Heating and Plumbing in Godstone (RH9)
Our office is at 27 High Street, in the middle of the village, so getting to a Godstone property for a survey or a quick look could not be simpler. That is useful on heating work in particular, because in a period village property a boiler change stops being a plumbing job the moment the floor comes up.
First fix in a building never designed for pipes
Older cottages were built long before anyone thought about running heating through them, so there is rarely a convenient route from one end to the other.
Pipes have to follow what the building will allow: under boards where the joists can take a notch in the right place, through cupboards and voids, boxed in neatly where they cannot be hidden, clipped and insulated properly so you are not listening to them all winter. Where hot water is going to be stored, the position of the cylinder decides a good deal of the rest, and in a house without an obvious airing cupboard that question is worth answering before the boiler is chosen rather than after it has been delivered. None of this is difficult work. All of it is much harder to correct once the room is decorated.
Making good is part of the price, not an afterthought
Chased walls, lifted boards, a hole where a flue went through and a patch where a radiator moved: that is the state a house is in when the heating side finishes. Our own bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers do that work, which is why we can put it in the quote at the start instead of leaving you to find a plasterer in January. Gas and heating is the specialist trade in all this — the engineers who carry it out are brought in by us, work to our programme, and we stay answerable for what they leave behind them. If you are comparing quotes on a heating job, the making good is usually where the difference between them is hiding.
The order it goes in
A heating job has a sequence, and most of the mess comes from breaking it.
Isolate and drain, strip out, first fix the pipework while everything is open, then plastering and floors, then second fix, then commissioning and balancing, then the walk round. Decorating before the system has been run up and checked is a false economy, because a weeping joint always shows itself on the first proper heat cycle rather than on the day it was made. Commissioning is not a formality either: the system wants filling with inhibitor, the radiators want balancing against each other, and somebody should set the controls up with you rather than leaving a booklet on the worktop. Working from the High Street means the snagging and any revisit are straightforward to arrange rather than something you have to chase us for.
More in Godstone
Everything we do in Godstone is on the Godstone area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the heating & plumbing page.
Common questions
Q.01Are you actually based in Godstone?
Yes, at 27 High Street in the village. Having the office here is what makes surveys, deliveries and coming back to check something straightforward.
Q.02Will the floors have to come up?
Usually some of them, because that is where the pipework runs. Boards get lifted rather than cut wherever possible, and are refitted by our own carpenters afterwards.
Q.03Who patches the plaster and brickwork afterwards?
We do. Our own team handles the chasing, patching and making good, and it is priced at the start rather than added at the end.
Q.04Can you do the heating as part of a full refurbishment?
Yes, and it is the right way round. The heating first fix wants doing alongside the rewiring and replastering, not in a separate visit that means lifting the same floors twice.
Thinking about heating & plumbing in Godstone?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.