WTS Plumbing and Heating Ltd covers commercial plumbing and public health engineering across Cheam, from the inter-war parades of Cheam Village, through the shops and offices along the A24 in North Cheam, out to the warehouse and trade counter units on the Kimpton estate, on the Sutton edge behind North Cheam. This is the water side of a building rather than the heating side: incoming mains and meter positions, cold water storage, booster sets and pressurisation, hot water generation and distribution, above ground drainage, washroom and kitchen fit out, backflow protection, and the hygiene regime that keeps all of it safe to use.
We are family run, started in 2008 by William Smith, and we work from Unit 2, Jayes Park Courtyard at Ockley near Dorking. Our commercial side covers design and modelling, public health services, mechanical installation, commissioning, and validations and reporting, and we answer emergency calls 24 hours a day. Our commercial clients in Cheam are facilities managers, managing agents, school business managers, care home operators, landlords and main contractors, so jobs get surveyed, quoted, programmed and handed back with paperwork rather than being treated as a domestic call out.
What Cheam's commercial buildings do to a water system
Cheam Village is the hardest water job in the town. The crossroads at The Broadway, Station Way and Ewell Road was largely rebuilt in the 1920s and 1930s, which is why the frontages are suburban mock Tudor with timber detailing and leaded lights, alongside blocks of 1930s brick. The High Street is more modern. The core is a conservation area, so anything on a front or side elevation is a planning conversation before it is a plumbing one. Almost every unit is a two or three storey terrace with retail at ground level and flats, offices or treatment rooms above. There is no plant deck and no goods lift, so cold water tanks sit in roof voids over trading floors and every leak lands on somebody else's stock.
North Cheam is where one building holds several water systems that were never properly separated. Nonsuch House on London Road in SM3 is the clearest example, with offices on the first and second floors sitting directly over a working retail parade and reached by its own street door. Buildings like that throw up the same questions every time: which isolation valve actually serves one demise only, where the drainage stack runs before it reaches the ground, whether the sub meters match the pipework, and who pays when a first floor tea point floods a shop. The A24 through here is a TfL red route, so getting a tanker, a break tank or a length of stack to the kerb takes planning.
Behind North Cheam, on the Sutton edge of SM3, the Kimpton industrial area is a different animal again. Kimpton Park Way, Kimpton Road, Minden Road, Sandiford Road, Wealdstone Road and Four Seasons Crescent hold single storey steel portal frame warehousing with first floor trade offices, in schemes including Kimpton Trade and Business Centre, Kimpton Link Business Centre and the Tradeway Centre. Yard space, shutters and hardstanding make delivery easy, so the access problem that dominates the village barely exists here. The water risk is the opposite of the village: long runs to a single welfare block, showers that nobody uses from one month to the next, and outside taps and wash bays that need proper backflow protection.
What this covers in Cheam
Hot and cold water services
We design, replace and repair distribution rather than just fixing the leak at the end of it. That covers calorifiers and plate heat exchangers, unvented and vented storage, secondary return circuits, trace heating, pipework in copper, stainless press fit and plastic, and the balancing that decides whether the far end of a parade gets hot water in a few seconds or a few minutes. In an occupied Cheam Village unit we normally stage the work so the shop keeps a working sink and WC throughout.
Booster sets and pressurisation
Three storey parades with flats and offices above the trading floor are the classic pressure complaint in Cheam Village and along the North Cheam parades. We size and install variable speed booster sets, break tanks, pressurisation units and expansion vessels, and we take the noise and vibration seriously, because in these buildings the nearest bedroom is often directly above the plant. Where an existing set is short cycling or hunting, we would rather measure the real demand than sell a bigger pump.
Above ground drainage
Soil and vent stacks, waste pipework, air admittance valves, grease management and internal gullies all fall to us, designed to BS EN 12056 for gravity drainage inside buildings. In a Cheam Village terrace the stack usually passes through at least one other tenancy on the way down, so access, notice and reinstatement matter as much as the pipe. For kitchens we look at grease at source, since a restaurant on the High Street cannot easily fit a large external interceptor in a conservation area yard.
Water hygiene and Legionella control
We carry out sampling, temperature monitoring at sentinel points, tank inspection and chlorination, dead leg removal, shower head and hose replacement, and flushing programmes. Cheam gives us the classic risks: a warehouse welfare shower on the Kimpton estate used twice a year, changing room showers at a busy leisure centre, and a primary school closed for six weeks. Findings come back written for whoever reads them next, whether that is a CQC inspector, an environmental health officer at a High Street restaurant, or the school's responsible person on the first morning back.
Thermostatic mixing valves and safe hot water
Care homes in Cheam, including the converted houses on Downs Side, York Road and Shirley Avenue, sit at the sharp end of this, and so do GP consulting rooms and school washrooms. We supply, install, service and record TMV2 and TMV3 rated valves, carry out thermal shutdown and failsafe checks, and keep storage hot while limiting the temperature at the outlet. Valves get labelled and scheduled so the next service is not a treasure hunt.
Washrooms, kitchens and incoming mains
Washroom and commercial kitchen fit out, new incoming supplies, meter and stopcock positions, and backflow protection all sit together. In an occupied Cheam Village unit we sequence the strip out so the trading floor keeps a WC and a wash hand basin from one day to the next. On a terrace at The Broadway or Station Way there is no forecourt to put a boundary box in, so the meter position gets agreed before anything is dug, and we leave every air gap accessible for the water undertaker to inspect.
