Plumbing repairs and installations in Hendon

What are Hendon's homes like?

Old Hendon is the cluster around St Mary's church and The Burroughs, which is a conservation area. The rest grew after the Northern line reached Hendon Central in 1923: semi-detached houses across Hendon and West Hendon, Edwardian terraces around Brent Street, and mansion blocks of flats along the main roads. NW9 reaches north through Colindale and crosses into the London Borough of Brent at Kingsbury and The Hyde, so check which council is yours before contacting one.

What is changing in Colindale and West Hendon?

More than almost anywhere in the borough. The Grahame Park estate, built in the late 1960s and 1970s on part of the old Hendon aerodrome, is being demolished and rebuilt in phases, the West Hendon estate beside the Welsh Harp is being replaced with new blocks, and former hospital, police college and library sites in Colindale have become thousands of new flats. Around Brent Cross, a whole new district is going up.

For plumbing this means two very different kinds of enquiry from the same postcode: an original 1970s maisonette with its first pipework, and a flat finished last year with plastic pipes, a heat interface unit and a management company.

What should people in the new blocks know?

In a tall new block the cold water is usually pumped up from a basement tank, the hot water and heating may come from a central plant through a heat interface unit in a hallway cupboard, and the waste from every flat drops down a shared stack. A plumber you book can deal with your own taps, toilets, appliances and the pipes inside your flat. Pressure for the whole block, the heat network and the stacks belong to the management company. In the first years after completion, defects are the builder's to fix, so check your paperwork before paying anyone.

And in the 1920s and 1930s semis?

Hendon's interwar houses have the usual pattern: a loft tank, now often gone after a loft conversion, a bathroom above the kitchen, and kitchens extended across the back with washing machines and dishwashers connected to a waste that was never meant for them. Some keep a lead supply pipe under the front garden. The pipe from the boundary to the house is the owner's, so a wet lawn that never dries is a plumber's job rather than the water company's.

What about the mansion blocks and converted houses?

Blocks from the 1930s along Hendon Way, Watford Way and around Hendon Central mostly have a cold tank in the roof feeding every flat, so the top floor has the gentlest flow and the lowest floors get leaks from everyone above. Edwardian houses around Brent Street are often split into flats with one soil stack between them. In both, the lease decides whose pipe is whose, and whoever owns the pipe that failed repairs it, with the damage below usually a matter for the lease and the building's insurance.

Is the water hard?

Yes. Scale on cistern valves is the usual reason for a toilet that keeps running in Hendon, as it is across the borough.

What happens to an enquiry from NW4 or NW9?

If a local plumber's area includes your postcode and you have consented, that one plumber receives it. If no plumber covers your postcode, we tell you, and nothing is passed on.