Bexleyheath or Bexley Shop Leak: Business Plumbing Help

If a pipe bursts in your Bexleyheath or Bexley shop, turn off the unit’s water at the stopcock, switch off the electrics in the wet area, and get customers and staff away from it before you think about stock. Then tell your landlord or, if you trade in the Broadway Shopping Centre, centre management, and call a plumber. Your lease decides who pays for internal plumbing; faults in the public sewer or the water main belong to Thames Water. Bexleyheath’s water is very hard, so once you are open again, put the water heaters and urinal valves on a service schedule.

First: people, power, water

In a house, the order is water first. In a business with the public inside, it is people first.

1. Move customers and staff away from the water. Close the area or the shop if you need to.
2. Switch off the electrics for the affected area at the distribution board, as long as you can reach it standing somewhere dry.
3. Turn off the unit’s water at the stopcock. Typical places: under the staff sink, in a cleaner’s cupboard, by the water meter, behind a panel in the toilets, or in an outside box at the front or rear boundary.
4. Switch off water heaters, coffee machines and dishwashers on the same supply.
5. Put out wet floor signs and buckets, and lift stock off the floor.
6. Photograph the leak and the damage with the time showing.
7. Ring your landlord or centre management, then a plumber.

A wet floor in a shop is a slip claim waiting to happen. If you cannot make an area safe, close it.

Where Bexley businesses trade

Bexleyheath Broadway. The Broadway Shopping Centre is the borough’s largest covered shopping centre, and the pedestrianised Broadway beside it is lined with chains and independents. Units inside a managed centre usually share risers, plant and maintenance staff with neighbouring shops. Centre management may hold the keys to the isolation valves, and your lease may say who can carry out work.

Old Bexley village. The High Street’s older buildings often have flats or offices above the shop, with shared pipework, old lead or iron supplies and a shared soil stack. A leak above your ceiling may not be yours at all, but you still need to protect your space and tell the people upstairs.

Who pays?

• Your lease decides whether internal plumbing is the tenant’s or the landlord’s. Read the repairs clause.
• Thames Water manages the public sewers and water mains here, and since 1 October 2011 also drains shared by two or more properties. If several units are blocked at once, or water is coming up in the road, report it to Thames.
• Insurance: your business policy may cover the damage and the loss of trading; the landlord’s buildings policy may cover the building. Tell both.

Very hard water and your equipment

Bexleyheath is in Thames Water’s Bexleyheath supply zone, which averaged about 359 mg/l in 2024, the hardest figure in our whole area. Old Bexley is in the Bexley zone at about 284 mg/l, which is still hard. In a business that uses a lot of hot water, scale is a running cost:

• Water heaters and instant boilers scale up and lose efficiency, then fail.
• Urinal flush valves stick open or stop flushing.
• Tap cartridges in washrooms start to drip.
• Dishwashers and glass washers scale up without a softener.
• Toilet fill valves run on into the pan.

Put a simple schedule in place: descale or service water heaters, check urinal controls, and fix drips when they appear. A softener or scale inhibitor on the hot water supply can pay for itself in a cafe or salon.

Cafes and takeaways: keep fat out of the drain

Thames Water names fat, oil and grease as a major cause of blocked drains. In a food business they come from pans, fryers and plate scrapings and set in the pipes as they cool.

• Scrape plates into the bin.
• Fit and empty sink strainers.
• Keep a grease trap and empty it regularly. Keep a log.
• Store used oil for collection, never down a sink.

If your kitchen drain blocks mid-service, stop all water going into it. Every sink and dishwasher load adds to what will come back up on to the floor.

Blocked customer toilets

If one toilet overflows, close it, turn off the small isolation valve on its feed, and keep the others in use. If every toilet and sink is backing up, the blockage is further down the drain and needs rodding or jetting.

What to tell us when you call

• The business name, address and postcode, and where we can park or unload.
• What has happened and whether the water is off.
• Your opening hours and whether you need to reopen today.
• Whether centre management or the landlord needs to give access.
• Who can approve the work and how you want the invoice.

We agree the price with you before any work starts, and we write up what failed and what we did, which helps with insurers and landlords. Our insurance help page shows what that report looks like.

Gas

Any gas appliance, including a gas water heater or a commercial range, needs a Gas Safe registered engineer. We do not work on gas. If you smell gas, get everyone out and call National Gas Emergency on 0800 111 999.

When to call

Call us for burst pipes, water through a ceiling, blocked kitchen drains and toilets out of action. We cover commercial plumbing in Bexley, burst pipes in Bexley and commercial plumbing across our area. More on the area is on our Bexley area page.

Need a plumber now?

Call 07868 281022 and tell us your postcode, what is leaking or blocked, and whether the water is off. Say it is a business so we come prepared.