Emergency plumber East Midlands

A street-wide loss of water is the water company’s to fix, not a problem with your pipes, and nobody should charge you to tell you that. The East Midlands is supplied by several companies — Severn Trent Water and Anglian Water among them — and which one is yours can change from one street to the next, so check the top of your water bill. If the water is off or leaking only in your own property, it is ours.

The town list is where our plumbers are based, not a boundary. In and around the towns it is 30 to 60 minutes, because our plumbers are spread across the five counties rather than working out of one depot. Out in the villages it takes longer, and we would rather tell you so. Give us the postcode when you call and we will tell you the real travel time rather than quote a standard one we cannot keep.

Common in converted buildings, where one flat’s pipework can run through another’s ceiling. Turn off your own stopcock if you have one, put a bucket under the drip, and ring us. We will work out whether the water is coming from your own pipework or from above, because that decides who pays. If it is from the flat above, we can stop it at your end, take photographs and write down what we found, and tell you exactly what to put to the neighbour, the managing agent or your insurer. If the source is yours, we fix it on the spot.

It is possible in homes built before the 1970s, and worth knowing for certain. Find where the water pipe comes into the house — usually under the kitchen sink or under the stairs — and scratch it gently with a coin. Lead shows shiny silver underneath, is soft, gives a dull thud rather than a ring when tapped, and a magnet will not stick to it. Wash your hands afterwards. If it looks like lead, do not panic, but ask your water company about a free test and any replacement scheme, and have any replacement done by a WaterSafe-approved plumber. Ring us and we will look at the pipework with you and tell you plainly what we see.

The usual culprit is a dry trap. Every basin, bath, shower and sink has a U-bend that holds a little water to block the smell from the drain, and in a basin or shower that is rarely used that water evaporates and the smell comes straight up. Run the tap for a minute and see whether it goes. If it comes back, or it is coming from a toilet or a floor drain, the cause may be a blocked or badly vented pipe, or a fault in the drain itself, and that is worth a visit. A smell together with slow draining or gurgling usually means a blockage on its way.

It can be. Most boilers sit at around 1 to 1.5 bar when cold, and your manual gives the exact figure. If the needle has dropped below it you can usually top it up using the filling loop, following the manual, and a pressure that then holds is nothing to worry about. If it keeps falling, water is going somewhere: a leaking radiator valve or joint, a failed pressure relief valve, or an expansion vessel that has lost its charge. Do not take the boiler casing off. Ring us and we will find where the water is going.