A lot of Surrey's care is delivered in buildings that weren't designed for it. Country houses became nursing homes, Edwardian villas became private clinics, and boarding houses gained en-suites decades after they were built. Each change added plumbing, and usually a few more mixing valves. Our job is to find them all and keep them safe.
Care homes in converted houses
Care and nursing homes are everywhere in Surrey, and plenty of them started life as a single big house. Over time they've grown wings, annexes and garden rooms. That tends to leave two things behind: several separate hot water systems, and long pipe runs between a TMV and the tap it serves.
Long runs matter. HTM 04-01 Part B points out that pipework downstream of a TMV sits at the kind of temperature bacteria like. So alongside testing the valve, we note where it sits relative to the outlet and flag anything worth raising with your Legionella risk assessor. For residents, the safe bath limit in HSE's health and social care guidance is 44°C, and assisted baths are where we spend most of our time. Scalding risk in care homes: where TMVs fit in goes into more detail.
Private hospitals and clinics
The county has a strong independent healthcare sector alongside its NHS hospitals: private hospitals, day surgery units, physiotherapy and rehab centres, dental practices. If you're delivering healthcare, HTM 04-01 is the benchmark people will hold you to, so TMV3 valves and D 08 style in-service testing are the norm. We report per valve, ready for your Water Safety Group or whoever owns water safety on site.
Independent and boarding schools
Surrey has many independent schools, and boarding means residential bathrooms that get used every morning and evening for most of the year. Add medical centres, swimming pool changing rooms and junior school washrooms, and a single campus can have valves in a dozen different buildings.
We schedule around the school day. Boarding house showers are easiest to test once pupils have gone to lessons. Bigger jobs, such as a run of cartridge replacements, fit neatly into the holidays. TMVs in schools and nurseries: a practical guide covers the practical side.
Hotels, golf clubs and business parks
Country house hotels, conference venues, golf and leisure clubs all have guest showers and changing rooms. Out along the M3 and M25 there are business parks with staff showers and accessible WCs. These valves are rarely high risk, but they still scale up and drift, and nobody wants a guest scalded on a Saturday night.
Water in Surrey
Surrey doesn't have one water company. Depending on where you are, you could be supplied by Thames Water, Affinity Water, SES Water or South East Water. Hardness varies too. Much of the county, especially on the North Downs chalk, gets hard water, while some areas are noticeably softer. Your supplier's postcode checker will tell you where you stand.
Hard or soft, we check strainers and look for scale at every visit. On harder supplies we'd expect descaling to be a regular part of the service rather than an occasional extra.
Getting to you
From Chiswick the A316 takes us straight onto the M3, and the M25, A3 and M23 cover the rest of the county. Most Surrey sites have on-site parking, which makes life easier than central London. Town centres such as Guildford and Woking can be busier, so we'll check access when we book.
Towns we cover in Surrey
- Guildford
- Woking
- Epsom
- Ewell
- Reigate
- Redhill
- Dorking
- Leatherhead
- Esher
- Walton-on-Thames
- Weybridge
- Staines-upon-Thames
- Egham
- Camberley
- Farnham
- Godalming
- Haslemere
- Cranleigh
- Caterham
- Oxted
- Banstead
- Horley