How the call-out fee works in Merton
One rate, any hour, no night or weekend premium on the call-out itself. There are two situations where you do not pay it at all, and both are worth knowing before you ring.
Charged once, 24 hours a day. Covers the engineer attending and diagnosing the fault. Labour is billed separately at from £110 an hour on weekdays and from £140 out of hours.
If the work runs past three hours, the call-out fee is waived and you pay labour and materials only. You are not charged twice for the same visit.
No call-out fee on any visit, on every property, for landlords, property managers, block managers and letting agents on a collaboration contract. Labour and materials only. Ordinary emergency call-outs pay the standard £60. See our property manager terms.
Every figure above is published in full on our pricing page, and the price for your job is agreed in writing before any chargeable work starts.
Two water companies, and only one of them supplies your street
Merton Council states it directly: there are two water companies responsible for supplying water to Merton, and in the event that a water main bursts or there is flooding or a leak from a water service pipe, the relevant company should be contacted. It lists Thames Water and SES Water side by side with separate 24-hour numbers.
SES Water describes its supply area as 322 square miles extending from Morden and South Croydon in the north to Gatwick Airport in the south. Morden is where it stops, which is why part of the SM4 area of Merton is SES territory and the rest of the borough is not. Testing real Merton postcodes against SES Water's own supply-area checker returns matches in Cannon Hill, Lower Morden, Merton Park, St Helier and Ravensbury, and no match across SW19, SW20 outside a small Lower Morden fringe, CR4, KT3 or the SW16 edge. The SM4 6 area is itself split. There is no published boundary map, so the only reliable test is your own postcode against the supplier's checker.
It matters twice over. First, in a genuine emergency, reporting a burst main or a total loss of supply to the wrong company costs hours before anyone attends. Second, the water is measurably different. SES Water publishes hardness by zone, and its 2025 drinking water quality report for the ZL22 Langley Park Morden supply zone, which serves the SES part of Merton from its Cheam treatment works, gives an average of 205.2 mg/l of calcium carbonate, 82.1 mg/l of calcium and 14.37 degrees Clark, and states that on the water hardness scale that zone is a hard water zone. Thames Water, which supplies the rest of the borough, states that all the water in its region is hard and classes 200 to 300 mg/l as hard.
Sewerage is simpler. SES Water does not provide it at all, saying that depending where you live your wastewater services are provided by either Thames Water or Southern Water. For Merton it is Thames Water, which the council names as the sewerage undertaker responsible for provision and maintenance of the sewer network, and which it tells residents to contact for anything beyond their own boundary.
Clay underneath, and a borough with a serious surface water problem
Merton's own flood risk strategy for 2026 to 2036 describes soil predominantly underlain by London Clay, which is generally not permeable, so water will not easily soak into it and tends to run off into streams, rivers and drainage features. It notes that Wimbledon Common and Wimbledon Village sit on gravel over that clay, which is permeable enough to let water soak away but, because the clay lies beneath, creates the potential for groundwater flooding instead.
The consequences are quantified. The council records more than 7,000 residential and over 600 non-residential properties at risk of surface water flooding in a borough of over 80,000 homes, and its flood incident register shows surface water accounting for 286 of 507 recorded flood incidents. It also notes that Thames Water's own flood incident records for the borough date back to 1969 and that the majority of those incidents relate to foul sewers.
The named hotspots are specific. The council reports that the Raynes Park catchment has experienced flooding almost every summer over the past 15 years, with significant rainfall in summer 2021 flooding infrastructure and over 120 properties from both the surface and foul sewer networks as well as from the Beverley Brook and Pyl Brook. It records flooding on 23 September 2024 at High Street Colliers Wood, Byegrove Road and Wandle Park, and at the Cherry Red Records Stadium, Plough Lane and Summerstown. Merton lies within the catchments of the River Wandle in the east, including the River Graveney, and the Beverley Brook in the west, including the Pyl Brook, and the council also names Bunce's Ditch, The Pickle, Wandle Park Ditch and Figge's Marsh Ditch as watercourses to report flooding from.
