DA13 · Gravesend
Plumbers & electricians in Meopham & Southfleet
DA13 climbs onto the downs south of Gravesend, and it is the most exposed ground we work on.
4.7 from 186 Google reviewsMeopham is strung out along the A227 for a couple of miles rather than gathered around a centre, with the green and the windmill roughly in the middle of it. Istead Rise sits below it as a largely twentieth century development. Vigo was built in the nineteen sixties in the woods on the ridge. Southfleet is a smaller village off to the north west.
Height is the thing that unites them. This is high, open chalk downland, and it holds frost after the valleys have thawed and catches wind that the towns never feel.
Cold weather on the ridge
Two consequences follow from that, and both cost people money every winter.
The first is that pipework in lofts and unheated spaces is genuinely at risk here in a way it is not down by the river. Loft insulation makes it worse, not better, because insulating the floor of the loft keeps the heat in the house and leaves the pipes above it in outside temperatures. Pipes and tanks in a loft need lagging in their own right, and the insulation should go over the tank rather than under it.
The second is that long runs lose heat. Where a property is large or spread out, or where a boiler sits at one end and the bathroom at the other, hot water takes an age to arrive and half the energy that heated it warms a joist instead. Lagging accessible hot runs is one of the few jobs on this whole site that pays for itself.
If your property has an outbuilding, a stable, an annexe or a garden room with water in it, that is the first thing to drain when a cold snap is forecast, not the last.
What DA13 covers
- Meopham
- Istead Rise
- Vigo
- Southfleet
Post town Gravesend. If your postcode begins DA13, you are inside the patch.
DA13: questions we actually get asked
Is Vigo part of Meopham?
Vigo Village is its own place with its own character, built as a single scheme in the woods, but postally it sits in DA13 alongside Meopham, Istead Rise and Southfleet. All four are covered.
My loft tank froze last winter. How do I stop it happening again?
Lag the pipes in the loft, and lay the loft insulation over the top of the tank rather than beneath it so house heat can still reach it. Leaving the loft hatch ajar in a hard frost is a crude last resort that genuinely works.
Do you come out this far for a small job?
Yes. DA13 is on the list the same as everywhere else. It is a longer drive from the Bexley end of our patch, and that is our problem rather than yours.
Is it worth fitting frost protection?
On an outbuilding or a garden room that stands unheated for weeks at a time, yes. A small amount of trace heating, or a supply that can actually be drained down, costs a great deal less than a split pipe in a building nobody visits until spring.
Next door to DA13
The districts that border this one. If you are near a boundary, both pages apply to you.
What we do in Meopham & Southfleet
Ring us about a job in Meopham & Southfleet.
Tell us the postcode and what has happened, and you will get a straight answer before anything is booked.
Call any time, day or night
07546 185778