What safety checks does a landlord need on a rented house here?
In England, private landlords have a short list of legal checks, and the estates around Saffron Lane and Eyres Monsell have plenty of privately rented homes alongside owner-occupied ones. We handle the electrical side and the alarms; gas is for a Gas Safe registered engineer.
- EICR at least every five years
- We carry these out, with a copy for your tenants.
- Remedial work within 28 days
- Or sooner if the report says so.
- A smoke alarm on every storey
- Tested on the first day of a new tenancy.
- A carbon monoxide alarm
- In any room with a fixed combustion appliance, such as a gas boiler.
- Yearly gas safety check
- Not our work; booked separately.
Which alarms should a family home have?
Owner-occupiers aren't held to the landlord rules, but fire services generally recommend a smoke alarm on every floor, a heat alarm in the kitchen and a carbon monoxide alarm near any gas or solid-fuel appliance. In a two-storey post-war house, that usually means three or four alarms in all.
Interlinking them makes the biggest difference: when one goes off, they all do, so a fault in the kitchen wakes the children upstairs. Sealed ten-year alarms save you from changing batteries. We fit the alarms, test them in front of you and show you how to silence a false alarm from cooking.
Can you change a radiator without a gas engineer?
Yes. A radiator is part of the water side of your heating, not the gas side, so swapping, adding or moving one is plumbing work. The boiler itself is where a Gas Safe engineer is needed.
Cold bedrooms are a common reason people call: an old single-panel radiator under the window that's simply too small for the room. We can fit a larger one, add thermostatic valves, then refill, bleed and balance the system so it heats evenly. Where there's no gas heating in a room, an electric radiator is another option. Send photos of the radiator, its valves and the room, and tell us roughly how big the room is.
Why is water dripping from a pipe outside my house?
Usually it's an overflow doing its job: something inside is overfilling. The most common culprit is a toilet cistern whose fill valve no longer shuts off fully. In houses with a loft tank, a stuck float valve can do the same thing.
It isn't an emergency, but it wastes water and can stain walls and paths. Send a photo of the pipe and tell us which room it comes from. If the dripping pipe comes from the boiler, that's a condensate or pressure-relief pipe, and the boiler needs a Gas Safe engineer.
Can you do a whole list of family jobs in one visit?
Yes, and that's often the best use of a visit. A dripping tap, a radiator that won't heat, a new light in the hall, a door that sticks and a wardrobe to assemble can all go on one request, with one fixed price.
We're about 3 miles away, so when the diary allows, we come out the same day for something urgent. For everything else, we agree a day and time that works around school and work, any day from 8am to 8pm.