For a plumber this is not weather commentary, it is a diagnostic prior. On clay, a saturated garden does not drain, so a gully or a soakaway that copes for eleven months backs up in the twelfth. Ground movement on shrinkable clay cracks rigid drainage runs and pulls joints apart, especially near mature trees, which is why root ingress and displaced joints are the two things we look for first on a recurring Merton blockage. And where foul and surface water have been cross-connected at some point in a property's history, heavy rain arrives inside the house rather than outside it. We run CCTV before quoting an excavation, because on clay the right dig is one dig.
Pre-war houses, gas heating, and licensing in four wards
The 2021 Census counted 81,728 Merton households. 35.7% are terraced, the second highest share of any London borough after Barking and Dagenham, 19.0% semi-detached and 5.7% detached, so 60.4% of Merton homes are houses. Purpose-built flats account for 28.4% and converted or shared houses for 9.2%. 55.6% of households own their home, against 45.2% across London, which means most of our Merton customers are the person who actually decides whether to repair or replace.
The stock is old. A stock condition and stressors report commissioned by the council in September 2022, using Valuation Office data, found that Merton has a high number of residential properties, 65.3%, built pre-Second World War, out of a total of 85,767 residential dwellings. The same report notes a gradient of risk with age of property, greatest in dwellings built before 1900. It also records that the private rented sector has grown from 24.8% in 2011 to 34% in 2022, that 6,068 private rented properties are predicted to have at least one Category 1 hazard under the housing health and safety rating system, and that there are 1,774 HMOs distributed across all 20 wards.
Heating in Merton is overwhelmingly gas. 77.6% of households run on mains gas only, the seventh highest share of any London borough and well above London's 70.5%, with 9.8% on electric heating only and just 0.8% on a district or communal heat network. In other words, unlike most of inner London, the emergency here usually is a boiler, a cylinder or a radiator circuit, in a house, with the whole system under one owner's control. That makes honest repair-or-replace advice worth more than it is in a borough of communal plant, and it is what we lead with.
The one part of the borough where the paperwork bites is the east. Merton designated an area for selective licensing on 19 June 2023 covering the wards of Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Longthornton and Pollards Hill, in force from 24 September 2023 and ceasing on 23 September 2028. On the same day it designated an area for additional HMO licensing covering Colliers Wood, Cricket Green, Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Lavender Fields, Longthornton and Pollards Hill, running on the same dates and applying to HMOs occupied by three or more persons comprising two or more households. Merton's published licence conditions do not set any heating, hot water or drainage standard, which is unusual among London schemes, but they do require that where gas is supplied the licence holder produces annually, or within 7 days of a written request, a gas safety certificate obtained within the last 12 months from a registered Gas Safe contractor. The council's 2023 notices list a civil penalty of up to £30,000 for operating without a licence, alongside a rent repayment order of up to 12 months' rental income.
What actually fails in Merton property types
Merton's stock is overwhelmingly pre-war houses on clay, with a Victorian core in Wimbledon and Merton Park and interwar suburbs pushing south to Morden and Mitcham. These are the failures each produces.
Labour is £90/hr on weekdays and £120/hr out of hours, billed in 15-minute increments, with a fixed written price agreed after diagnosis and before the repair starts. Full rates are published on our pricing page.
Getting a van to your door in Merton
Merton is straightforward to reach for fifty weeks of the year and genuinely difficult for the other two. Here is what governs the approach.
The Championships fortnight, and what it closes
Merton Council publishes its Championships parking restrictions under the heading 29 June to 12 July 2026, matching the dates the All England Club gives for The Championships 2026. During Wimbledon fortnight there are restrictions throughout Wimbledon Village, Wimbledon Park and parts of Wimbledon town centre affecting all motorists, payment terminals on affected streets are switched off and parking bays are suspended. Bathgate Road, Cannizaro Road, Church Road, Woodhayes Road, Parkside, Marryat Road, Somerset Road, High Street Wimbledon between Belvedere Grove and Church Road and West Side Common all become no parking 8.30am to 11.30pm every day. A long list of streets including Arthur Road, Burghley Road, Home Park Road, Leopold Road, Revelstoke Road and St Mary's Road become permit holders only 8.30am to 8.30pm. A number of roads close entirely to motor vehicles 8.30am to 11.30pm. Delivery, care worker, resident permit and taxi vehicles are the exempted classes on most of those closures, and residents and their visitors need a permit from the AELTC to enter them. There is no trade exemption, so if you are inside the closure area during the fortnight, tell us when you call and we will plan the approach properly.
