Lead Pipes in Beckenham and Park Langley Homes

Yes, it is possible. Thames Water says lead water pipes have been banned since the 1970s and that you are unlikely to have them only if your house was built after 1970 or has been completely replumbed since. Every Victorian villa round Kelsey Park and every house in the original Park Langley estate is older than that. The quickest check is at your stopcock: if the pipe coming up out of the floor is dull grey, soft and has no screw joints, it is very probably lead.

How old is my Beckenham house, plumbing-wise?

Beckenham, BR3, is mostly Victorian and Edwardian at its core, with large villas and tall terraces off the High Street and around Kelsey Park, and Edwardian family houses towards Shortlands. Around that core is a ring of 1930s houses in Park Langley and Eden Park, then post-war estates towards Elmers End.

Park Langley is older than many people think. H & G Taylor bought around 700 acres in 1908 and started building a garden suburb there in 1909. The first roads were Wickham Way, Elwill Way and Hayes Way, followed in 1910 by Malmains Way, Whitecroft Way and Styles Way, with most of the layout and many of the houses by the architect Reginald C. Fry. Building carried on in the decades after, which is why the estate mixes Edwardian houses with later inter-war ones.

That matters for one reason. Lead was the normal material for the supply pipe from the street into the house for most of that period. A house that has had a new kitchen, a new bathroom and a new boiler can still have its original lead pipe under the front garden, because nobody needed to dig up the lawn to do any of that work.

How do I check for lead?

Go to your internal stopcock. In Beckenham’s Victorian houses it is often under the kitchen sink or under the floorboards just inside the front door, and in a house with a cellar it may be on the front cellar wall. Look at the pipe coming into the stopcock from below, before the stopcock, not after it.

• Lead: dull grey, quite thick, soft enough that a gentle scratch with a coin or key shows shiny silver metal. No threads, no compression nuts. Bends are smooth curves, and joints are fat, rounded bulges called wiped joints. A fridge magnet will not stick.
• Galvanised iron: grey or rusty, hard, with threaded joints. A magnet will stick.
• Copper: orange-brown or green with age, with neat soldered or compression joints.
• Blue or black plastic: the modern supply pipe, polyethylene. Someone has already replaced it.

If you see copper after the stopcock but grey before it, the inside has been modernised and the supply has not. That is very common.

Who is responsible for which bit?

Thames Water supplies Beckenham. The pipe under the pavement, from the main to roughly your boundary, is Thames’s communication pipe. The pipe from there across your front garden and into the house is your supply pipe, and it is yours.

Thames runs a lead pipe replacement scheme. If you cannot replace your pipe straight away, Thames says you can call Thames Water on 0800 316 9800 and it will take samples of your water. If lead levels are high, Thames will replace its own communication pipe, but it only does its own side. Ask Thames directly about how its scheme currently works for your address before you book anything, because the details are theirs to give.

What does replacing a lead supply pipe involve?

On a typical Beckenham front garden the job is:

1. Confirm the route of the old pipe and where it enters the house.
2. Dig a narrow trench, or use a mole to push a new pipe through underground, from the boundary to the house.
3. Lay new blue polyethylene pipe and bring it up through the floor or wall.
4. Fit a new stopcock inside, ideally a modern valve that turns easily, and a drain-off point.
5. Connect it to the existing plumbing, then test it under pressure.
6. Arrange the connection at the boundary with Thames if its side is being renewed at the same time.

It is worth coordinating with Thames, so that both halves are done close together and you are not left with new plastic on your side connected to old lead on theirs.

Why replace it if it is not leaking?

Two reasons. First, health guidance on lead in drinking water, which Thames sets out on its own lead page; read that rather than taking a plumber’s word for it. Second, age. Beckenham sits on London clay that shrinks in dry summers and swells in wet winters, and a century-old lead pipe under a front lawn is exactly the kind of pipe that cracks quietly. A high bill in the autumn and a lawn that stays green in a drought are the signs. If you are already paying to find and fix an old supply leak, replacing the whole run at the same time usually costs little more than patching it.

Our guide to a lead supply pipe in a Sidcup house covers the same question for 1930s semis, where the pipe tends to be shorter and the signs slightly different.

What if the old pipe is already leaking?

If your meter moves with every tap off, find the leak before anyone digs. Our leak detection in Beckenham page explains how a supply leak is pinned down with listening equipment and tracer gas. Once you know there is a leak on your side, Thames expects it fixed within four weeks, and a metered customer who does that may be able to claim a leak allowance.

Need a plumber now?

If your old supply pipe has failed, or you want it checked, Call 07868 281022. Tell us your postcode, what you have found at the stopcock, and whether the water is off. We handle water leaks in Beckenham across BR3 and we agree the price with you before any work starts. See our Beckenham page for more on local housing.