Plumber in Oxted, Surrey

Hard water in Oxted

Oxted is supplied by SES Water, and the water is genuinely hard, measured at around 229 parts per million. Within a few years that is enough to scale the hot water side of a combi, coat the coil of a hot water cylinder, and fur up kettles and shower heads. In the larger Oxted and Limpsfield houses that run an unvented cylinder, scale on the coil is the thing to watch, because hot water takes longer and longer to recover before anything actually fails. A scale reducer or water softener on the incoming main and an annual boiler service keep it in check.

Period homes in Old Oxted and Limpsfield

Many Victorian and Edwardian houses in Old Oxted and Limpsfield were built for tank-fed hot water, and their pipework has been modified many times since. It was never designed around a modern mains pressure boiler. Three jobs come up again and again here.

• Replacing ageing supply pipes that are too narrow or too corroded to feed a combi or an unvented cylinder properly.
• Converting tank-fed systems, to a combi in the smaller houses or to a system boiler and unvented cylinder in the larger ones, with the loft tanks removed.
• Fitting radiators sized for the room. High ceilings and solid walls lose heat faster than a modern room of the same floor area, and an undersized radiator leaves the room cold whatever the boiler does.

Before quoting on a period Oxted house we look at the whole system, not just the fault in front of us, and tell you honestly whether it needs an upgrade or a repair. You get that answer before the quote, not after the work starts. See boiler installation and our guide to plumbing problems in older homes.

Smart controls for larger Oxted houses

Once a big house is zoned, smart controls let each floor run to its own schedule, so you stop heating empty bedrooms during the day. In thick-walled period houses around Oxted and Limpsfield the weak point is the wireless signal between the hub and the receivers, so we plan where the receivers and any signal boosters go as part of the job, rather than leaving you with a thermostat that keeps dropping offline. See smart thermostats.

Hurst Green and the villages around Oxted

The post-war houses around Hurst Green are more straightforward than the period stock in Old Oxted and Limpsfield, and a like-for-like combi swap often makes sense there. The hard water is the same, so the same scale protection and annual service apply. Out at Limpsfield Chart, Tandridge and Woldingham, the larger detached houses raise the same questions about zoning and hot water demand as the big houses in town, and we survey them in person before quoting.