A walk down memory lane with PASLR
In August PASLR celebrated thirty-three years in business – something we are incredibly proud of. Back in 1989, Darlene Henshaw founded Replacement Lamp Services (RLS), an electrical maintenance and lamp replacement service. Several years later in 1996 she launched All Pumps which did what RLS did, only with pumps. Then, in 2017 water coolers and filtration were added to the mix with Pure H2O. In 2020, mid-pandemic, all three businesses merged to form PASLR – combining the critical services of power, pumps and water. Below, we share a few happy snaps and memories from those early days as we worked our way to becoming the awesome business we are today.
Maintenance by day, projects by night
In the 1990’s business was booming for Replacement Lamp Services. In 1991, when the Building Act came into effect, emergency lighting became a requirement on building WOFs, and RLS were one of the first companies in New Zealand to be certified to carry out emergency lighting installation and maintenance. “We had so much maintenance work that we would work all day at it and then from 5pm – 10pm we would work on bigger projects such as refitting a building. Here we are parked up in the city, ready to get stuck into one of those night jobs – it was a lot of fun and great to be busy,” says Darlene.
Keeping the lights on at the top of the city
Retired electrician Denis Adam (pictured) who was with PASLR for over twenty-five years is atop the ANZ Tower (then the Coopers & Lybrand building) in 1995 changing light bulbs – a job he undertook for Christmas, Red Nose Day and other special occasions. “I ended up with a half page spread on me in the New Zealand Herald – the trick I used for the colour change was imported bathing caps,” he says. “Another day up there I was the only person in the whole of Auckland in sunshine when we had a very heavy fog come in, no planes, no birds, a real Kodak moment!”
Our DIY Director delivers Christmas spirit of epic proportions
During the late 1990’s Darlene played a very hands-on role in producing the giant Christmas tree which lit up the front of Auckland’s thirteen-storey Carlton Hotel each Christmas. “I remember building the tree on the driveway of my parents’ house, and every time there was a gust of wind we had to hold onto everything. We rolled it up on rollers and then had to roll it down from the top of the building – it was definitely before the days of health and safety!” she said.
Making a name for ourselves at the Kumeu Show
The very first All Pumps stand at the Kumeu Show, March 1999. The huge agricultural show has been attracting thousands of visitors for the past 100 years and John Brockelbank, our Pump Technician extraordinaire who has been with us since day dot was there. “It was a huge learning experience for all of us and we got to talk to a lot of customers over a three day period. We spent a couple of months off and on planning what we could do to show off the Davey products and get our name out there. There were some long days by all of us and luckily we had Davey staff help us the following year,” he says.
Providing TLC to the team for nearly twenty years
Jackie Grant joined the RLS team in April 2003 when the offices were on the second floor in a building in Hillside Road. “At the time there were four office staff which included an office manager. In November 2003 we moved to the premises in the photo pictured and had expanded into two offices upstairs and one downstairs. There were two office people for Replacement Lamp Services upstairs – both of us doing a similar role, with four electricians/technicians under our tender loving care. The following year we still had the four out on the road but only one office staff member,” she says.