Plumber in Brislington, Bristol: open 24/7
Leaks, burst pipes, blocked drains, toilets and taps. A local plumbing and drainage service for Brislington and the surrounding areas, day or night.
What we can help with
We’re a plumbing and drainage service. We don’t do gas, boiler or electrical work, so everything we take on is water in, water out, and the pipes in between.
Leak detection & repair
Drips under sinks, damp patches on ceilings, a meter that keeps turning. We trace the source and repair it.
Leak repair →Burst & frozen pipes
Water coming through a ceiling or a pipe split by frost. Turn off your stop tap and call us, any hour.
Burst pipes →Blocked drains
Slow sinks, overflowing gullies, a blocked manhole or toilet. We clear blockages and find out what caused them.
Blocked drains →Toilet repair & replacement
Constant running, weak flushes, leaks at the base, blocked pans. Repairs, new cisterns and full replacements.
Toilet repairs →Taps & sinks
Dripping or stiff taps, limescale-clogged aerators, new kitchen and bathroom taps, sink waste and trap leaks.
Taps and sinks →Pipework repair & replacement
Corroded, noisy or leaking pipes, outside taps, stop taps, and replacing old lead or galvanised runs.
Pipework →Appliance plumbing
Plumbing in washing machines and dishwashers, new valves, waste connections and fixing leaks behind appliances.
Appliance plumbing →Bathroom & kitchen plumbing
Replacing basins, baths, mixer showers, sinks and wastes. Plumbing only, no gas or electrical work.
Bathroom and kitchen →Plumbing in Brislington: what’s under the floorboards
Brislington grew from a village into a suburb, and its homes show it. The conservation area around Hollywood Road and Church Hill, on either side of Brislington Brook, has stone cottages and houses dating back to the village’s 18th-century core. Knowle and St Anne’s were built as council estates between the wars. Stockwood’s upper estate came in the 1960s, and new homes are planned at Brislington Meadows.
That mix matters for plumbing. Bristol Water says homes built before the 1970s could still have lead pipework somewhere between the stop tap and the kitchen tap. An older house may also have a mix of copper, iron and plastic from decades of alterations. When we fix a leak, we look at what’s around it as well.
The water itself plays a part too. Bristol Water classes all the water in its area as moderately hard to very hard, because of the limestone it comes through. Hard water leaves limescale in taps, shower heads, toilet cisterns and appliance valves, and it’s behind a good share of stiff taps and slow-filling cisterns.
Drains: whose problem is it?
Since 1 October 2011, shared sewers and lateral drains (the pipes outside your property boundary) belong to the sewerage company, which in Brislington is Wessex Water. The drain that serves only your home, within your own boundary, is yours to look after.
So if your neighbours’ gullies are backing up as well as yours, the blockage may be in the shared sewer, and Wessex Water should deal with it. If it’s only your drain, it’s a job for us. We’ll tell you honestly which it looks like when you call.
Areas we cover
We’re based in Brislington and work up to about ten miles around: across the city and the surrounding areas, out to Keynsham, Kingswood and beyond.
Close to Brislington
- Arnos Vale
- Knowle
- St Anne’s
- Totterdown
- Hengrove
- Stockwood
- Whitchurch
- Hanham
- St George
East & south-east
- Keynsham
- Longwell Green
- Warmley
- Oldland Common
- Bitton
- Saltford
- Bath
North & north-east
- Kingswood
- Fishponds
- Downend
- Frenchay
- Emersons Green
- Yate
City & west
- Bedminster
- Southville
- Redcliffe
- Clifton
- Redland
- Bishopston
- Bishopsworth
- Westbury-on-Trym
- Filton
- Long Ashton
- Nailsea
South
- Pensford
- Chew Magna
What happens when you call
When you ring 0117 214 1207, you’ll speak to someone who wants to understand the problem before anything else. We’ll ask what you can see, where the water is coming from or going to, when it started, and whether you’ve managed to turn the water off. Those few questions usually tell us whether it’s a job that needs someone tonight, one that can safely wait until the morning, or something that isn’t a plumbing job at all.
If it’s ours, we’ll talk you through what we think is going on and what it’s likely to involve, and the quote is free. If it isn’t ours, perhaps a shared sewer for Wessex Water, a leak on the water company’s side of the stop tap, or anything to do with gas, we’ll say so and tell you who to call instead. Nobody wants to pay for a visit that was never going to fix the problem.
Your stop tap: the most useful thing in the house
Most water damage gets worse in the minutes between a pipe failing and someone finding a way to stop it. That’s why the single most useful thing any homeowner or tenant can do is find their internal stop tap now, on a quiet day, rather than in the dark with water coming through the ceiling.
