London's
hot water
cylinder
specialists

The rate is £150 per hour with a £50 call out, agreed before an engineer sets off. It does not rise for a Victorian conversion, a third floor flat with no lift, a stopcock buried behind a fitted kitchen or a visit at seven in the evening. What moves the total is how long the work takes, and that is the part nobody can tell you down the phone honestly. A weeping service valve under a sink is one job. Chasing water through a floor void is another. You hear how the clock is running on the day, not at the end.

Often, yes. There are 20 engineers across London, so same day cover is usually a question of who is closest and what he is in the middle of. We will not hand you a window we cannot hold. Describe the fault and the property when you call and we will say plainly whether it is today, this evening or tomorrow morning. If water is running and you cannot stop it, say that first. Shutting the stopcock and draining down at the cold taps buys you time and costs you nothing.

We repair. The engineer who traces the fault is the engineer who fixes it, on the same visit wherever the parts allow. A good part of this trade has drifted into detection as a product of its own: somebody arrives with a camera, marks an X on your floor, emails a report and invoices you, and you are left to find a plumber to do the actual work. Our vans carry the valves, fittings, immersion elements and cylinder controls that fail most often in London, so diagnosis and repair are one job rather than two.

Yes, and we say so before we lift anything. Reinstatement is part of the job, not something you chase afterwards. Floorboards go back down, chased plaster is made good, a ceiling opened to reach a joint is patched and left ready to decorate. Engineered wood and tile we talk through first, because a tile out of production for ten years cannot be matched and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Liquid screed over underfloor heating is its own conversation: we open the smallest area that gets a tool to the pipe, and agree the finish before anything is cut.

It happens, and we tell you rather than guess. The intermittent ones are the difficult ones: a joint that only weeps under full mains pressure, or a heating pipe that only gives itself away once the system has been hot for an hour. What you get at the end of that visit is what has been ruled out, which circuits were isolated and pressure tested, where the moisture readings sat and what a second visit would involve. A ruled out list is worth more than a confident answer that turns out to be wrong and costs you a floor.

By narrowing it down before any tool touches the floor. Isolate sections and watch what the pressure does, because a circuit that holds is a circuit you never open. Thermal imaging picks up the warm track of a heating leak under screed. Acoustic equipment listens for pressurised water escaping, which has a sound of its own once the house is quiet. Tracer gas goes into a drained pipe and surfaces where the gap is. Moisture meters map the wet edge. You end up with a small area rather than a room, and that is what gets opened.

Treat it as urgent, but find out where the water is coming from first. Water at a fitting, an immersion heater boss or a connection is often repairable. Water weeping from the body of the cylinder itself is not, and it does not improve: a cylinder that has failed through the wall is on its way to splitting, and an unvented one holds a great deal of hot water under pressure. Meanwhile turn off the immersion and the boiler, shut the cold feed to the cylinder, and get buckets and towels down. Then call.

The tundish is the small open gap in the discharge pipe from an unvented cylinder, usually in the airing cupboard. It is a deliberate window so you can see when something is releasing water. A drip means either the expansion vessel has lost its air charge and the hot water has nowhere to expand to, or the pressure reducing valve or the temperature and pressure relief valve is passing. It is a safety device doing its job, so it should not be ignored and should never be plugged. An engineer checks the vessel charge first, because that is the usual answer.

The split tells you a lot. On a combi it points at the hot water side: a diverter valve not driving across, or a plate heat exchanger scaled up, which London water does quickly. On a cylinder system it points at the hot water circuit rather than the boiler, so a seized two port valve, a failed cylinder thermostat, or a motor that hums and never moves. If you are on an immersion heater only, check the switch and the breaker in the consumer unit before you call anyone, because a tripped circuit and a burnt out element are both common.

It depends what has failed. Thermostats, immersion elements, expansion vessels, valves and the controls around a cylinder are replaceable parts and usually worth doing. The cylinder body itself leaking is the end of it. A Pulsacoil or similar thermal store in a purpose built block is often written off too quickly by people who have not worked on one: the elements and controls are serviceable, and a full replacement in a flat is a significant job. We will also tell you when repairing it is throwing good money after bad, including when saying so loses us the work.

Regularly. Blocks are a large part of London work and they bring their own problems: access to a riser cupboard, one stopcock serving four flats, a leak showing in a kitchen ceiling that started two floors up. We attend, establish where the water is coming from and put that in writing so responsibility is clear before anybody starts arguing about it. We will also say plainly when something is communal rather than a leaseholder repair. Invoicing an agent or block manager instead of the resident is not a problem, arranged before we attend.

Because we have not earned them yet. This is a new firm, and a five star count sitting on a new website is either bought or written by whoever built the site. When customers who have actually paid us leave ratings on a verified profile you can read for yourself, we will link to it, including the ones that are not flattering. Until then, judge us on what is on this page: the rate stated before we set off, what the engineer checks and in what order, and the fact that we put the floor back.