London Handyman Service

One of the jobs Silver Saints have become experts on over the years is curing problems with household taps. Identifying makes and models from emailed photos, sourcing specific valves, ceramic cartridges, handles, diverters and indices has become somewhat of an obsession amongst the Silver Saints Operations Team.

I had a particularly satisfying enquiry this morning. A lady had picked up one of our business cards at her local South West London coffee shop and given us a call about her leaking bath taps. She obviously did have some DIY knowledge as she explained that the tap internals would need to be changed as the problem with the valve felt a little more than just a worn washer.

I asked her to email me a picture of the taps. Which she did.

Within a half-hour we had identified the make and model of the taps and ordered the replacement parts. I'd be very surprised if any other London handyman service or Plumbing service had the same knowledge or resources to identify and source parts from a picture of a 10-15 year old bath tap. But we do it half a dozen times a week.

It must be said, we don't always find the parts needed. Sometimes we just don't have enough clues from the taps themselves to identify the manufacturers and sometimes they are just cheap no-name taps imported from China and sold online (so parts are not available). But at least a customer can be confident that if we suggest fitting a new tap, the parts really are impossible to find.

We had one of the strangest jobs we have had so far on Wednesday of this week. A customer wanted to hire a handyman to remove their bath panel because his pet Burmese Python had escaped from its cage and slithered under the bath. His hope was that our handyman would be able to remove the bath panel so that he could retrieve his snake.

Luckily, one of our handymen, Don, has had experience with snakes. His son used to have one as a pet! So he didn't mind offering his assistance in returning the serpent to its enclosure.

Unfortunately, when Don removed the bath panel the python was nowhere to be seen! It appeared as if it had crawled even further along the waste pipe than first thought and was probably behind the tiled-over mdf boxing that had been installed to hide the bathroom plumbing.

The customer then confessed that the snake had actually been AWOL for about a month and must by now be quiet hungry. Plan B was then to try entice the snake out from behind the boxing by dangling a fresh mouse in the proximity of the entrance to the boxing in the hope that he would show himself for long enough to be captured. Our handyman did not stick around for this part of the plan. He also didn't have the heart to tell the customer that one of the jobs we do quiet a lot of in London, is mouse proofing, and that in our experience there is no shortage of rodents behind the pipe boxing in London flats. So he shouldn't be surprised if his 5ft pet snake isn't in fact starving but does actually emerge from his den as a 10ft well fed snake when he himself is good and ready!

I'm not sure what sort of licences a person needs to have a pet python in London or any other reptile for that matter. But both myself and the London mouse population would certainly be interested to know how many escape and are never seen again.

I leave you with this conundrum; if you were a tenant in a flat and your pet python escaped and you never saw him again. Would you warn the landlord and the new tenants about their co-inhabitor when you finally moved out or would you just say nothing and hope the snake has moved out as well.

Many people who use our London handyman service for the first time are pleasantly surprised when a well spoken, polite and neatly turned out person turns up to tackle their 'to do' list.

All of our handymen come from professional backgrounds: Don is an Oxford graduate, was a pilot in the Royal Air Force, a government liaison in China, Chairman of a Charity and also has a honours degree in french studies. He picked up most of his handyman knowledge and skills while renovating his own and friends properties. Don has been working as a professional handyman for six years now and is attracted to this job because no two days are the same. Nick graduated from Brunel University with an engineering degree, he worked for KPMG for twenty years as a management consultant, is an avid yachtsman and skippers commercially owned yachts in his spare time. Nick describes himself as semi-retired even though he works a full five day week. The aspect of this job he likes the best is meeting new and interesting people everyday. Robin has been in the building trade working as a Quantity Surveyor for over twenty years, he is an advanced motorcyclists and often takes groups of motorcyclists on guided trips to Europe. His depth of building and technical knowledge is massive and he pursues carpentry projects as a hobby.

It should be obvious from the profiles above that we are no ordinary handyman service, when you book a Silver Saints handyman, you are getting someone who can communicate well, is used to working in high pressure environments, has excellent problem solving skills and have chosen to do this job because they understand the importance of customer service and love DIY. All our handymen have had successful professional careers but have left the confinement of the office behind to pursue a flexible, fun and rewarding career as a mobile professional London handyman.

Silver Saints cover a massive range of plumbing jobs. One of our more specialist jobs is the repairing of faulty thermostatic showers and electric showers.

In fact we have repaired and fitted hundreds of showers. We recently had two showers at separate properties within a week which proved to have the same unique fault. Both showers appeared to only be getting hot water. On the lowest temperature setting no water would flow at all. We originally thought that there must be an airlock in the cold supply as both showers were been supplied by a tank in the loft. But after a bit of investigation we found that the non-return valves fitted to the cold supply within the shower valves had become stuck and were preventing the cold water from entering the shower valve.

The solution was to remove the non-return valves completely. As the cold water was tank fed there was no risk of contamination to mains water so these valves were not needed. Of-course if the cold was been fed by mains we would have replaced the faulty non-return valves.

On reflection we suspect that the problem with the non-return valves were caused because the cold water was tank fed while the hot supply was fed off a shower pump. Because the pump ran on for a few seconds after the shower flow was shut off, the hot water putting trying to flow into the cold supply, allot of pressure onto the non-return valve on the cold supply every time the shower was turned off. Eventually it just jammed closed.

In eight years of working with showers we have seen this exact problem only 3 times. So not exactly a common cause for failure, but an interesting problem none the less.