Plumber in Totterdown and Knowle

On a hillside terrace, rear walls take the wind. Boiler condensate pipes, outside taps and soil stacks on those walls are the first to freeze in a cold snap. A frozen condensate pipe stops a modern boiler working. You can usually thaw it with warm water, not boiling, and reset the boiler. If it keeps freezing, the pipe can be rerouted inside or upsized outside. Our guide to the frozen condensate pipe walks through it.

Bristol Water says it sees a high number of bursts on private pipes every winter, so lagging exposed pipes before the first frost is worth doing.

Totterdown terraces are often taller at the back than the front, so the boiler and its pipes may be two or three floors up a rear wall. Reaching them safely sometimes needs a ladder platform or scaffold tower, which we plan for when we price the job.

Water pressure at the tap depends partly on height. Homes high up on a hill can have lower pressure than homes lower down, and old narrow or lead supply pipes reduce flow further. If your pressure has suddenly dropped, check Bristol Water's incident page first, then check your stop tap is fully open. If it has always been weak, we can measure pressure and flow and look at the supply pipe. See our post on low water pressure in Bristol.

Interwar homes in Knowle often still have the original cold water main under the front garden, loft tanks in some, and boilers that have been swapped several times. When replacing a boiler here, we look at the whole system, clean it and fit a filter and scale protection, because Bristol Water's supply is moderately hard to very hard.

Steep streets also affect drains. On a hillside terrace, the drain often falls sharply to the sewer in the road. That helps drains run, but old joints on steep runs can crack and let roots in. If drains block repeatedly, a camera survey shows whether a joint has moved.