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A badly maintained house can put buyers off. Our Plumbing Health Check can help you sell your house by showing potential buyers that the plumbing in your home has been well maintained. This can make all the difference. What’s more, it costs just £67 during January 2016.

Knowing which plumbing checks to carry out to help you successfully sell your house can seem confusing. What do you need to do before you put it on the market?
Is it just about ‘Wow factor’ and beautiful bathrooms?
Stopcocks Women Plumbers have provided this 20 point checklist to make the process easier.

A Plumbing Health Check Certificate can help sell your house. It Lets Buyers Know Your Home has been Well Maintained

Our guide will tell you what to do and what to check on boilers, heating, radiators, pipework etc which might make a difference to you selling your property and could influence negotiations on price.

These tips will help you ensure that purchasers won’t be put off by plumbing issues.

Your local Stopcocks Woman Plumber will carry out a thorough Plumbing and Heating Health Check and give you a full report with recommendations. You can use this to bring the property up to scratch, and show your completion certificate to potential purchasers to let them know the property has been well maintained.

During January it is reduced from £97 to just £67.

A Word about Bathrooms

1. Much is made of putting in a fabulous bathroom to create ‘Wow factor’, but on more than one occasion we’ve been asked to put new bathrooms into houses being prepared for sale only to be asked back by the new owner to change that very same brand new bathroom!! People like to put their own stamp on their new home.

You don’t necessarily need a brand new bathroom in order to sell your property. What constitutes a fabulous bathroom is a matter of taste and you may be spending money unnecessarily. Usually a plain, smart, clean bathroom will suffice. If the suite is a difficult to match colour or you have patterned tiling which might not be to everyone’s taste you may need to change them to plain white or be prepared to drop your price so the buyer can change it to suit themselves without going over their budget, be prepared to negotiate.

Boilers and Heating

2. How old is your boiler? If the boiler is new do you have the paperwork from Gas Safe to show it has been officially Notified as having been fitted by a properly qualified and competent person? This is now a legal requirement so is essential.
If it’s likely your purchaser will need to replace a boiler in the near future this is likely cost them in the region of £1500-2000. This in itself is not a deal breaker.

3. Have you had the boiler regularly serviced and do you have paperwork from a qualified Gas Safe Engineer to demonstrate this? Yearly servicing is recommended for gas all appliances, so ensure it’s done before you put your house up for sale. Have the certificate available to show potential buyers.

4. Make sure your boiler looks clean and cared for so that buyers can tell you have maintained your whole property with care.
5. If you have a cylinder for hot water, is it properly lagged or insulated? If not, lag it.
6. Are all the connections on the boiler and cylinder and any cold water tanks sound and free from rust? If there are signs of rust there may be leaks, if you’re having the boiler serviced you can have this dealt with. Ask your local Stopcocks Woman Plumber about it

7. Is the heating working efficiently? The potential purchaser will probably ask for it to be turned on, will it be warm by the time you’ve shown them around the house?

Radiators and Leaks

8. Are the radiators warm from bottom to top?
9. Are radiators downstairs warm (heat rises)?
10. Are there cold spots in the house?
11. Any of these three issues could be a sign that the system needs bleeding and the boiler pressure needs adjusting. You always need to adjust the pressure on the boiler after you have bled the radiators. If you don’t know how to do this, your Stopcocks Woman Plumber will be happy to show you how.  If this doesn’t solve the problem the system may need flushing (we don’t always recommend Power Flushing, which can show up problems in older pipework).

Your Stopcocks Woman Plumber will be happy to gently flush your whole heating system (from £450).
12. If this still hasn’t solved the problem, Your Stopcocks Woman Plumber will probably know by this point what it is, as she will have been around the house and checked everything. In many houses in UK the Central Heating was installed after the house was built and often added to over the years, this means that one part of the system may not work perfectly with another. Your plumber’s diagnosis will help you decide what to do about any problems with the heating before putting your house up for sale.

13. If she’s carried out these checks any leaks will have come to light already, if she hasn’t, take a good look for rust patches, green patina and leaks on all radiators and pipework. DO NOT remove rust! It may be what is holding the water in!
If you find leaks, rust, green patina or mould, ask your Stopcocks Woman Plumber to check out what is going on and how serious it is so that you can use this information to change, repair or just adjust the selling price.

14. Check the stopcock is easy to find and use. Let potential buyers know where it is.

Drains

15. Are all drains working efficiently?
17. Empty traps under all sinks to ensure there are no blockages or smells.
18. Is the cistern flushing the toilet effectively and is the action of the handles or buttons smooth? This is not expensive to fix.
19. Check drains outside for smells which could be a sign of a blockage or leak.
Do not attempt to cover up bad smells with air freshener.
20. Apart from having to change the whole Central Heating System, most of these issues will not stop a potential purchaser from buying your house, all of them in combination may concern them as together they could be evidence of inadequate maintenance, so a Stopcocks thorough Plumbing and Heating Health Check from your local Stopcocks Women Plumber is well worth considering. You can then use the paperwork for this to present to your potential purchasers to show everything has been well cared for.