Emergency plumbers covering Croydon and the CR postcodes, 24 hours a day

We are based on Highbury Avenue in Thornton Heath and we cover Croydon and the CR postcodes, so most calls inside the borough are reached within the hour. We give you a real time on the phone rather than a comforting one. If we are already on a job and cannot get to you quickly, we will say that too, because in an emergency being told the truth at eleven at night is worth more than being told what you want to hear.

The call-out is £120 and that is the whole of it: getting to you, isolating the water, finding the fault and telling you what the repair will cost. It does not change at night, at weekends or on bank holidays. For comparison, the trade directories put the Croydon average for emergency plumbing at around £178, with quotes commonly running from £131 to £245, and most of those figures are before anyone has told you what the repair costs on top.

Call us straight away for anything you cannot stop: a burst or split pipe, water coming through a ceiling, an overflow you cannot isolate, a leak anywhere near electrics, or a smell of gas, which needs the National Gas emergency line first and us second. A dripping tap, a slow-filling cistern, a single cold radiator or a toilet that is running but contained will all keep until we can come out in normal hours, and it will cost you less if it does. If you are genuinely unsure, ring and describe it, and we will tell you honestly which of the two it is.

Check under the kitchen sink first, then the hall floor near the front door, then the under-stairs cupboard, which between them cover most Croydon houses. If you are in a converted flat, look on the landing for a riser cupboard, because the valve is often outside your front door and shared with the rest of the building. Failing all of that there is an external stop valve under a small cover plate near your boundary, though it needs a stopcock key to turn. Ring us while you are looking and we will work through it with you.

Almost certainly not, and this is very common here. Croydon water is hard, and a brass stop valve that has not been moved in a decade or more scales up internally until the spindle seizes. Do not put a wrench on it, because shearing a stopcock while the main is live turns a manageable leak into a flood. Tell us when you call and we will isolate at the boundary valve instead, then free or replace the internal one while we are there.

No. The £120 call-out is one flat figure whenever you ring, and there is no unsocial hours loading, no doubled Sunday rate and no separate charge for turning up. We would rather publish one number that holds than advertise a low daytime rate and quietly reprice it at midnight, which is when people are least able to argue about it.

Deal with stopping it first and work out the liability afterwards, because the longer it runs the larger the argument gets. Turn off your stopcock, or the building one if your flat has no separate valve, and let the flat below know so they can move things and kill the affected electrical circuits. Broadly, if the leak originates inside your demise it is usually your responsibility and your insurance, but leases differ and shared soil stacks and risers are commonly the freeholder’s. We will put in writing what failed and where, which is the document both insurers will ask for.

It depends who is in the house. A total loss of heating in a cold snap where there is a baby, someone elderly or anyone unwell is something we will come out to at any hour. In a mild week with an otherwise healthy household it is usually cheaper and no less effective to book it as a boiler repair the next working day at £110. Either way, tell us the fault code on the display when you ring, because it frequently tells us which part to bring.

That is nearly always a frozen condensate pipe, and it is the single most common January call we get. Modern condensing boilers drain acidic water through a plastic pipe, and where that pipe runs outside, which in a Croydon terrace usually means down the side return where the sun never reaches it, it freezes and the boiler shuts itself down safely. You can often fix it yourself by pouring warm, not boiling, water along the outside pipe and then resetting the boiler. If it keeps happening the pipe is too narrow, badly run or unlagged, and that is worth correcting properly rather than thawing every winter.

The main in the road belongs to your water company and you should report it to them. The supply pipe from the boundary stop valve into your home is yours to maintain, and the stretch under a front garden or driveway is the one that causes disputes. Croydon is split across two water companies, so check the name on your bill before you ring anyone. Older lead and steel supply runs under drives in the north of the borough fail regularly where seasonal clay movement shears them, and we can trace and replace that section without digging the whole garden up.

Someone over eighteen needs to let us in and be there to authorise the repair price, but it does not have to be you. We work for a good number of landlords and managing agents where the tenant is the one who lets us in and the bill and the decisions go to the owner, and we are happy to arrange it that way. Just tell us on the call who is authorising the work so we are not ringing three people from your hallway.

Yes. Our engineers are Gas Safe registered under registration number 919881, and you are entitled to ask for the card on the doorstep before anyone starts work. Nobody should be working on a gas appliance in your home without it. Wet plumbing and drainage work does not fall under Gas Safe, but anything involving the boiler, the gas supply or the flue does.