Leaks, blocked drains, banging pipes, water pressure, hot water safety, bathroom refits — and the questions people ask about us before they let a plumber through the door. Each one has its own page, answered properly.
Answers
51 answers, sorted by the thing that's actually gone wrong. If yours isn't here, describe it on the quote form and your plumber will talk it through with you.
Yes. For a burst pipe, a major leak, no water or no heating, choose "Emergency / burst pipe" as the job type on the quote form and your job is prioritised for the fastest call back we can manage. If you can smell gas, call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 first — before you do anything else.
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Turn the water off at the stopcock, then open the cold taps to drain the pipes down. If water is anywhere near electrics, turn the power off at the consumer unit. Then call a plumber. If you can smell gas, call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 instead — that comes before everything else.
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Your internal stopcock is most often under the kitchen sink. Failing that, look in the downstairs loo, an airing cupboard, under the stairs, or near where the mains pipe enters the house. It closes clockwise — "righty tighty". There's also an external stop tap, usually under a small metal cover in the path or pavement outside — and in Macclesfield's older terraces, that outside one is often in the pavement itself and shared with next door.
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Most plumbing emergencies give warning first. Lag your pipes before winter, get the boiler serviced once a year, keep fat and wipes out of the drains, replace flexible tap hoses before they perish, and deal with small drips rather than living with them. Knowing where your stopcock is turns a disaster into an inconvenience.
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Lag every pipe in an unheated space — the loft, the garage, the outside tap — and keep the heating on low rather than off when it's freezing, even if you're away. If a pipe does freeze, turn the water off at the stopcock first, then thaw it gently with a hot water bottle or a warm towel. Never use a naked flame or a blowtorch. This matters more the higher up you live: the hills above Macclesfield get a good deal more frost than the town does.
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Yes — if you're away for more than a few days, turning the water off at the stopcock is cheap insurance. A leak that would be a wiped-up puddle while you're home becomes a fortnight of running water while you're not. In winter, leave the heating on a low setting or its frost protection so the pipes don't freeze while the water is off.
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The classic test: turn every tap and water-using appliance off, then check your water meter. If it's still ticking over, water is going somewhere it shouldn't. Other tell-tales are a water bill that's jumped for no reason, a patch of damp or a musty smell, a boiler losing pressure, or a warm patch on the floor.
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Turn the water off at the stopcock, put a bucket or towels under the leak, and keep water away from electrics — if it's anywhere near a light fitting or socket, turn the power off too. Take a photo, then call a plumber. Don't leave a "small" leak running: water damage compounds quickly, and it's the damage that costs, not the pipe.
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Wipe the back of the pan dry, then press a square of dry toilet paper against the porcelain just below the cistern, and leave it 15 minutes without flushing. If the paper is wet or wrinkled, water is trickling from the cistern into the pan. A leaky loo makes no mess and no noise, which is why it can waste hundreds of litres a day unnoticed.
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Look for the signs first: a damp or discoloured patch, blistering paint, a musty smell, or a wall that feels cold and soft. Confirm it's live with the water meter test. Then it's a job for proper leak detection — a moisture meter, a thermal camera or acoustic listening gear — rather than guesswork with a hammer.
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Insulate the pipe. Condensation forms when warm, humid air meets a cold pipe surface, so foam pipe lagging — which keeps that air off the cold metal — stops it. Improving ventilation and reducing humidity in the room helps too. It isn't a leak, but left alone it drips, stains and eventually rots what's underneath.
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Usually it covers the damage, not the plumbing. Buildings insurance typically pays for "escape of water" — the ruined ceiling, floor and decoration — while the failed pipe or appliance itself is normally your own cost. Many policies also include "trace and access" cover, which pays to find the leak and open up to reach it. Gradual leaks and wear and tear are commonly excluded, so read your own policy.
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If nothing has changed about how you use water, a jump in a metered bill usually means a leak — and the most likely culprit is a loo quietly running into the pan. Other explanations are an estimated reading being corrected, a tariff change, more people in the house, or a hot summer of hosepipe and paddling pool.
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A slow sink is a partial blockage — nearly always fat, soap and food congealed in the trap or the waste pipe just past it. It won't clear itself, and it will become a full blockage. Start with the trap: put a bucket underneath, unscrew it, and clean it out. That fixes the majority of slow kitchen sinks.
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Bail the standing water out first — you can't plunge effectively through a full bowl, and you don't want to be splashing chemicals about. Then block the overflow with a wet cloth, seal the plunger over the plughole and work it firmly a dozen times. If that fails, put a bucket under the trap and clean the trap out by hand.
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It's almost always hair bound up with soap scum, sitting just below the grate. Lift the grate out, hook the clog out with a drain snake or a bent piece of wire, then flush the trap through with hot water. A hair catcher over the waste stops it coming back — this is a blockage that returns unless you stop feeding it.
