Emergency Call-out

Plumbing and heating emergencies are the jobs that cannot wait until the next booked slot. MTEX Services runs a 24-hour emergency call-out on top of ordinary hours. Ordinary hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and Saturday, 9am to 1pm. Outside those times, call if a pipe has burst, water is coming through a ceiling, the heating has failed in cold weather, or a boiler has shut down and will not reset. The published emergency call-out starts from £100 plus VAT.

A dripping tap that has dripped for a fortnight is not an emergency. Book it in office hours. A leak you cannot isolate, a ceiling that is bowing, or no heat when the temperature has dropped, is. If you can reach the stopcock, turn the water off before you call. On many houses in Carshalton, Sutton and Wallington it is under the kitchen sink. If the leak is on the heating, there may also be a valve on the pipework near the boiler. Do not leave electrical items sitting in water.

If you smell gas, that call does not start with us. Leave the building, do not use electrical switches, and call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999. Call us afterwards if the boiler or the pipework needs making safe and repairing. Gas work is done under Gas Safe registration 618835.

We do not promise a fixed arrival time. How quickly we can be there depends on what else is already out, the time of night, and where you are. We will tell you on the phone what we can do, rather than invent a response time. The call-out price is explained before we start any extra work. If the job turns out to be a small repair we can finish on the visit, we say so. If it needs a part we do not have, we make the situation safe and arrange the follow-up.

The faults we see out of hours in this area are fairly predictable. Frozen condensate pipes on combination boilers, especially in flats in Sutton and over the shops in Wallington, lock the boiler out in a cold snap. Burst pipes show up in lofts and in outside taps that were not isolated. Overflowing loft tanks in 1930s houses run until someone notices the stain. Scale and sludge do not usually start at midnight, but they are often why a boiler that was struggling all week finally stops on a Sunday.

Emergency visits are for making the house safe and getting heat or water back where we can. A bathroom fitting, a planned boiler installation or an annual boiler service waits for a booked appointment. A landlord gas safety certificate is also booked work, not a night call, unless there is an immediate danger we have been asked to make safe.

We cover Carshalton (SM5), Sutton (SM1, SM2 and SM3), Wallington and the rest of SM6, and the other districts on areas we cover. Those London borough places are in south London. Banstead, Epsom and the other Surrey towns on that list are the ones that are actually in Surrey. If you are unsure we cover you, say the postcode when you call.