Heating Engineers in Chalfont St Giles

When the chalk fills up

The Misbourne runs north to south through the village. The council's investigation puts it plainly: as a chalk stream it gets most of its flow from the chalk aquifer, so when groundwater is high, so is the river. The village sits on Beaconsfield gravel along the line of the river, over Seaford and Newhaven chalk. In the spring of 2014 the flooding was caused, the report says, by exceptionally high groundwater in that chalk. It reached the pumping station and the telephone exchange, and pumping the exchange out then flooded the High Street and closed the council car park. Four commercial premises flooded inside. The council's older flood assessment adds that several properties and farm buildings in the village are in Flood Zone 3a.

No council document we read records sewer flooding in the village, and the record names the High Street and Pheasant Hill, not the whole parish. Most boilers here are nowhere near it. The practical consequence is narrow: a cellar that is damp in a wet winter may be groundwater and not a pipe, and a boiler, cylinder or pump at or below ground level is worth a conversation about where else it could go.

A village with three Grade I buildings

Milton's Cottage on Dean Way is Grade I, described on its list entry as an early seventeenth century house, timber framed with red brick infill. So are the parish church of St Giles and Jordans Meeting House, dated 1688. There are Grade II* and Grade II entries besides: The Old Rectory, The Vache, several pubs, and Roughwood Farmhouse, which the entry says was very probably extended by C.F.A. Voysey in 1902. The council's local heritage list adds a number of locally listed buildings in the village, at Jordans and at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, whose buildings were moved there from elsewhere and are not part of the village's own stock.

The village centre has been a conservation area since 1969, extended in 2001, and Jordans has its own. The appraisals are Chiltern District Council documents and scans, so the council's current pages carry no flue wording of their own. For a house the national rule applies: in a conservation area, a flue on a wall or roof slope that fronts a highway and forms the principal or side elevation needs planning permission. The council's current list of Article 4 directions has nothing covering the village. If your house is listed, the test is whether the work affects its special character, and there is no blanket rule either way, so ask before assuming.

Jordans, Seer Green and the lanes

The parish is bigger than the village. Jordans, with Jordans Meeting House of 1688, Old Jordans Hostel and the Mayflower Barn, is a separate settlement inside it, and the council's Green Belt wording in the neighbourhood plan says most of the parish's housing is in the village and Jordans. Jordans postcodes are HP9, not HP8, and Seer Green next door is its own parish that shares the Census ward. Little Chalfont is a third place altogether, in its own parish. When the council writes about "the Chalfonts", it is often not saying which, and we have tried not to borrow a record that belongs to a neighbour. If you are in Jordans or Seer Green, tell us the address and we will say plainly whether it is on our patch.

Who does the work

Andrew Millward brings forty years in the trade, and he is a Heat Geek Elitist and Viessmann accredited. Elis Harizi does all our bathroom work. Any major make of boiler is fine by us. We are gas engineers only, so an oil-fired or bottled gas system is not something we can take on.