Plumbing in Stanmore

Yes, and on a Stanmore house with four or five bathrooms that is the sensible approach. Send the list of dripping taps, slow wastes, running cisterns and tired silicone across all of them and we will estimate the hours honestly. One combined visit means fewer disruptions for you or your tenant than several separate callouts.

We do. In a managed block some pipework belongs to the building rather than the flat, so where a leak sits on that boundary we work with the managing agent to establish who is responsible. For anything inside the flat itself, such as taps, WCs and showers, we get on with the repair once you have agreed the figure.

Time, mostly, because nobody can honestly promise how long it takes to find water behind tiles or under a floor. How the pipework is boxed in and how many bathrooms are involved both matter. You hear what we have found before any repair starts, and once the source is known the fix is priced for you to approve.

Usually, once we know the system. On a gravity-fed system with a loft tank, a top-floor shower has very little height to work with, so a correctly sized pump often solves it. On an unvented cylinder or combi, weak flow upstairs points more to incoming pressure, a partly closed valve or a blocked shower head. We check which applies before recommending anything, because a pump on the wrong system causes problems.

Not for the plumbing inside an ordinary house, which planning law does not count as development, even in the Stanmore Hill or Old Church Lane conservation areas. The outside is different: on conservation-area land, a new soil and vent pipe or flue is not permitted development on a wall or roof slope that faces a road and forms the front or a side of the house, so an en-suite in a front bedroom usually needs its pipework routed inside or to the rear. Harrow's Stanmore Hill appraisal also counts badly sited conduits and a clutter of water pipes among the things that spoil an otherwise intact front, and would like plastic rainwater goods swapped for cast iron or other cast metal. A listed building also needs listed building consent for internal changes that affect its character. Check with Harrow's conservation team if your house is listed.

Usually the sewerage company. Since the 2011 transfer of private sewers in England, a drain that serves more than one property, or runs outside your boundary to the public sewer, belongs to the sewerage undertaker, which is responsible for clearing it. The length that serves only your house and stays inside your boundary is yours. Semi-detached and terraced houses often share a run at the back, so if water is backing up in more than one home, call the sewerage company first. If the blockage is on your side, we can clear it the same day in opening hours.

Yes, and the notice has to go in before the plumbing starts. The 1999 water fittings regulations list a material change of use of any premises among the jobs that need Affinity Water's consent, alongside water fittings for a new building, such as a garden studio with a basin or WC, and, unless an approved contractor does the work, changes to the water system in a building that is not a house, a block of flats included. Planning is a separate question, and on Stanmore Hill a hard one: the conservation area appraisal says Harrow will resist flat conversions there, and when it was written only one house in the area had been divided into flats.