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Lift the drain cover and look. If the chamber is full or standing with water, the blockage is downstream of it; if it's empty and dry while the house is backing up, the blockage is between the house and that chamber. Gurgling, bad smells outside, and several fixtures draining slowly at once all point the same way.
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Very often it's United Utilities, not you — and they'll clear it free. Since October 2011, drains shared by more than one property have been the water company's responsibility from the point where your drain meets your neighbour's. In a Macclesfield terrace that's usually a few feet outside the back door, which means a great many blockages people pay privately to clear were never theirs to pay for.
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Cloudy or milky-looking water is nearly always harmless air. Fill a glass and watch it: if it clears from the bottom upwards within a minute or two, that's tiny air bubbles escaping and there's nothing wrong. If it stays cloudy, clears from the top down, or is discoloured brown or yellow, stop drinking it and ring your water supplier.
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A bang when a tap or appliance shuts off is water hammer — moving water stopped abruptly, sending a shockwave down the pipe. A rattle or knock while water runs is usually a pipe that isn't clipped properly, vibrating against a joist. Neither is harmless: over time water hammer loosens joints and fittings.
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The usual trick is to connect a hose between a mains-pressure tap (normally the kitchen cold) and the airlocked tap, then run the mains tap so the pressure pushes the trapped air back out. Spluttering taps, no flow from one outlet while others are fine, and banging or gurgling after work on the system are the classic signs.
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Typical UK mains pressure at the tap is somewhere between about 1 and 4 bar, and most homes and appliances are happy in that range. Many combi boilers and power showers want at least 1 bar, and often a decent flow rate as well as pressure. Much above 4–5 bar and you're into territory where a pressure-reducing valve is worth fitting.
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In England and Wales, water companies must maintain a minimum of 7 metres of static head at the boundary of your property — roughly 0.7 bar. In Macclesfield that's United Utilities' obligation, and it comes with money attached: under their guaranteed standards, if pressure at the boundary drops below it twice inside four weeks, for over an hour each time, you can claim a payment. It's a regulatory floor at the stop tap, though — not a promise of a good shower.
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The commonest causes are a stop tap or isolation valve not fully open, a blocked tap aerator, old narrow-bore or corroded pipework, a failing pressure-reducing valve, a hidden leak, or peak demand. In Macclesfield there are two more worth checking before any of those: whether you live on the high ground, where pressure is legitimately lower, and whether you're on an old shared supply pipe feeding next door as well as you.
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On a combi boiler, lukewarm water usually points to a failing diverter valve or a blocked plate heat exchanger. On a cylinder system, it's more often a thermostat set too low, a failed immersion heater, or a programmer that isn't running the hot water for long enough. If it's lukewarm at just one tap, suspect that tap's mixer or a thermostatic valve rather than the boiler.
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Stored hot water should be kept at 60°C or above, and should reach the taps at 50°C or more, within about a minute of running. That's hot enough to control Legionella bacteria in the cylinder. Because water at that temperature will also scald, the answer is not to store it cooler but to limit the temperature at the outlet — with a thermostatic mixing valve.
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Cold water should be delivered at 20°C or below, and should get down to that within a couple of minutes of running the tap. Above 20°C, cold water is in the range where bacteria including Legionella can multiply — so cold pipework should be kept away from heat sources, and lagged where it runs alongside hot pipes or through a warm space.
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Two, and they pull in opposite directions. Water stored too cool — roughly 20°C to 45°C — lets bacteria such as Legionella multiply. Water delivered too hot scalds, and it does so faster than people expect: at around 60°C, serious burns happen in a matter of seconds, and far quicker on a child's skin. The safe answer is to store hot and deliver blended.
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Fit a thermostatic mixing valve, which blends the hot water down to a safe temperature at the outlet while the cylinder stays hot enough to be safe from bacteria. In new-build homes, bath hot taps are already required to be limited to a maximum of 48°C. Beyond that: run cold into the bath first, and always test the water before anyone gets in.
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Isolate the water to that tap, then replace the worn part. On a traditional tap with a handle you turn several times, that's a rubber washer. On a modern quarter-turn tap, it's a ceramic cartridge — and cartridges are tap-specific, so take the old one with you to buy the new one. A drip from around the spout base is usually an O-ring instead.
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A tap that wobbles has a loose backnut underneath the basin. Turn the water off, get under there with a basin wrench, and tighten the nut that clamps the tap down onto the surface. On a thin basin or a sink with a large hole, it often also needs a top-hat washer or stabilising plate to give the nut something solid to pull against.
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A toilet that keeps running has one of two faults: the fill valve isn't shutting off when the cistern is full, or the flush valve is letting water leak straight through into the pan. Take the cistern lid off and watch it fill — if the water rises past the fill line and into the overflow, it's the fill valve; if the level is fine but water still trickles into the pan, it's the flush valve.
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Gurgling is air being pulled through the water in the trap, and it means the drain isn't venting or draining freely. Usually that's a partial blockage further down the soil pipe, or a blocked soil vent. Take it seriously: a gurgling loo is often the first warning of a blockage that ends with the drains backing up into the house.
