Plumber and heating engineer in Barking

New blocks, and the unit in the cupboard

Barking has had more new flats built in it over the last decade than almost anywhere else we cover, and the great majority are on communal or district heating. That means no boiler, no flue and no gas in the flat: what you have is a heat interface unit taking hot water from the building's plant.

We fit, repair and service those. Servicing is £130 for a single flat and less per flat when several are done in the same visit, which is why a lot of our Barking work comes through landlords and managing agents rather than individual residents.

The older streets

Behind the new build there is a great deal of Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing, much of it converted into flats. Converted property needs care: what looks like one heating system is frequently two, the controls rarely match what the pipework does, and the stopcock serving your flat may not be in your flat.

The jobs that repeat

Leaks between flats, drains shared between two homes, radiators that were added without the system being rebalanced, and heat interface units with error codes. We also cover East Ham and Chadwell Heath from here.

Who usually rings us here

More of our Barking work comes from landlords and managing agents than from individual residents, simply because of how much of the housing is flats in managed blocks. That changes the job: several units in a day, access arranged in advance, and one report at the end rather than a conversation at each door.

For a resident in a managed block it is worth checking whether servicing is already arranged by the building before booking it yourself, because in some developments it is.