Controlled parking that varies from three hours to a full week
Merton publishes a list of controlled parking zones by code rather than a headline number, and the spread of hours is wide. In Wimbledon Village alone, zones VC, VN, VOn, VOs and VOt run Monday to Saturday 8.30am to 6.30pm, VSW and VSW2 run Monday to Friday 8.30am to 6.30pm, VNe and VNS run Monday to Friday 10am to 4pm, VSW1 runs Monday to Friday 11am to 3pm and VQ runs only Monday to Friday 2.30pm to 5.30pm. The council also states that on Boxing Day, New Year's Day and bank holidays parking is free in all zones except W3 and W4 where charges apply between 2pm and 6pm, and that on Christmas Day and Good Friday parking is free in all zones. It adds its own caution that all listed restrictions and hours are for guidance only and signs should be checked on arrival.
A trade permit that works borough-wide
Merton sells a trade parking permit that allows a business to park one vehicle in any controlled parking zone in Merton using the designated bays, available to businesses or tradespersons required to carry out work on any property within a zone. It is a virtual permit tied to a specific vehicle, and the council publishes the prices: £52.50 for 7 days, £160 for a month, £395 for three months, £610 for six and £905 for a year for an electric vehicle, with petrol and higher emission vehicles paying more, up to £1,100 a year for a vehicle producing 226g/km or more. That cost sits inside our rate rather than on your invoice.
No Congestion Charge, ULEZ everywhere
Merton is outside the Congestion Charge zone. TfL's own postcode checker returns addresses in South Wimbledon, Raynes Park, Mitcham, Wimbledon Village and the All England Club as outside it, so there is no £18 daily charge on a job here. ULEZ is different: TfL states that the zone operates across all London boroughs and the City of London, 24 hours a day, every day of the year except Christmas Day, at £12.50 a day for non-compliant vehicles, and that this includes residents of the zone. That charge is already inside our hourly rate.
Conservation areas and Article 4 directions
Merton lists 29 conservation areas, including two covering John Innes' Merton Park garden suburb and one covering Wimbledon Village. The John Innes areas carry four separate Article 4 directions, dating from 1986, 1990 and two from July 2007, which remove permitted development rights that would otherwise apply. That has a practical effect on plumbing: it is the reason a new external soil pipe, flue or rainwater goods replacement in those streets can need consent when the identical work two streets away does not. We flag it before committing you to a permanent reinstatement rather than after.
Home Services in Merton
Gas Safe and NICEIC certified engineers across Merton's terraces, interwar semis, Village houses and Mitcham rentals. 77.6% of homes here run on mains gas alone, so most of this work is boilers, cylinders and drainage rather than communal plant.
Emergency Plumbing
24/7 emergency response - burst pipes, leaks, no water. Engineers on call 24/7 across London.
Learn more →Boiler Repair & Service
77.6% of Merton homes run on mains gas only, the seventh highest share in London. Repairs, servicing and honest repair-or-replace advice.
Learn more →Blocked Drains
London Clay moves, and displaced joints and root ingress are the two things we find first on a recurring Merton blockage. Jetting, root cutting and CCTV proof.
Learn more →Leak Detection
Acoustic and thermal tracing on buried supply pipes running under drives and lawns, so the ground comes up in one place only.
Learn more →CCTV Drain Survey
On clay the right excavation is one excavation. A survey before the dig is the cheapest part of the job in this borough.
Learn more →Electrical Work
NICEIC certified electricians for fuse boards, rewires, sockets and emergency faults.
