What a Chester emergency usually looks like
Chester's housing decides where a leak goes. In the Victorian and Edwardian terraces of Hoole, Boughton and Newton the bathroom is often in the back addition or a former bedroom, with a cast-iron waste under the floor that has been there for a century; when a joint on it or on the bath trap gives way, the water shows on the ceiling of the room below. The sooner it is stopped, the less ceiling there is to put right.
In the converted flats of Hoole and the city centre, a leak reaches the flat below quickly, so turn the water off and tell the neighbour too. Upton's larger semis and detached houses tend to have ensuites over a bedroom or the living room, and an ensuite shower leak usually comes down to failed silicone, a tray that has moved or a weeping waste. In Blacon and Lache, the compact post-war bathroom with the separate toilet beside it means an overflowing cistern or a blocked pan can put the only toilet in the house out of use.
Example scenario: a Hoole terrace, late on a Sunday
Water is dripping through the kitchen ceiling under a bathroom in the back addition. The owner turns the stopcock off under the sink, switches the kitchen lights off at the consumer unit and sends a WhatsApp video. We drive over from Wrexham, lift the bath panel, find the old waste joint weeping where it meets the cast-iron pipe, and replace that run with plastic at the right fall. The water goes back on; the ceiling is left to dry before a decorator looks at it, and the owner has photos for the insurer.
Before we get there
Turn the water off at the main stopcock, close the isolating valve on the toilet or basin if that is where the water is coming from, and switch off at the consumer unit if water is near a light, but only from a dry floor. Put buckets under the drip and take photos for your insurer. The full first-five-minutes list, with where to look for the stopcock, is on our emergency page.
Severn Trent's pipe or yours
Chester's water comes from Severn Trent, which took over Dee Valley Water's English side in 2018; on the Saltney edge it is Hafren Dyfrdwy. Water coming up through a pavement in Hoole or a road in Upton, or a leak on the pipe before the outside stop tap, is theirs to repair, so report it to them rather than to a plumber. From the boundary to the house the pipe is the owner's, and a leak inside the house, in or under the bathroom, is ours to stop and repair.
Landlords, agents and student houses
A good share of Chester's bathrooms are let, from the student houses of the Garden Quarter to flats in the city centre. Landlords and agents can give tenants our number for out-of-hours leaks; we agree the cost with you, as the one paying, before any work starts. Planned work between tenancies is on our landlord page.
Not boilers, not gas
We do bathroom plumbing only. A boiler that has stopped, a heating leak or no hot water from the boiler needs a heating engineer. If you smell gas anywhere in the house, ring the National Gas emergency line on 0800 111 999 before anything else.
After the emergency: the repair and the refit
Most leaks are fixed on the visit. Some are a sign of a bathroom at the end of its life: a tray that flexes, tiles coming off a wall that has been wet for months, a cast-iron waste rusted through. Then the lasting fix is a refit, and in Chester's older houses that is the work Nikolay does most, with the walls boarded before tiling and the old wastes renewed. Our Chester bathroom page has the detail on the houses, the council and where to choose a suite.