Heating Engineers in Amersham

The Old Town and the ground under it

The Misbourne runs through Old Amersham, behind the houses on the north side of the High Street, through a number of culverts. The council's 2014 investigation notes that in several places properties have been built over the culverted river. That is the setting for two floods the council has written up.

In January and February 2014, exceptionally high groundwater raised river levels, a culvert restriction made the Misbourne back up, and a riverbank collapse flooded property. The council counted at least four homes and five businesses flooded internally. In June 2016, forty to sixty minutes of very intense rain flooded nine homes and twenty commercial properties internally, according to the council's report on that event. A separate council assessment says that rising groundwater has directly caused, or made worse, flooding to several basement properties in Old Amersham. The Environment Agency's flood alert area is named for the Misbourne at Great Missenden, Amersham and the Chalfonts.

We are heating engineers, not flood specialists, and most Old Town jobs have nothing to do with any of this. It does change two things. A cellar that stays damp is not automatically a leak, and it is worth knowing which before anyone sells you a repair. And a boiler, cylinder or pump at or below ground level in the Old Town deserves a conversation about where else it could go.

Amersham-on-the-Hill has no river, but it is not dry. Two roads, Grimsdells Lane and Shortway, were named in the council's report on the 2016 storm as the low points for surface water, and residents told the council that moderate rain floods the street about three times a year.

Flues, chimneys and the conservation areas

Amersham Old Town has been a conservation area since 1969, with its boundary amended in 1992. On the Hill, the Weller Estate and Elm Close were designated in 1992. All of the appraisals are older Chiltern District Council documents, and none has been replaced by the current council.

For a house in a conservation area, the national rule is that a chimney, flue or soil and vent pipe on a wall or roof slope that fronts a highway, and forms the principal or side elevation, needs planning permission. A flue out of the back of the house normally does not. Buckinghamshire Council publishes no wording of its own on flues, and its current list of Article 4 directions, the tool councils use to take permitted development rights away, has nothing covering Amersham. So the national rule governs, and we work out the flue route as part of the survey. Flats and maisonettes have no permitted development rights at all, so a flue there is a planning question from the start. Whether an address lies inside the Chilterns National Landscape is something we check for that address, because inside it the same flue rule applies whatever the conservation area position.

The other problem is old chimneys. Historic England's advice is that not all chimneys can accept a new flue liner, because flues in traditional buildings can be narrow, contorted or distorted by years of movement, and forcing a flexible liner down one risks damaging historic fabric. The Old Town High Street is lined with buildings from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and the Church of St Mary and Shardeloes are Grade I. If your house is listed, check before choosing a boiler, not after.

Around Amersham

Along the same valley, Chalfont St Giles and Chalfont St Peter are on the same chalk and the same river, though each has its own council record and its own water. We also work in Chorleywood across the Hertfordshire border. The range of heating work is on our heating page, and if what you need is a tap, a leak or a bathroom, that is on our plumbing page.

To book a service, have a fault looked at or get a replacement boiler priced, call Andrew or Elis on 07970 632 064.