Boilers, Central Heating and Plumbing in Coulsdon (CR5)
Coulsdon's Edwardian and 1930s houses did not have central heating when they were built. Whatever is in them now was retrofitted at some point and added to since, and the pipework usually tells that story more clearly than the boiler does.
A new boiler on an old system
Steel radiators and water make a black sludge over the years, and decades of it ends up sitting in the bottom of radiators and in the narrowest parts of the circuit.
Put a new boiler on a system like that and the debris goes straight through its heat exchanger, which is the quickest route to a warranty argument and an expensive repair. Manufacturers expect the system to be clean, and that is not a sales line, it is a condition of the guarantee. Depending on what we find it means a chemical clean, or a power flush where the system will take one, and a magnetic filter on the return so the next lot has somewhere to collect. Being straight about it: a flush does not rescue everything. A radiator corroded through, or a leg choked solid, wants replacing rather than rinsing.
Microbore, mixed pipework and cold bottoms
A great deal of the heating fitted into older houses from the 1960s onwards was run in microbore, which works perfectly well until it silts up, and then it blocks far sooner than a larger pipe would. Add the usual mix of copper, steel and whatever the last person had on the van, and you get systems where two rooms behave one way and the rest behave another. A radiator cold at the bottom and hot at the top is sludge; cold at the top and hot at the bottom is air. Those are different problems with different answers, and telling them apart at the survey is what stops you paying for the wrong one. Where a leg is beyond cleaning, re-piping that run is usually cheaper than flushing the same system twice more.
Older houses bring building work with them
Pipework in these properties runs under suspended floors and through walls that were never meant to carry it, so heating work in a house of this age brings brickwork, joinery and plastering with it.
Our own team handles that side. There is more to it than people expect: boards lifted and refitted rather than split, joists notched only where they can take it, air bricks and underfloor ventilation left clear rather than buried behind a new pipe run, and radiator brackets fixed into something that will actually hold them in a lath and plaster wall. One survey, one price, and one firm to ring if something wants looking at again in six months.
More in Coulsdon
Everything we do in Coulsdon is on the Coulsdon area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the heating & plumbing page.
Common questions
Q.01What is a power flush and do I actually need one?
It is a forced clean of the whole system to shift the sludge that builds up in old radiators and pipework. It is worth doing when a new boiler is going on, and it is not the answer if a radiator or a pipe run is already beyond saving.
Q.02My radiator is cold at the bottom. What does that mean?
Usually sludge sitting in the bottom of it. Cold at the top is air instead, which is just a bleed. They look similar from the doorway and need completely different work.
Q.03Will a new boiler fix my cold rooms?
Not on its own. If the radiator is undersized, the circuit is blocked or the system has never been balanced, a new boiler heats the same water and delivers it to the same places.
Q.04Can you do the plumbing as part of a wider refurbishment?
Yes, and it is the sensible way round. If a house is being replastered or rewired, the heating first fix belongs in the same programme rather than in a separate visit later on. Plumbing and heating are trades we bring in and manage, our own bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers do the building work around them, and we stay answerable for how the whole thing turns out.
Thinking about heating & plumbing in Coulsdon?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.