London Cylinder Specialist: The Cylinder Division of London Leak Specialist

London Cylinder Specialist is the cylinder division of London Leak Specialist. It diagnoses, repairs and replaces hot water cylinders across London inside the M25, 24 hours a day, and it has its own website at London Cylinder Specialist. Diagnosis is a fixed £180 with no call-out fee, and no VAT is charged on anything.

This page explains why we set it up as a separate team, what it handles, how it fits alongside our leak detection work, and exactly what the confirmed prices cover. If your problem is a cylinder, that is where to go. If your problem is water you cannot trace, that is us. Plenty of jobs start with not knowing which of the two it is, and we cover that too.

Why a hot water cylinder needs its own division

Our own work is finding leaks inside walls, under floors and beneath drives. Hot water cylinders keep coming up in it, usually as the first thing someone blames. A damp ceiling under the airing cupboard, a wet carpet by the tank, a stain on the landing: the cylinder is the obvious suspect, and sometimes it is the wrong one.

Where it is the right one, the trade splits. Finding a leak in pipework is a detection problem: listening, thermal imaging, tracer gas, moisture mapping. Repairing or replacing a cylinder is an installation problem, with its own parts, its own regulations and its own kind of experience. A pressurised unvented cylinder, a vented cylinder fed from a loft tank, a thermal store and a cylinder with a solar coil are different machines with different faults. Treating them as an afterthought to leak detection did neither job justice.

So the cylinder work lives in its own team, with its own phone line and its own site. The cylinder division is part of London Leak Specialist, so a cylinder question never has to start with a stranger.

What London Cylinder Specialist handles

• Diagnosis. A visit to find out what is actually wrong: a leak at the cylinder, a failed immersion element or thermostat, a discharging relief valve, a tank that will not heat, water that is cold, lukewarm or scalding, or noise and pressure problems around the cylinder.
• Repair. Where the fault is a part rather than the vessel, the team fixes it. An easy fix is done straight away on the diagnosis visit. If parts are needed, they are ordered and you get a quotation for the repair.
• Replacement. When a cylinder has failed or is past sensible repair, it is taken out and a new one fitted.
• New installation. A cylinder where there was not one before, including the pipework, commissioning and the Building Regulations side.
• Annual service. A yearly check that certifies the cylinder is in a good state for use.

Coverage is London inside the M25, at any hour. A cylinder that has failed does not wait for office hours, and neither does the water on your landing.

How the two teams split a job

The dividing line is simple: the cylinder team deals with the cylinder and everything that is part of it, and we deal with water that is escaping from somewhere you cannot see.

The problem	Who deals with it
Water dripping from the cylinder body, its connections or its valves	Cylinder division
Relief valve or tundish discharging, immersion or thermostat faults, no hot water	Cylinder division
Cylinder is old, corroded or has failed and needs replacing	Cylinder division
A stain, damp patch or wet floor with no obvious source	London Leak Specialist
A leak in pipework behind plaster, under a floor or in a screed	London Leak Specialist
Water meter moving with everything off	London Leak Specialist
Not sure whether the cylinder or a pipe is leaking	Either; start with the checks in our guide to telling a cylinder leak from a pipe leak

The grey area is the last row, and it is common. If water is appearing near an airing cupboard, the quickest route is often to have the cylinder ruled in or out first. If it is ruled out, the problem is in the pipework, and finding it is the work described on our leak detection pages. A cylinder that is dry and healthy but sitting beside a leaking joint is not a cylinder job, and a good cylinder engineer will tell you so rather than sell you a new tank.

Confirmed prices and terms

These are the figures for the cylinder division. They are published here so you can compare them before you call.

Service	Price	What it covers
Diagnosis	£180 fixed	The team comes out and diagnoses the fault. No call-out fee.
Annual cylinder service	£180	Certifies the cylinder is in a good state for use.
Cylinder replacement	£1,450 fixed labour	Labour and miscellaneous parts. The cylinder itself is priced separately.
New installation	£2,400	Pipework, installation, commissioning and Building Regulations. The cylinder is priced separately.

Three things are worth reading carefully.

• No VAT is charged. The prices above are the prices.
• There is no call-out fee. The £180 is for the diagnosis, and it is the whole charge for the visit.
• The cylinder is priced separately on both replacement and new installation, because the right unit depends on its type, its size and your preference. The labour figure is fixed; the cylinder is chosen with you.

If a repair needs parts that the team does not carry, they are ordered and you are given a quotation for the fix, priced either by the hour or as a fixed price.

What a diagnosis visit is for

A cylinder fault is easy to misread from the outside. Water at the base can come from a failed seam, a weeping immersion flange, a loose union or a drip from a pipe above. A discharge from the tundish can be a worn valve, a pressure problem upstream or an expansion vessel that has lost its charge. Lukewarm water can be a thermostat, an element or a motorised valve.

The point of a fixed £180 diagnosis is to settle which one it is before anyone talks about replacing anything. Many faults are small and fixed on the day. Some are not, and the visit tells you that honestly, with a quotation, rather than leaving you to guess. If the vessel itself has failed, repair is rarely sensible, and the next step is replacement at the fixed labour price above plus a cylinder chosen to suit the house.

Repair or replace?

There is no universal age at which a cylinder must go, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What matters is the fault:

• Replaceable parts (immersion heater, thermostat, valves, a leaking union) usually mean a repair, and the cylinder carries on.
• A leak from the vessel itself, from a corroded seam or the cylinder wall, almost always means replacement. A failed vessel cannot be patched in any way that is safe to rely on.
• Repeated faults on an old cylinder, each one cheap on its own, can add up to more than the labour on a replacement. A diagnosis visit is the cheapest way to find out where you are on that curve.

A yearly service is the other half of that picture. It costs £180 and it tells you the state of the cylinder before it fails on a Sunday night, which is when failures prefer to happen.

Where our leak detection fits in

Some cylinder problems are not cylinder problems at all. A damp ceiling in the room below an airing cupboard, a stain that keeps returning, or a wet patch that appears after the heating comes on can all come from a pipe, not the tank. In that case the right tool is not a spanner. It is acoustic listening on pressurised pipework, a thermal imaging survey of a wall or floor, or tracer gas where the pipe is buried or sealed in.

That work is charged the way all of our detection is: at a fixed hourly rate that cannot rise on the day, and protected by no find, no fee. Standard leak detection is £160 an hour, and if we attend a confirmed live leak and cannot find it, the detection time is not charged. The full rate card is on the pricing page. Once the leak is found, repairing it is a plumbing job, which we also do; see water leak repair.

How to reach the cylinder division

Go to the London Cylinder Specialist website for the cylinder services, or ring the division directly on 020 7870 1666. That is its own line, separate from ours, and it is answered at any hour for cylinder faults inside the M25.

If you are not sure whether you are dealing with a cylinder or a hidden pipe leak, you can contact either team. Describe where the water is and when you first saw it, and you will be pointed to the right one. Before you ring, it helps to have noted where the water appears, whether it is hot or cold, and whether it changes when the heating or hot water comes on.