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Yes, usually noticeably. Swapping fittings in the same positions is largely a fitting job. Moving them means new hot, cold and waste runs — and moving a WC means moving the soil pipe, which is the expensive one, because waste has to fall at the right gradient and that often means lifting floors or boxing in. What it costs also depends heavily on the age of your house: this is a much bigger job in a Victorian terrace than in a 1970s semi.
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If it's your only bathroom, think hard before losing the bath — families with small children need one, and estate agents will tell you a house with no bath at all can be harder to sell. If you have a second bathroom or an en-suite, that's the place to go shower-only, and a proper walk-in shower will be used far more often than a bath ever is.
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Tile where the water goes — the shower enclosure, above the bath, behind the basin — and that's non-negotiable. Beyond that it's taste and budget. Full tiling looks seamless and wipes clean but costs more and can feel cold and echoey; part tiling with good moisture-resistant paint above is cheaper, warmer, and far easier to change your mind about later.
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Tiling is the best floor for a bathroom — it's genuinely waterproof, it lasts, and it's the only sensible choice over underfloor heating. The catches are that it's cold underfoot without heating below it, it can be slippery when wet unless you choose a suitable finish, and the floor underneath must be rigid enough not to flex, or the grout will crack.
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In a bathroom, it's one of the few upgrades nobody regrets — it turns a cold tiled floor into a warm one and frees up the wall space a radiator would eat. Fit it during a refit, when the floor is up anyway; retrofitting it later means taking the floor up again, which is where the cost sits.
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Only a little. A towel rail puts out far less heat than a radiator of the same size, and once it's draped in wet towels — which is the whole point of it — most of that output goes into drying the towels rather than warming the room. Treat it as a towel warmer, and heat the room with something else: a radiator, or underfloor heating.
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Soft. Macclesfield's water measures roughly 45 to 68 mg/l of calcium carbonate depending on which part of town you're in — and United Utilities' own guidance is that scale only really starts forming at 200 mg/l and above. So limescale is not a problem here, and you almost certainly do not need a water softener. Anyone trying to sell you one in Macclesfield is selling you a cure for a disease the town hasn't got.
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If your house was built after 1970, no — United Utilities are clear that homes from then on don't have lead. If it was built before 1970, it might, and in Macclesfield's Victorian streets it's a genuine possibility. Find the pipe where it comes into the house, usually by the stopcock: lead is dull grey, soft enough to mark with a coin, and makes a dull thud rather than a ring when you tap it.
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Four things, and they compound: solid walls with no cavity to hide pipework in, original joists that were never sized for a modern bathroom, drains and supply pipes that are often shared with next door, and a front elevation that in much of the town centre sits hard against the pavement — which limits where a boiler flue or a soil pipe can legally go. None of it is a problem. All of it is worth knowing before you commit to a design.
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Usually yes, but not just anywhere. In a conservation area a flue must not be fitted on the principal or side elevation that fronts a highway — so the street-facing wall is out, and you're looking at the rear or a side that doesn't face the road. If the building is listed, you need listed building consent, and doing the work without it is a criminal offence rather than a paperwork problem.
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No. Macclesfield Plumbers is not a lead marketplace or a bidding site. Your job goes to one local plumber who covers Macclesfield — the same person who rings you back and does the work. Your details are never auctioned, sold on, or sent to a list of competing trades.
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Nothing. The call back and the quote are free, and you're under no obligation to go ahead. You only ever pay for the plumbing work itself, at a price you've agreed with your plumber before the job starts.
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Yes. The plumber is fully insured, and Gas Safe registered for any work involving gas or your boiler — which is a legal requirement in the UK. You're welcome to ask to see the registration card and insurance before work starts.
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Usually the same day. During working hours it's often within the hour. If you mark the job as an emergency, it goes to the top of the pile and you'll be called as quickly as the plumber can get to a phone.
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Macclesfield first and foremost — every part of the town, from the centre out to Hurdsfield, Tytherington, Broken Cross, Upton Priory, Weston, Moss Rose — plus the villages and high ground immediately around it, and the wider Cheshire towns beyond. It's a deliberately small patch, which is why same-day visits are realistic. Put your postcode on the quote form and we'll confirm straight away whether we reach you.
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One independent local plumber — the same person who rings you back. This site is how you reach them and how the job gets booked in; they're the one on the tools. You agree the price and the work with them directly, so you stay in control of both.
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No. Your details go to one plumber and nobody else. We don't sell leads, we don't run a bidding board, and we don't pass your number to third parties for marketing. You get one call, from the plumber who'd be doing the job.
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Anything plumbing and heating: leaks and dripping taps, blocked drains and toilets, boiler repairs, servicing and new installs, radiators and central heating, bathroom and shower fitting, and emergency call-outs across Macclesfield.
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Tell us what you need and it goes straight to our Macclesfield plumber — one callback, usually the same day. The quote is free and there's no obligation.