Records an inspector will accept
Commercial water work in Cheam is judged on paperwork as much as pipework. For a care home on Downs Side or a school in SM3 that means a current legionella risk assessment, a named responsible person, a written scheme of control, an asset register, temperature and sampling logs, TMV service records, and as fitted drawings that match what is actually in the ceiling. We issue that pack in a form you can hand straight to a CQC inspector, an insurer, a local authority officer or an incoming managing agent. It also records what we cannot put right on our own, such as a roof void tank in a village parade where the deck will not carry a replacement of the same capacity, or a shared stack whose lower section sits in a neighbouring demise and needs the freeholder's consent before anything is cut in.
Working in Cheam without closing the building
Access drives the programme here. Sutton's published charges at the time of writing are 40 pounds per suspended bay per day, or 30 pounds per 100 metres of unrestricted highway, plus an administration fee per suspension, with at least seven working days notice. A same week dispensation per vehicle per day is the quicker route where no bay has to be held open, and Sutton's parking team take both requests on 020 8770 4161. The A24 through North Cheam is a TfL red route, so a dispensation is needed there instead. Retail and food units want early mornings, evenings or Sundays, the GP centre on Malden Road means out of hours, and schools mean summer shutdowns. Cheam sits inside Greater London, so ULEZ and, for heavier diesel vehicles, LEZ rules apply to the vehicles we bring, and any charge actually payable is shown as its own line.
Typical commercial buildings in Cheam
- Cheam Village retail parades with flats and offices above
- Offices over shops in North Cheam
- Kimpton estate warehouses and trade counters
- Schools, academies and sixth forms across SM3
- Care homes in converted detached houses
- GP surgeries and clinical rooms
- Leisure centres, gyms, changing rooms and health suites
- Pubs, restaurants and commercial kitchens
- Managing agents and landlords with split demises above shops
Duties and standards that apply
- Duty holders control legionella risk under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. The HSE Approved Code of Practice L8 and the technical guidance in HSG274 set out how that is normally done, through risk assessment, a written scheme of control and monitoring. An Approved Code of Practice is not the only lawful route, but if a duty holder is prosecuted and has not followed it, they have to show they met the law some other way or a court will find them at fault.
- The Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999 apply to every commercial connection in Cheam. They sort each point of use by fluid category, which decides the backflow arrangement at a cleaner's sink, a dishwasher, a beer line cleaner or a wash bay, and they require the water undertaker to be notified in advance of certain installations. WRAS approval is one recognised way of showing a fitting complies rather than a legal requirement in its own right.
- New and altered work in England falls under the Building Regulations, with Approved Document G covering sanitation, hot water safety and water efficiency and Approved Document H covering drainage and waste disposal. Fitting an unvented hot water storage vessel of more than 15 litres is notifiable work, so it has to be signed off through building control or under a competent person scheme.
- There is no single legal hot water temperature for a commercial outlet. The Building Regulations limit the temperature at a bath outlet to 48 degrees where a new dwelling is built or formed by a change of use, with Approved Document G giving the guidance on meeting that, while in care, clinical and school settings the control comes from risk assessment and published guidance rather than one figure written into law. That is why the type, position and service interval of a thermostatic mixing valve should follow the building's own water safety plan.
Common questions
We can do both, and most Cheam clients would rather not manage two firms. We will assess, then price and carry out the remedials that come out of it, whether that is removing a dead leg above a shop on The Broadway, replacing a tank lid in a roof void, servicing TMVs in a care home, or setting up a flushing programme for a Kimpton estate welfare block that is barely used. Where a remedial needs another trade first, such as a builder to open up a ceiling in the demise below, we price around that and say when it has to happen.
Into the space the building already has, which in an inter-war parade means a back of house cupboard, a cellar or a roof void. The conservation area designation makes anything on a front or side elevation a planning conversation, and residential occupiers above the trading floor make noise and vibration a real constraint, so we look at anti vibration mounts, pump speed and pipe support early. Where the demise is split between landlord and tenant we confirm which isolation valves serve which unit before we quote.
Through a booked bay or a dispensation, and the van stands there only for as long as the lift takes. That stretch of the A24 has controlled loading bays rather than open kerbside, so nothing goes on the pavement while somebody looks for the key. Where a unit has rear service access off the back of the parade we would rather run the job from there and leave the frontage alone, which usually means a longer carry but no waiting on the council. The paperwork lead time is what moves a start date, so we confirm the access route at survey and programme from the date the dispensation clears.
Yes, and for schools in Cheam that is normally the only sensible way to do it. Hot and cold water alterations, riser work, washroom refurbishment and tank cleaning at a large secondary in SM3 get programmed into the summer break with a dated handback and a commissioning record. Long closures matter for a second reason: six weeks of standing water in a primary school system is exactly the condition a flushing and sampling regime is meant to deal with before pupils return.
Yes, by staging it. Cheam's care stock is mostly large detached houses converted into homes, so the plant is domestic in scale but doing a commercial duty, with cylinders in former bedrooms or lofts and pipework that grew rather than being designed. We work in sections, keep temporary hot water available, and change over at times agreed with the manager, so no resident is left without washing facilities overnight. TMV servicing and temperature records are updated as we go.
Talk to us about Cheam
If you look after a building in Cheam and the water side of it needs work, from a legionella risk assessment on a converted care home to a washroom strip out in a village parade or a new booster set off Kimpton Road, call our Surrey office on 01306 621 057 or email info@wtsmechanical.co.uk. The survey gives you a schematic of which isolation valve serves which demise, the bay suspension or dispensation priced as its own line, and a handback date tied to a school summer break or a Sunday shopfitting window. Out of hours escapes of water over a trading floor come straight to us, and handover brings the commissioning record, as fitted drawings and a twelve month defects period on parts and workmanship.
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