Plumbers in Folkestone

Folkestone is where most of our work is, and we are ten minutes away in Hythe rather than dispatching from a depot in Maidstone or Canterbury. Whatever part of the town you are in, an engineer who knows the local housing stock will be the one who turns up.

Folkestone properties and what they need

Folkestone changes character dramatically across a couple of miles, and the plumbing changes with it.

The Regency and Victorian terraces along the Leas, Clifton Crescent and the streets off Sandgate Road are grand, tall and mostly divided into flats now. That brings shared soil stacks, shared supplies and long vertical runs where pressure on the top floor is a fraction of what it is at ground level. It also brings the recurring question of whose pipework a problem actually sits on, which is worth establishing before anyone commits to paying for a repair. We are used to working with freeholders and managing agents on exactly that.

The Victorian terraces around Foord, Radnor Park and Black Bull Road have the pipework you would expect from that age. Copper now fifty or sixty years old and thinning at the bends, lead supply sections still in place in some properties, and drainage runs shared between neighbouring houses. Where the same run leaks more than once, the pipework itself has reached the end of its life and repairing it again will not hold for long.

The post-war housing around Park Farm, Morehall and Broadmead is more consistent and usually straightforward. Many are now on a second or third boiler, though a good number still have the original heating pipework underneath, which is where the sludge sits.

The newer development around Shorncliffe is well insulated with modern boilers, and the issues there are developer shortcuts rather than age. Systems never balanced, controls fitted but never set up, and frequently no magnetic filter or inhibitor at handover.

The Harbour and the seafront

Anything near the Harbour, the Harbour Arm and the East Cliff takes weather straight off the Channel. Salt air is hard on external pipework, boiler flue terminals, condensate pipes and outside taps, and it works considerably faster than it does inland. Anything outside is worth checking annually here rather than every few years, and an unlagged external condensate pipe will shut a boiler down on the first properly cold night.

Hills and water pressure

Folkestone is built on a slope, and the difference in level between the seafront and the top of the town is significant. Properties higher up, and tall properties anywhere, often have noticeably weaker pressure on the upper floors. On a gravity fed system that is normal behaviour rather than a fault, and the right answer is usually a shower pump or an unvented cylinder rather than replacing a shower that was never the problem.

Hard water

The supply across Folkestone is hard, and it turns up in almost every job we attend. Scaled shower cartridges, furred immersion elements, kettling boilers and blocked plate heat exchangers all trace back to it. It is the most common underlying cause of the faults we see, which is why we fit a magnetic filter on every heating system as standard and recommend a softener in some properties.

What we do most in Folkestone

• Boiler repairs and annual servicing

• Leak detection in older terraces and converted flats

• Blocked drains and clearance

• CCTV drain surveys for repeat blockages

• Bathroom installations

• 24 hour emergency callouts

Areas of Folkestone we cover

Town centre and the Old High Street, the Harbour and Harbour Arm, the Leas and West End, Sandgate Road, Bouverie, Radnor Park, Foord, Morehall, Broadmead, Park Farm, Shorncliffe, East Cliff and the Warren.

Useful reading

Preparing your plumbing for winter, how to find and use your stopcock and our annual plumbing maintenance checklist.

Call +44 7915 255984 for a plumber in Folkestone.