Emergency Plumber Harrow

Harrow on the Hill is quite different from any other area of the borough. The historic core, built up around the centuries old buildings of Harrow School and the steep narrow streets which ascend from the High Street, is home to a variety of older residential and institutional buildings, with plumbing systems that are generally older, and in some cases, original Victorian and earlier pipework, adapted numerous times over the years to fit the modern fixtures. Another genuine practical challenge when working on the hill relates to the way our engineers approach a call-out from this unique part of the borough, because the steep inclines and narrow, sometimes cobbled, streets around Church Hill and West Street mean that vehicles take longer to move – and slower – than they do on Harrow’s flat residential roads.

In addition to the historic buildings, the residential streets that radiate from the foot of the hill out towards Sudbury Hill and South Harrow are dominated by early 20th century building, a lot of which was constructed as the Metropolitan Railway opened up this stretch of Middlesex for commuters to London in the interwar years: the ‘Metroland’ development that has had such a profound impact on outer London. They are solid, well built houses, but a 100 year old semi has 100 years worth of pipe joints that have become weak, and we see that reflected in the regular volume of call-outs of ageing pipe joints and cold water systems that are slowly failing in this area of these streets.

Wealdstone is quite different from the wider areas of Harrow, in terms of the Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, its bustling High Street and the higher proportion of converted flats/multi-occupancy properties than is seen near Stanmore and Pinner. This concentration exposes the same issues associated with shared-pipework and shared-riser problems that are common in more central boroughs, but also encompasses some plumbing peculiarities of the terraced houses erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the industrial and railway working classes of Middlesex. We regularly go to converted terraces in Wealdstone for leak tracing to determine if a leak is from the flat that is leaking or a flat across the street.

The commercial section of Wealdstone High Street can also generate the heavier usage of sewers that occurs in the busier High Street sections of other towns — food outlets and takeaways can strain Victorian sewer infrastructure, and blocked drains are a regular occurrence here on Wealdstone High Street.

Pinner and Hatch End are amongst the most attractive areas of Harrow, with its high streets retaining a village character and its residential streets having substantial and leafy high quality streets built up in the interwar and post-war periods. Otherwise, Stanmore has some of some of the borough’s largest and most valuable detached and semi-detached homes. Despite their class, what these areas share is a true testament to mature plumbing infrastructure, with many of these homes having been built decades ago and although well looked after on the surface, have not been updated in a comprehensive way with the pipework, boiler installations and loft-mounted cold water tanks still used as they were originally installed.

These are the areas where we see a pattern of high spend on kitchen and bathroom upgrades often without any consideration given to the pipework that provides the water supply, which can lead to pressure imbalances or lead to a compromise in the pipework that was not upgraded and is therefore not included in the renovations. One very real, recurring cause of emergency call out we attend in Stanmore or Pinner properties is when new demand is placed on existing supply pipework.

Harrow is an ethnically and culturally mixed borough with strong South Asian communities, particularly Gujarati and Tamil, located around places such as Kenton, North Harrow and Wealdstone. This is not only a demographic footnote; it has a real impact on household plumbing demand. This is because these communities have more multigenerational households (larger family homes with multiple bathrooms and greater daily water consumption compared to the national average household), making the system more stressed and increasing risk of failure at any given time. We have also seen a steadily growing demand for more bathroom installations and kitchen extensions for example, where extended families are living all in the same house and each of these projects, if not done correctly and cared for properly with the existing supply pipework, can be the source of a future emergency callout. Unlike many other engineers, our team understands what goes on in these homes, rather than what was laid out when they were built decades ago.

The spectacular Art Deco architecture of Rayners Lane is particularly significant in outer London’s architectural heritage and many of the surrounding residential streets, developing along with the more familiar Metroland semi-detached housing, were built in a similar style. They tend to have slightly different layouts in-house than a typical 1930s semi, with bathrooms sometimes being located in non-standard rooms, and pipe runs that reflect this layout as opposed to a template. It’s a minor detail but when you’re working to trace a pipe leak or to access a blockage in a pipework system it comes in handy when the engineer knows the housing block so well that they know the quickest and least disruptive way to get to work.

An annual boiler service before the cold winter months really does help you avoid a breakdown this winter, at least if you live in one of Harrow’s many interwar semis, especially South Harrow, Rayners Lane or North Harrow as this is a London hard water area and limescale gradually grows on heat exchangers even if the boiler looks in top condition. When a bathroom or kitchen has been recently renovated in a Pinner, Hatch End or Stanmore Home, it is probably best to have a plumber visit before you experience a pressure problem in the fixture or have a burst pipe, to ensure that the supply pipework is correctly sized for the fixtures, rather than just hoping it will fit. If you live in an older converted flat in Wealdstone or South Harrow, even when everything appears fine, shared risers and communal pipework could have minute leaks that can be spotted at regular intervals, before they are a huge, expensive and disruptive issue for everyone.