Span Houses in Blackheath: Where Are Your Valves?

Look under the kitchen sink first. If it is not there, try the utility area, a ground-floor cupboard, under the stairs and the space around the hot water cylinder or boiler. In a Span terrace it is also possible that a supply is shared along the row, so if you cannot find a valve that stops your water, ask your estate’s management company or residents’ association where the terrace’s stop tap is. Find it, check it turns, and label it before the day you need it.

What are Span houses, and why are they different?

Blackheath has 19 Span housing schemes, built from the mid-1950s and designed by Eric Lyons working with Geoffrey Townsend. Many are on the old Cator Estate, among them The Priory, Hallgate, The Plantation and Corner Green. They are modernist terraces and flats, set in shared landscaped gardens, with big windows, open plans and, in many cases, flat roofs.

From a plumber’s point of view, a Span house is a 1950s or 1960s building that has had sixty or seventy years of updates. It does not have the Victorian problems of lead under a cellar floor. It has its own set:

• Original copper that is now old, with joints and fittings from the same era.
• Open-plan layouts with fewer walls and cupboards, so pipes and valves were tucked into whatever space there was.
• Flat roofs, where a ceiling stain can be the roof rather than the plumbing.
• Shared land and shared services, because the estates were planned as communities, with gardens and some services held in common.

Where should I look for the stopcock?

Under the kitchen sink

The commonest spot, as in most houses of the era. Empty the cupboard and look at the back and floor of the unit for a valve on the incoming cold pipe.

Utility area or ground-floor cupboard

Where the kitchen has been remodelled, the stopcock may have been left where the pipe enters the house, in a cupboard or utility space on the ground floor.

Under the stairs

Worth a look in the houses with an internal staircase near the front door.

Near the cylinder or boiler

If you have a hot water cylinder, the cold supply to it, and sometimes the main stopcock, is often in the same cupboard.

Outside

There will be an outside stop tap somewhere near the boundary or in the shared landscaping. On an estate with communal gardens it may not be outside your own front door. Your management company may know where it is.

Is my supply shared with the neighbours?

It can be, on terraces built as one scheme. If turning your stopcock off stops the water to your neighbour too, or you have no stopcock at all, you are probably on a shared supply. That matters in two ways. In an emergency, turning water off affects more than one house. And when a shared pipe leaks, the repair is a shared cost, so it is worth knowing in advance who looks after it.

Many Span estates have a residents’ association or a management company that holds the common parts. Ask them for any plans of the services, and whether shared pipework under the communal gardens is theirs or the householders’.

What do I do if something leaks?

1. Turn the stopcock off by turning it clockwise, gently.
2. If it will not move, do not force it; use the outside stop tap, and call the management company if it is in the common areas.
3. Open the cold taps to drain the pipes.
4. Switch off the immersion heater or water heater.
5. Turn off the electrics at the consumer unit for any room where water is near lights or sockets.
6. Tell your neighbours if you have turned off a shared supply.
7. Photograph the leak and the damage, then call.

What should I check now, while it is dry?

• That the stopcock turns. Blackheath’s water is hard, around 282 mg/l in Thames Water’s Blackheath zone, and scale seizes old valves.
• Isolating valves under the sinks, on the washing machine and dishwasher, and on the feed to each toilet. If there are none, have them fitted, so one fitting can be turned off without stopping the house.
• Flexible tap connectors and appliance hoses, which perish with age.
• The cylinder cupboard, for green or white crust on joints and valves.
• The ceiling under the flat roof, after heavy rain, so you know whether a stain is the roof or a pipe.

What about Kidbrooke Village and the newer blocks?

Down the hill, the new homes at Kidbrooke Village have pressurised water systems and shared stacks, where one failed joint can reach the flat below quickly. The same advice applies, perhaps more so: find your isolation valve, usually in a cupboard near the entrance or in the airing cupboard, before you need it. Kidbrooke’s water is also very hard, around 308 mg/l.

If you live in a converted flat rather than a Span house, our guide to finding the stopcock in an Anerley or Penge flat covers that layout. More on SE3 on our Blackheath page.

Need a plumber now?

If something is leaking and you cannot find or turn the stopcock, Call 07868 281022. Tell us your postcode, which estate you are on, what is leaking and whether the water is off. We handle water leaks in Blackheath and leak detection across SE3, including the Cator Estate and Kidbrooke, and we agree the price with you before any work starts.