Heating and plumbing

We will tell you what it costs before we get in the van.

To come out and look, weekday: £114; The first hour, all in. £62 an hour after that.
Same thing at three in the morning: £228; Double time on the labour, and nothing added to the parts. That is the whole of it.

Both figures include VAT at 20%. Every price on this site does.

Why there are prices on this website

Because the first thing anybody wants to know is what it costs to get somebody through the door, and nearly every trades website in the country refuses to say. The usual reason given is that every job is different. The whole job is different; the hourly rate is not, and neither is whether Saturday costs more.

So all of it is here. Every figure on this site is worked out from one rate card — the callout, the hourly rate after it, the mate’s rate where a job needs two of us, and VAT. There is no price typed into any page. If we put the rates up, every number on the site moves the same day, which is the only way a published price list stays honest.

And a calculator, because the other question is harder

The second thing people ask is whether their radiators are the right size, and the honest answer needs a calculation rather than an opinion. There is one further down this page. It does the real thing — fabric loss and ventilation loss, with the standard U-values for the age of the house — and it will tell you something most people are not told: what happens to those radiators the day the boiler is replaced with a heat pump.

The things people ring about

Prices are what you would actually pay on a weekday, materials and VAT included. Click through for the evening, weekend and emergency figures and the full breakdown.

Annual boiler service Strip, clean, check the flue and the combustion, and tell you honestly whether it has another winter in it. £114 about 1 hour on site Replace a radiator, like for like Off with the old one, on with a new one the same size, in the same place. £330 about 2 hours on site Fix a leaking tap Usually a washer or a cartridge. Rarely the whole tap. £131 about 45 minutes on site Clear a blocked soil stack Everything backing up at once usually means the stack, not the sink. We come out for this £151 about 1.5 hours on site Power flush a heating system For a system full of black sludge, with cold spots at the bottom of the radiators. £905 about 6 hours on site New combi boiler, swap for swap A day and a half where the new one goes roughly where the old one was. £2,449 about 9 hours on site

Everything we do, with prices

The bench

No stock photographs of somebody else's boiler cupboard. This is the bench, the van stock and the houses we work on.

Hand tools laid out in rows on a dark bench — The bench, laid out the way it goes back every night.

A row of worn spanners hanging on a board — Spanners by size. The worn ones are the sizes houses actually are.

Fittings and small parts sorted into a tray on a workbench — The van stock: every olive, washer and coupler has a place.

Hands marking a measurement against a steel rule — Measure twice. The pipe does not care how confident you were.

A hand drawing a plan with a ruler and markers — Every quote starts as a drawing of your pipework, not a guess.

The upper storeys of a Victorian terraced house — The houses we work on: solid walls, long pipe runs, character.

What size radiator does this room need?

The real calculation, not a rule of thumb. Sized for the Calder Valley at -4°C outside, which is the coldest it sensibly gets here.

Room

Length, m

Width, m

Height, m

The house was built

Windows

Glass area, m²

Walls facing outside

Ground floor Roof above

Running on

1.40 kW radiator, at its catalogue rating

The room loses 1.37 kW at 91 W per square metre. On boiler, 75° flow that is exactly what the catalogue rating means, because the rating is measured on this system — so the radiator you buy is the number above.

Where the heat goes
Through	Area	U	Watts
External walls	17.6 m²	1.60	702
Windows	2.6 m²	1.60	104
Ground floor	15.1 m²	0.70	265
Ventilation 1.0 air changes an hour through 36.3 m³	—	—	304
Total, holding 21° against -4°			1,375

The same room on every system

Boiler, 75° flow How radiators are rated and how most are still run.	50.0 K	100%	1.40 kW
Boiler, turned down to 60° A condensing boiler actually condensing, which is where its efficiency is.	32.5 K	57%	2.45 kW
Heat pump, 50° flow A heat pump pushed hot to suit existing radiators.	27.5 K	46%	3.00 kW
Heat pump, 45° flow A sensible heat pump design.	22.5 K	35%	3.90 kW
Heat pump, 35° flow What underfloor heating is happy with, and radiators are not.	12.5 K	16%	8.35 kW

This assumes 1919 to 1975: Cavity wall, unfilled. Little or no loft insulation as built. Those are the standard assumptions for the age, and they are assumptions — a solid wall somebody insulated internally in 2015 will not behave like 1900. We measure the real thing before we order anything.