Unvented Cylinder Servicing & Repair in Bromley
G3 qualified servicing, repair and pre-purchase inspection of unvented hot water cylinders across Bromley, Beckenham, Bickley and Hayes. £140 with no VAT, and a written inspection record every visit.
paymentsBromley Pricing
- check_circle£140 full G3 annual service, no VAT
- check_circle£270 cylinder + heat pump together
- descriptionWritten inspection record every visit
- scheduleEvenings & weekends available
Why Bromley Homes Need G3 Servicing
Bromley has a very high proportion of the housing that runs on unvented cylinders — the larger Victorian and Edwardian properties around Bickley, Shortlands and Park Langley, the family homes in Hayes and West Wickham, and the newer developments around Bromley South where system boilers and unvented cylinders were fitted as standard. Two, three or four bathrooms all wanting mains-pressure hot water at once is exactly what an unvented cylinder is for.
The catch is that an unvented cylinder is a pressurised vessel. Its safety devices — the temperature and pressure relief valve, the expansion relief valve and the thermal cut-out — are what stand between normal operation and a genuinely dangerous failure. They must be tested annually, by law, by someone holding the G3 qualification.
I'm based in Orpington, roughly 15 minutes from Bromley town centre, so Bromley isn't a long-distance call-out for me. I cover BR1, BR2, BR3 and BR4 in full.
What I Find Most Often in Bromley
Water discharging from the tundish
The most common call. A safety valve is passing, and the usual culprit is the expansion vessel — either it has lost its charge, or it was set wrong at commissioning. I once found a vessel charged 0.5 bar above what the incoming mains could deliver, so it could not absorb expansion properly.
Expansion vessel never commissioned
A great many cylinders are left at the factory precharge from the year they were made, never adjusted to suit the property. The pre-charge should be set in line with the manufacturer's instructions for your cylinder, using properly taken pressure readings — checking and resetting it is part of every service I do.
Low hot water pressure but cold is fine
Almost always the strainer in the inlet control group, which fills with debris from the mains. Easy to clean once you know where to look.
Non-compliant discharge pipework
I regularly find two 15mm relief valve discharges combined into a single 15mm manifold, which does not comply with Approved Document G3. It matters — in a real over-pressure event the pipework has to carry the discharge away safely.
Bromley Cylinder Questions
Book Your Bromley Cylinder Service
£140 with no VAT, written inspection record every visit, across Bromley, Beckenham, Bickley, Hayes and West Wickham.
call07717 846247When to Get It Looked At
Almost every cylinder I attend had been dropping hints for months. None of these are dramatic, which is exactly why they get ignored.
Reduced flow at every hot outlet at once
Points at the cylinder or its controls rather than an individual tap, and is usually the pressure reducing valve or the strainer.
Water in the tundish
Even an occasional drip after the cylinder heats means a safety valve has operated. It is the clearest warning you get and the one most often ignored.
Rusty or discoloured hot water
Worth investigating quickly. On an indirect cylinder it can point at the coil; elsewhere it may be pipework rather than the vessel.
Banging, knocking or kettling
Noise from the cylinder or pipework usually means scale, trapped air, or a valve operating when it should not be.
Hot water runs out sooner than it did
Often a failing immersion, a scaled coil, or a thermostat that has drifted out of calibration. All repairable, all cheaper caught early.
What It Costs
A full G3 annual service is £140 with no VAT — I am not VAT-registered, so that is the whole price rather than a figure with twenty percent waiting behind it.
Servicing a cylinder and an air source heat pump in the same visit is £270 instead of £170 and £140 separately. That is £40 saved, and it makes sense because one heats the water the other stores.
What I will not do is quote for a replacement cylinder before measuring your incoming mains pressure and checking the expansion vessel charge. A lot of cylinders get replaced when a valve would have fixed them.
