Hard water first, because it decides the fittings
Severn Trent supplies every SY11 postcode and lists the Oswestry zone at 245 milligrams per litre of calcium carbonate, which is hard; the neighbouring Ellesmere zone is harder still at 274 and Weston Rhyn is 239. The supplier's own research found Oswestry households less happy with hardness than most, and we see why: white scale on shower glass within weeks, blocked rainfall heads, furred electric shower elements and taps that lose their shine.
So in Oswestry we specify differently. A thermostatic mixer with an easy-clean rubber-nozzle head, which you wipe rather than descale; glass with a factory limescale-resistant coating; brassware in a finish that hides scale (brushed rather than polished chrome); and a conversation about a water softener, which in a house this hard is worth the money if you are renovating anyway, because it protects the boiler and the cylinder as well as the bathroom. An electric shower in Oswestry water needs its element descaling or replacing more often than one in Wrexham, and we say so before you choose one.
Oswestry's houses, from Church Street to Cambrian Fields
Most of the town centre is a conservation area: Georgian and Victorian frontages on Church Street, Bailey Head and Upper Brook Street, with timber-framed survivors such as Llwyd Mansion. Bathrooms in those houses were added to buildings that never had one, often on a half-landing, with solid walls, awkward soil pipe runs and sloping floors, and the job starts with levelling and boarding. The eastern and southern expansion along Cabin Lane, Morda Road, Middleton Road and Shelf Bank is mostly later-twentieth-century semis, the mainstay of the town's housing, with the standard square bathroom and a cistern that has seen better days. Cambrian Fields on the outskirts is new-build, where the developer suite is the one owners replace once the snagging period has passed. Around the fringes there are cottages and farmhouses with stone walls and low ceilings, which need the layout drawn before anything is bought.
Shropshire Council building control
Oswestry comes under Shropshire Council, whose building control service is run in-house from Shrewsbury under the English Building Regulations. New drainage connections and structural work are notified to them; the bathroom electrics are self-certified by the registered electrician we work with, and you get the certificate. In the town-centre conservation area we keep extractor grilles off the front elevations and route ducting to the rear or the roof.
Maesbury Road: the best place in the area to see bathrooms
For a town of its size Oswestry is unusually well served. Maesbury Road has The Bathroom Showroom at City Plumbing on Radfords Field, Morgans Electrical and Plumbing at Mile End Business Park with more than sixty bathrooms on display and a tile showroom, and Evans Tile and Bathroom Centre, also on Radfords Field. Colour Supplies on Whittington Road carries tiles and bathrooms as well. Many of our Oswestry customers choose there and we fit; we check the order list first, especially the shower, against the hard water and your pressure.
The work we do in Oswestry
- Full renovations in town-centre period houses, floors levelled and walls boarded first
- Bath-to-shower conversions in the Cabin Lane and Middleton Road semis
- Wet rooms and level-access showers, including for the retired households the town has many of
- Developer bathrooms and ensuites at Cambrian Fields replaced
- Showers, glass and brassware specified for hard water, with softener advice
- Tiling, wall panels, towel rails, fans and lighting (electrician certified)
- Descaling, resealing, regrouting and leak repairs
Example scenario: a 1970s semi off Middleton Road
A square 2 by 2 metre bathroom with a bath under the window, a furred-up electric shower over it and a shower curtain. We fit a 1600 by 800 low tray where the bath was with a single fixed glass panel, a thermostatic mixer with a rubber-nozzle head and a hand shower, wall panels on the three shower walls, a wall-hung vanity, a new toilet, porcelain on the floor, a towel rail and a humidity fan. We fit an inline scale inhibitor on the feed to the shower and quote a softener as a separate line. Four working days.
Emergency call-outs in Oswestry
Oswestry is about 24 minutes from Wrexham, inside our 24/7 emergency area, so WhatsApp or phone at any hour if a pipe bursts, a cistern will not stop filling or water is coming through a ceiling. Severn Trent supplies SY11, and a leak in the pavement or before the outside stop tap is theirs; from there into the house, it is ours. In water this hard, an isolating valve nobody has turned for years can be stiff, so try yours before you need it.