Plumbers & electricians in Thamesmead & Erith Marshes

It takes in Erith Marshes and the eastern edge of Thamesmead, on the flat ground between Belvedere and the river. Thamesmead itself was built from the late nineteen sixties onwards as a planned town, with a layout organised around lakes and canals and a deliberate separation of pedestrian levels from roads.

It is a small district by area and a distinctive one by building type, and it has the highest proportion of flats and maisonettes of anywhere we cover.

Communal systems and getting access

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The thing that most often slows a job down here has nothing to do with the plumbing. It is access: to a service cupboard, to a riser, to a roof space, or to the flat above or below where the fault actually is.

In a planned development, a good deal of the pipework is shared. Heating and hot water may be communal rather than individual, and the isolation for a single dwelling may sit in a cupboard on a landing rather than inside the front door. It is worth finding out which arrangement you have before you need to, because the answer decides whether a leak on a Sunday is your problem or the landlord’s.

The practical advice is the same as anywhere with communal services, and it is worth writing down and putting on the fridge: know where your own isolation is, know the emergency number for the managing agent or landlord, and know which flats sit directly above and below you. When water is moving, those three pieces of information save more damage than anything a plumber can do in the first half hour.

Access is worth arranging in advance for the same reason. Secure entry, fire doors and shared corridors all mean somebody has to let us in, and sorting that when the job is booked is the difference between the work happening today and a wasted trip.