Plumbing and Heating in Caterham (CR3)
Caterham's older houses — the Victorian and Edwardian streets up on the plateau, the interwar and post-war homes climbing the valley sides — were not built around the number of bathrooms a house gets fitted out with now. Adding a second one, or an en suite, is a drainage question long before it is a tiling one.
Where the waste can actually go
The position of a new bathroom is decided by the drainage more than by the room.
Waste runs on gravity, so it needs a fall along its whole length to reach the soil stack, and the further you are from that stack the more height you have to find. In an older house that height often is not there without building the floor up or dropping a ceiling below, which is exactly the sort of thing worth knowing before you settle on which bedroom to take the corner off. A pumped waste can rescue a position gravity will not serve, but it is a mechanical part buried in a wall and it is not a first choice. We work the drainage out at the survey and let it settle the location, rather than picking the room and hoping.
Can the supply serve another bathroom
The other half of the question is what happens when two showers run at once. On a combi that means the flow is being split between them; on a stored system it is the size of the cylinder and how fast it recovers that decides it. Pipe sizes matter as much as the boiler does, and a mixer shower wants its hot and cold supplies balanced or it will run warm one moment and cold the next. All of that is measurable at the survey, and it is worth measuring before a second bathroom is designed rather than after it is fitted and somebody has to live with it.
The room the bathroom comes out of
A second bathroom usually takes its space from somewhere, and the practical details decide whether it ends up feeling like a proper room or an afterthought.
Where the door swings, whether the new stud wall lands on something that can carry it, how the floor is built up over the waste run, and where the extraction goes so the room clears properly after a shower. On a house on a sloping plot the floor levels between old and new can want thinking about as well. None of it is complicated, but it wants deciding on paper before anything is ordered, because moving a soil connection once the tiling is on is an expensive way to change your mind.
More in Caterham
Everything we do in Caterham is on the Caterham area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the heating & plumbing page.
Common questions
Q.01Can an en suite go anywhere upstairs?
Not quite anywhere. It comes down to whether the waste can reach the soil stack with a fall the whole way, which is what usually decides the position. We work that out before the layout is fixed.
Q.02Will the shower go weak if two are running at once?
On a combi it can, because the flow is being split. On a stored system it depends on the cylinder size and how fast it recovers. Both are worth checking before you commit to a second bathroom.
Q.03Do I need a pump for a shower room?
Only if the position or the supply genuinely needs one. A pumped waste can serve a spot gravity cannot reach, but it is a mechanical part buried in a wall, so we look for a gravity route first.
Q.04Who actually does which part of the work?
The building work is ours — studwork, floors, joinery, plastering and making good. Plumbing, tanking and tiling are specialist trades we bring in and manage, and we survey the job, price it, run it and answer for it, so you are dealing with one firm rather than four.
Thinking about heating & plumbing in Caterham?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.