Emergency Plumber in Finchley

Water through the ceiling of a flat in N3, or a cylinder leaking in N12? Call 07861 933265. A person answers at any hour, there is no call-out fee, and we usually reach Finchley within 60 minutes, whether you are in Church End, North Finchley or Woodside Park.

While you wait: Turn off the stopcock. In a 1930s semi it is normally under the kitchen sink or the stairs. In a house split into flats, look in the hall cupboard or ask the ground-floor flat, because some conversions still share one valve. Keep away from wet switches and sockets. If you can smell gas, ring 0800 111 999 before anything else.

Converted houses and the flat below

Plenty of the larger Victorian and Edwardian houses around Ballards Lane and Church End are now two or three flats. The bathrooms added upstairs drain into the original soil stack, and water from a cracked shower tray or a perished bath seal runs along the joists before it shows on the ceiling of the flat below. That is why the stain often appears a metre or two away from the bathroom above it.

The stack causes the other conversion problem. When it blocks near the bottom, everything from the upper flats backs up into the lowest toilet, so the ground-floor flat floods even though the blockage belongs to everyone.

Semis with a loft tank

Woodside Park, West Finchley and the roads off Hendon Lane are mostly 1930s semis and mock-Tudor detached houses, and many still have a cold water tank in the loft feeding a copper cylinder. Most water in the south-east of England is hard, and in a cylinder that means scale on the immersion element and the coil. Hot water takes longer and runs out sooner. The other classic is a float valve sticking in the loft tank, which leaves the overflow pipe running down the outside wall or, if the overflow is blocked, sends water through a bedroom ceiling.

Long gardens, long pipes

Finchley gardens are generous, so drains and supply pipes run a long way. Old clay drains under the older streets let tree roots in at the joints, and a drain that serves only your house is yours to clear, while a sewer shared with neighbours is the water company’s. Outside taps at the end of long gardens are the first thing to freeze: isolate them from inside and leave the tap open over winter.

What it costs

There is no call-out fee. The first hour is £110, each further half hour is £45, and parts are extra. See the price page for how it works. We also cover Whetstone, Friern Barnet, Totteridge and East Finchley.