy is don't look back. The 120 years is just history.

You want to look at history look at the floods and look at the history that's been broken. No one had a clue it was going to get up an extra eight foot, feeling was that's not gonna happen. We got records for 150 years, even when the Aboriginals told the story of water going over the Cathedral there, it was before the bell tower was done. They hadn't built the tunnel underneath the road for the school kids. The road got raised, I'm thinking 600 or 800 mil, it was a dirt road then, around 1888 I think.

We got six foot through the building but it didn't come up here (second-floor administration section), if it did we would be in more trouble.

We lost a lot of machinery in the flood 12 months ago but we got it all going again.

We got the grant and just kept working, we didn't worry about the losses. It took us 6 to 8 weeks to get the shed back up and working. We were lucky we've got plenty of work.

We have about 36 staff now. That's made up of about 30 on the books and five or six contractors. We've been up to about 50 at times and when I started we were about the mid-forties.

(Two of Sidney & Hacking's longest-serving employees. Steve Mitchell has been there for 44 years starting at 16 out of school. Warren Fredericks worked there for 30 years also joining after leaving school at 15)

Retirement? I've got a few little jobs to do and projects to build and supervise when I retire, labouring. I can't stop, won't until I'm dead.