Terraced streets and combi boilers
Almost half the homes in Sheerness are terraced, and in Sheerness East it's six in ten. Most of them have one bathroom, which is exactly what a combi boiler is good at. It heats water as you use it, so there's no cylinder taking up a cupboard, and the boiler usually fits where the old one was.
The bigger question in a terrace is the flue. It has to clear windows, doors and the neighbour's wall by set distances, and on a narrow back addition that can decide where the boiler goes. We work that out at the survey, before you're quoted, so there are no surprises on the day.
Very hard water from the chalk
Sheerness gets its water from boreholes in the chalk at Eastling. Southern Water's own checker puts it at about 303 mg/l of calcium carbonate and calls it very hard. In a combi, that scale builds up in the small heat exchanger that heats your taps, and the first sign is hot water that runs hot, then cold, then hot again.
The building regulations guidance for boiler installers asks for a scale reducer on a combi's cold feed where water is harder than 200 mg/l, and Sheerness is well over that. If your hot water has gone lukewarm or the boiler bangs when it fires, scale is a likely cause, and it's often fixable without a new boiler.
Landlords in Sheerness
More than a third of homes in the town are privately rented, so a lot of our Sheerness work is for landlords. The law asks for a gas safety check on every gas appliance once every 12 months, and the tenant needs a copy of the record within 28 days. We do the check and the record, and quote for anything it turns up.
Conservation areas and flues
Mile Town, Marine Town and the Royal Naval Dockyard and Bluetown are all conservation areas, and Mile Town and Marine Town grew in April 2024. In a conservation area, a boiler flue on a wall or roof that faces the road needs planning permission. On 43 to 72 Marine Parade an Article 4 direction goes further and controls alterations to the front of the house and the front boundary. We plan a flue route to the side or back wherever we can, which normally avoids the question altogether.