In most houses it’s under the kitchen sink, close to where the supply pipe comes up through the floor. In older terraces it can be under the stairs, in a front room near the outside wall, or under floorboards in the hallway. In flats it’s sometimes in an airing cupboard or a cupboard by the front door. Turn it clockwise to close it. If it won’t move with firm hand pressure, don’t force it with a wrench, because old stop taps can snap. A seized stop tap is worth replacing before you need it.
Look out for smaller isolation valves too. There’s often one on the pipe feeding each toilet cistern, under each sink tap and behind the washing machine. They’re usually a small screw-slot fitting that you turn a quarter-turn with a flat-head screwdriver. Knowing where they are means one leaking tap doesn’t have to mean shutting off the whole house.
Hard water: what it does to your plumbing
Bristol Water classes all of its supply as moderately hard to very hard. In practice that means limescale. You’ll see it as white crust on taps and shower heads, but most of it builds up where you can’t see it: inside tap cartridges, toilet fill valves, appliance inlet valves and the small holes in shower heads and tap aerators.
The signs creep up slowly. A tap that needs more force to turn, a shower that sprays sideways, a cistern that takes longer to refill, a washing machine that’s slow to draw water. Some of this you can sort yourself. Unscrewing a tap aerator or a shower head and soaking it in diluted white vinegar will often bring the flow back. When the scale is inside a valve or cartridge, it’s usually a part replacement rather than a clean, and that’s where we come in.
Winter checklist for older homes
Burst pipes are at their most common in the cold snaps, and the damage often shows up when the ice thaws rather than when it forms. A few things done in autumn make a real difference:
- Lag pipes in the loft, garage, utility room and any outbuilding, and lag the cold water tank if you have one
- Turn off and drain outside taps, or have an isolation valve fitted inside so you can
- Fix dripping taps and overflows, because a slow drip in an exposed pipe freezes first
- Check that your stop tap turns
- If you’re going away in a cold spell, keep the heating on low rather than off
If a pipe does freeze but hasn’t split, Bristol Water’s advice is to thaw it gently with warm towels or a hot water bottle, never a naked flame.
Buying or renting an older home in Brislington?
Viewings rarely leave time to think about plumbing, but a few quick checks can tell you a lot. Find the internal stop tap and look at the pipe going into it. If it’s dull grey and soft-looking with rounded joints, it may be lead, which Bristol Water says is possible in homes built before the 1970s. Run the cold kitchen tap and see whether the flow is strong. Flush the toilets and watch how quickly the cisterns refill. Look in the cupboard under the kitchen sink for staining or swollen boards, and check ceilings below bathrooms for patches.
None of these will tell you everything, and they’re no substitute for a proper survey, but they’ll give you sensible questions to ask. If you’d like a plumber to look over specific things after you’ve moved in, call us and we’ll talk it through.
Drains after heavy rain
Brislington Brook runs through the heart of the old village, and the area has a flood defence scheme that was built between 1964 and 1978 and later repaired by the Environment Agency. River flooding is a separate matter from the drains around your home, but heavy rain is when blocked gullies and slow drains show themselves. Leaves and silt build up in outside gullies over autumn. When a downpour arrives, the water has nowhere to go and backs up around the house.
Clearing the gully grates around your home before winter takes ten minutes with gloves and a bin bag. If water still sits in a gully after the rain has stopped, or you can hear gurgling from inside the house, there may be a blockage further down. That’s when it’s worth a call.
Sources: Bristol Water, water hardness, lead pipe and winter pipe guidance; Environment Agency, Brislington flood defence works, 2020.
Common questions
Are you really available 24/7?
Yes. You can call 0117 214 1207 at any time, including nights, weekends and bank holidays.
Do you work on boilers or gas?
No. We don’t do any gas, boiler or central heating work. For those, use a Gas Safe registered engineer. You can check any engineer on the Gas Safe Register website.
Do you deal with blocked drains?
Yes. We clear blocked sinks, toilets, gullies and drains on your property. If the problem is in a shared sewer, we’ll point you to Wessex Water.
How much will it cost?
Every job is different, so we’ll talk it through with you before we start. Call us for a free quote over the phone.
Sources: Bristol City Council, Brislington Conservation Area enhancement statement; Bristol Water, water hardness and lead pipe guidance; GOV.UK, private sewer transfer, 2011.
Plumbing problem right now?
Call us any time of day or night. Quotes are free over the phone.