Learn more →Central Heating
Gravity-fed and sealed systems in pre-war houses, including the loft tank arrangements that two thirds of this borough's stock still has.
Learn more →Redecorating
Interior painting, plastering and decorating after repairs or for full property refresh.
Learn more →General Repairs
Handyman services, property maintenance and general repairs for landlords and homeowners.
Learn more →PPM Contracts
Planned Preventative Maintenance for landlords and property managers. Fixed monthly pricing.
Learn more →Unvented Cylinders
G3 qualified engineers for unvented hot water cylinder installation and servicing.
Learn more →Power Flushing
Interwar and postwar heating circuits in Morden, Raynes Park and Mitcham that have never been cleaned. Flushing restores output before you buy a boiler.
Learn more →Compliance & Specialist Services in Merton
Landlord compliance across SW19, SW20, SM4, CR4 and KT3, in a borough where selective licensing covers Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Longthornton and Pollards Hill and additional HMO licensing covers seven wards until September 2028. Gas safety certificates, cylinder certification, drainage surveys and restoration, with paperwork produced inside the seven days the licence allows.
Gas Safety Certificate (CP12) Merton
Gas Safety Certificate coverage across SM4 and the wider south london area.
Book gas safety certificate →EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report) Merton
EICR coverage across SM4 and the wider south london area.
Book eicr →Commercial Plumber Merton
Commercial Plumbing coverage across SM4 and the wider south london area.
Book commercial plumbing →Water Damage Restoration Merton
Water Damage coverage across SM4 and the wider south london area.
Book water damage →Why Choose Us for Merton?
South west London suburbs are a different job from inner London. This is what we bring to a Merton call-out.
- 30 to 45 minute response across SW19, SW20, SM4, CR4 and KT3
- Engineers who know which half of the borough is SES Water and which is Thames Water, and who to call first
- Drainage diagnosed for clay: displaced joints, root ingress and saturated ground, proved on camera before anyone digs
- Championships fortnight closures and permit zones planned before dispatch, not discovered on arrival
- Straight repair-or-replace answers in a borough where 55.6% of households own their own home
- Fixed price agreed after diagnosis, before the repair starts
- Available 24/7, 365 days a year
Areas Within Merton We Cover
Merton runs from Wimbledon Common in the north west down to Pollards Hill on the Croydon boundary. The housing, the water company and the ground conditions all change on the way.
Victorian and Edwardian terraces plus town centre flats. Inside the Championships restriction area, and supplied by Thames Water.
Larger houses on gravel over London Clay, which brings groundwater as well as surface water. A conservation area, and the heart of the fortnight's closures.
John Innes' garden suburb, laid out from 1870, now two conservation areas carrying four Article 4 directions between them.
The council reports flooding here almost every summer over the past 15 years, with over 120 properties affected in 2021.
Interwar semis on gravity-fed systems, and the part of Merton supplied by SES Water from its Cheam works at 205.2 mg/l hardness.
Mixed terraces, estates and rentals. Cricket Green is inside the additional HMO licensing designation running to September 2028.
On the Wandle corridor, with recorded flooding on the High Street, Byegrove Road and Wandle Park in September 2024.
Both inside the selective licensing designation, so single-household private lets here need a licence as well as an HMO.
30–45 minutes to Merton
Based on current engineer positions across South London
Merton plumbing questions we get asked
Who supplies my water in Merton, Thames Water or SES Water?
It depends on your postcode, and Merton is one of the few London boroughs where this is a genuine question. Merton Council states plainly that there are two water companies responsible for supplying water to Merton and lists both with separate 24-hour numbers. SES Water describes its supply area as extending from Morden and South Croydon in the north down to Gatwick, so part of the SM4 area is SES and the rest of the borough is Thames Water. Testing real postcodes against SES Water's own checker returns matches around Cannon Hill, Lower Morden, Merton Park, St Helier and Ravensbury, and no match across SW19, CR4, KT3 or most of SW20, with the SM4 6 area itself split. Check your own postcode with the supplier. Sewerage is simpler: SES Water does not provide it, and Thames Water is the sewerage undertaker for the borough.
How hard is the water here?
