Areas covered
Plumbing and heating for Norwich and fifty-five towns within twenty miles of it
The area worked is a twenty-mile circle around the city: out to Great Yarmouth and the coast, across the Broads, down to Diss on the Suffolk border and west to Dereham. This page describes the city itself, the housing in it and the jobs that housing produces, then names every town in the circle with its distance.
Five-star ratedby homeowners and landlords
- Twenty-mile radius
- Fifty-six towns and villages
- All fifteen services everywhere
What Norwich residents say about the plumbing and heating work in their streets
Plumbing and heating for Norwich, from the Golden Triangle terraces to the post-war estates
Norwich is a city of terraces. Roughly three in ten of its homes are terraced, and in the inner ring, the Golden Triangle between Unthank and Newmarket Roads, the streets off Dereham Road, the grid north of the river in NR3, the great majority were built between the 1880s and the First World War. Red brick, bay fronts, a back addition with the kitchen and, later, a bathroom squeezed in above it. That layout decides a lot: long waste runs, pipework in cold under-floor voids, clay drains shared along the terrace, and a boiler that usually ended up in the kitchen alcove where the copper once stood.
Beyond the ring the city changes. Inter-war semis along the arterial roads, the big council estates at Mile Cross, Earlham and Heartsease with their solid floors and heating pipes buried in the screed, the 1960s flats, and then the recent developments along the Wensum and around the station with their unvented cylinders and pressurised systems. Flint and older brick turn up in the centre, around the Cathedral Close and Colegate, where drilling a flue means knowing what the wall is made of.
This page describes the work the city produces and the parts of it that come up most. The fifteen services are listed below with a link to each; the towns around the city are listed further down this page. The single most common call from a Norwich terrace is a leaking pipe under an old floor; the most common from the estates is a boiler that has locked out.
The terraces: NR1, NR2 and NR3
The Victorian and Edwardian terraces have been re-plumbed several times over, and the result is layers: a lead supply pipe joined to copper by the front wall, imperial copper from the 1960s joined to metric from the 1980s, and plastic push-fit from the last kitchen refit. Leaks happen at the joints between the layers. Bathrooms added over the back addition drain through long, shallow runs to an outside gully, which block. The original clay drains under the yards are shared along the terrace and let roots in at the joints. Boilers tend to be combis hung in the kitchen or the back bedroom, working hard in winter for a house with solid walls and single-glazed bays.
The jobs that follow: leaking joints, blocked gullies and shared drains, combi faults, radiators cold at the bottom from decades of sludge, and, increasingly, full bathroom refits that move the pipework to where it should always have been.
The estates: Mile Cross, Earlham, Heartsease, Lakenham and Catton
The council-built estates of the inter-war and post-war years were plumbed to a standard pattern: a solid ground floor with the heating pipes in the screed, a vented cylinder in an airing cupboard upstairs, a cold tank in the loft, and radiators sized for a house that has since had its windows replaced. Many have been converted to combis; many still run the original layout with a boiler that has been swapped once or twice.
Leaks in the screed are the characteristic fault, found by tracing rather than digging. Cylinders fail at the coil. Loft pipes freeze in a hard winter. Boiler replacements here are often the moment to decide between staying with stored hot water and going to a combi, and the answer depends on the bathrooms and the mains flow.
Flats, conversions and the rental market
Norwich has a large rented sector: student houses in the Golden Triangle and around the university, flats above shops on Magdalen Street and Prince of Wales Road, conversions of the big Victorian villas along Thorpe Road and Newmarket Road, and the new blocks around the station and Riverside. Landlords and agents book the annual gas safety checks, the boiler services and the repairs between tenancies, and want the paperwork in a form that goes straight into the file.
Flats bring their own questions: which stopcock serves which flat, where the shared drainage runs, whether the leak coming through a ceiling is from the flat above. Those are sorted out on the first visit before anything is opened.
Hard water and the city's boilers
Norwich's water comes largely from the chalk beneath the county and it is hard. In practice that means limescale in every combi's plate heat exchanger, furred immersion heaters, shower heads that block and hot pipework that narrows over the years. It is the reason the annual boiler service matters more here than in a soft-water city, and the reason a scale inhibitor or a softener is worth talking about when a boiler or a cylinder is replaced.
Where we work
Norwich and every town within twenty miles of it
The circle is drawn from the city centre, so a village nineteen miles out on the coast is covered in the same way as a street in NR2. Distances are straight-line from Norwich, which is how the area was set; the drive is a little longer.
The same fifteen services are booked everywhere in the circle, and the services directory explains each one. None of the towns below has a page of its own; they are listed here so you can see at a glance that yours is covered. Where a job in one of them is described on the front page or a service page, the same applies in every other. A place just outside the circle is not a refusal: put the postcode on the form and it is answered the same day.