Hard in both halves of the borough, but only one of them publishes a number for Merton specifically. SES Water's 2025 drinking water quality report for the ZL22 Langley Park Morden supply zone, which serves the SES part of Merton from its Cheam treatment works, gives an average of 205.2 mg/l of calcium carbonate, 82.1 mg/l of calcium and 14.37 degrees Clark, and states that on the water hardness scale that zone is a hard water zone. Thames Water, which supplies the rest of Merton, states that all the water in its region is hard and classes 200 to 300 mg/l as hard, publishing its own figure per supply zone through its postcode checker. At those levels scale builds steadily on immersion elements, cylinder coils, heat exchangers and thermostatic shower cartridges, so a part that fails, gets replaced and fails again on the same timeline is usually a scale problem rather than a bad component.
My drains keep blocking every year. Why does it keep happening?
On London Clay it is rarely bad luck. Merton's own flood risk strategy describes the borough's soil as predominantly underlain by London Clay, which is generally not permeable, so water will not easily soak in and tends to run off. Shrinkable clay moves with the seasons, which pulls rigid drainage joints apart and opens the gaps that roots find, and when the ground is saturated a gully or soakaway that coped all year suddenly has nowhere to discharge to. The council records more than 7,000 residential properties at risk of surface water flooding and 286 of 507 recorded flood incidents attributable to surface water, and notes that the majority of Thames Water's recorded flood incidents in the borough relate to foul sewers. We clear the blockage, then run CCTV to establish whether it is a displaced joint, root ingress or a cross-connection, because on clay the right excavation is one excavation.
Can you still get to me during the Wimbledon Championships?
Usually, and it needs planning, so please say so when you call. The Championships 2026 run from 29 June to 12 July 2026, and Merton Council imposes matching restrictions throughout Wimbledon Village, Wimbledon Park and parts of the town centre, with payment terminals switched off and bays suspended. Church Road, Parkside, Marryat Road, Somerset Road, Woodhayes Road, Bathgate Road, Cannizaro Road, West Side Common and part of High Street Wimbledon become no parking 8.30am to 11.30pm daily; a long list of surrounding streets becomes permit holders only 8.30am to 8.30pm; and a number of roads close entirely to motor vehicles 8.30am to 11.30pm, with residents and visitors needing an AELTC permit to enter them. Delivery, care worker, resident and taxi vehicles are the exempted classes and there is no trade exemption, so we route around the closures and give you a realistic arrival time rather than quietly missing the window.
I rent out a house in Mitcham. Do I need a licence?
Quite possibly, and it depends on the ward rather than the borough. Merton designated an area for selective licensing on 19 June 2023 covering Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Longthornton and Pollards Hill, in force from 24 September 2023 until 23 September 2028, which catches single-household private lets in those four wards. On the same day it designated an area for additional HMO licensing covering Colliers Wood, Cricket Green, Figge's Marsh, Graveney, Lavender Fields, Longthornton and Pollards Hill, on the same dates, applying to HMOs occupied by three or more persons in two or more households. Merton's published conditions do not set a heating or hot water standard, but where gas is supplied you must produce annually, or within 7 days of a written request, a gas safety certificate obtained in the last 12 months from a registered Gas Safe contractor. We issue certificates in that form as a matter of course.
My house is 1930s and the boiler keeps failing. Repair or replace?
We will give you the arithmetic rather than a sales pitch. Merton's stock is old: a council-commissioned report found 65.3% of the borough's residential properties were built before the Second World War, out of 85,767 dwellings in total, and it notes that the risk gradient runs with age. 77.6% of Merton households heat with mains gas only, the seventh highest share of any London borough, and 55.6% own their home, so the person we are advising is usually the person paying. On an older house the failing boiler is often a symptom of a heating circuit that has never been cleaned, in which case a power flush restores output for a fraction of the cost of a replacement. Where the boiler genuinely is beyond economic repair we say so, quote both options and let you choose.
Question not answered here? Ring 07456 975436 or the office landline on 0207 046 1363 and an engineer will talk it through before you commit to anything.
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