The city and its edge
Under five miles
- Thorpe Hamlet0.6 mi
- Cringleford2.8 mi
- Bowthorpe3.4 mi
- Spixworth4.1 mi
- Rackheath4.2 mi
- Costessey4.3 mi
- Poringland4.7 mi
The villages and the Broads
Five to twelve miles
- Mulbarton5.5 mi
- Hethersett5.6 mi
- Horsford5.6 mi
- Brundall5.7 mi
- Brooke6.7 mi
- Coltishall7.5 mi
- Hoveton7.6 mi
- Lingwood7.9 mi
- Buxton8.6 mi
- Horning8.7 mi
- Long Stratton10 mi
- Loddon10.1 mi
- Acle10.5 mi
- Cawston11.1 mi
- Mattishall11.4 mi
- Aylsham11.8 mi
The market towns
Twelve to sixteen miles
- Reepham12.2 mi
- Reedham12.4 mi
- Ditchingham12.7 mi
- Thurlton12.8 mi
- Bungay13.3 mi, Suffolk
- Stalham13.5 mi
- Hingham13.6 mi
- North Walsham13.9 mi
- Attleborough14.1 mi
- Martham15.1 mi
- Harleston15.5 mi
- East Dereham15.8 mi
- Beccles16.1 mi, Suffolk
- Foulsham16.1 mi
- Banham16.4 mi
The coast and the county edge
Sixteen to twenty miles
- Ormesby St Margaret16.7 mi
- Dickleburgh16.7 mi
- North Elmham16.9 mi
- Hemsby17.2 mi
- Bradwell17.3 mi
- Shipdham17.3 mi
- Caister-on-Sea18 mi
- Great Yarmouth18.2 mi
- Mundesley18.2 mi
- Gorleston-on-Sea18.5 mi
- Briston18.5 mi
- Griston18.9 mi
- Scole19 mi
- Diss19.1 mi
- Hopton19.4 mi
- Watton20 mi
- Overstrand20 mi
Services across the area
Every service, across every part of the city
From a washer on a tap in Eaton to a new heating system in a Beccles terrace. Each has its own page, and each is booked in every town on the list above.
Plumber
Taps, toilets, showers, stopcocks, outside taps and the small jobs that turn into big ones when they are left. A plumber for Norwich homes, booked by the job.
Drain Unblocking
Blocked sinks, toilets, showers and outside gullies cleared with rods, jetting or a CCTV camera when the cause is not obvious from the top.
Underfloor Heating
Wet and electric underfloor heating for extensions, kitchens and bathrooms, plus fault finding on systems that have gone cold or never balanced properly.
Boiler Service
An annual boiler service that checks combustion, the flue, the seals and the safety devices, then leaves you with a record of what was found.
247 Emergency Plumber
Burst pipes, water through a ceiling, a boiler down in January or a toilet that will not stop running. Emergency plumbing requests taken day and night.
Boiler Installation
A new boiler sized to the house rather than to the old one, with the system flushed, the controls set up and the paperwork registered when it is done.
Gas Safety Certificate
Landlord CP12 checks on boilers, hobs, fires and flues, with the certificate issued on the day so a tenancy can start or renew on time.
Bathroom Installation
Full bathroom fitting from the first-fix plumbing to the last bead of silicone: showers, baths, wet rooms, tiling and the electrics that go with them.
Boiler Repair
Fault codes, lockouts, no hot water, pressure that keeps dropping. Boiler repairs diagnosed properly before any part is ordered or fitted.
Hot Water Cylinder
Vented and unvented cylinder replacement, repairs to immersion heaters, thermostats and expansion vessels, and advice on the right size for the household.
Leak Detection
Finding the leak behind a damp patch, a dropping boiler gauge or a water bill that doubled, using tracing methods that do not mean lifting every floor.
Central Heating Installation
Full central heating systems for houses that have none, plus new pipework, radiators and controls where an old system has reached the end of its useful life.
Power Flushing
A power flush pushes the sludge out of a heating system that has cold radiators, a noisy boiler or black water when it is bled, then protects it with inhibitor.
Radiator Repair
Leaking valves, radiators cold at the bottom, replacements, new radiators for extensions and thermostatic valves fitted so each room can be set on its own.
Leaking Pipes
Weeping joints, pinholed copper, split plastic push-fits and frozen pipes that have thawed and burst. Leaking pipes repaired at the source, not patched over.
Ready when you are
Somewhere on the list, or just outside it? Describe the job and the postcode
One form covers every town in the area. You get a call back to arrange the visit and a price before any work starts.
Questions
Norwich and the area: the questions people ask first
Do you cover the whole of Norwich?
Yes: every NR postcode in the city, from the centre out to the ring road and the suburbs beyond it, Thorpe St Andrew, Sprowston, Hellesdon, Costessey and Cringleford included.
Is the plumbing in a Victorian terrace harder to work on?
It is different rather than harder. The pipework is in layers of different ages and materials, so the right adaptors need to be on the van and the joints between the layers are where leaks start. Knowing the house type before the visit is what matters, which is why the form asks.
My flat's stopcock does not turn my water off. Why?
In converted houses the stopcock under your sink is sometimes not yours, or there is a shared main with a single stopcock in a communal area. Finding the right one is part of the first visit, and fitting an isolation valve inside the flat is a short job that saves a lot of trouble later.
Are shared drains in a terrace my problem?
The run shared with neighbours, from where it leaves the last house it serves alone, is normally the water company's responsibility. Your own drain up to that point is yours. A camera survey shows where the boundary is.
Why do Norwich boilers scale up so quickly?
The water here is hard because it comes from chalk. Scale forms wherever hot water sits, and a combi's heat exchanger is the hottest place in the house. An annual service and a scale inhibitor slow it down; a softener stops it.
Anything not covered here is answered on the service pages, and the form below takes the details for anything else.
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- Norwich and every town within twenty miles