Kent covers a lot of ground, from Dartford on the edge of London to the Thanet coast, and the buildings change a great deal along the way. We travel out from Chiswick to assess holiday lets, student houses, terraced rentals, care homes and schools right across the county.
Seaside holiday lets
Margate, Broadstairs, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Deal, Folkestone and the villages behind them have plenty of holiday cottages, seafront flats and converted fishermen's houses let by the night or the week. Holiday lets are businesses, so the owner or the agency running the bookings has the same Legionella duties as any other landlord.
The water problem with holiday lets is the gaps. A cottage might be busy every weekend in August and then sit empty for a fortnight in November. Some are closed altogether over the winter, with the water heater off and the pipes full of still water. An outdoor shower for sandy feet, or a hot tub in the garden, adds another outlet that needs looking after. A good assessment gives you a short changeover routine that a cleaner can actually follow, plus a proper plan for reopening in spring. We've written a whole post on Legionella in holiday lets and Airbnbs.
Canterbury student houses and Medway terraces
Canterbury's universities mean a large student rental market, much of it in terraced houses turned into shared homes. The same is true around the university campuses in Medway. Student HMOs are busy in term and quiet over the summer, so the weeks before September are when water has been standing longest. If you're licensing a shared house, check your council's requirements, because Kent's district councils and Medway each set their own. Our guide to HMO licensing and Legionella explains how the water side fits in.
Chatham, Gillingham, Rochester and Gravesend have long streets of Victorian and Edwardian terraces, lots of them now rented. Typical finds are old galvanised loft tanks, combi boilers fitted alongside redundant pipework that was never removed, and electric showers that haven't been descaled in years. Most of it is cheap to fix once someone's spotted it. Our remedial works team can take out dead legs and replace tired tanks.
Care homes along the coast
The Kent coast has a lot of care homes and retirement housing, many in large Victorian villas and former hotels that have been extended over the years. Big old buildings like these often have long pipe runs, several hot water systems added at different times, and rooms that sit empty between residents. With frail residents at risk of both Legionella and scalding, hot water storage, TMVs and flushing all need to work together. We can do the assessment, then look after TMV servicing and routine monitoring. There's more in our post on care homes, schools and dental practices.
Kent's water
Kent is supplied by several companies. Southern Water, South East Water and Affinity Water each supply parts of the county, with Affinity covering the area around Folkestone and Dover. Much of Kent's water comes from the chalk, so it's generally hard. Check your bill, or your supplier's postcode checker, to see exactly who supplies you and how hard your water is.
Hard water leaves scale in showers and on heating elements, and in a holiday let that's only used now and again, a scaled-up shower head is a perfect place for bacteria to sit. Cleaning and descaling shower heads is an easy win to build into your changeover routine.
Getting to you
We come into Kent on the M25, M20, M2 and A2. The Dartford Crossing charge applies on the way in from the north, and we account for it when we quote. We try to plan coastal visits together, so if you've got several holiday lets or a mix of properties in one part of the county, tell us and we'll do them in one trip.
Towns we cover in Kent
- Canterbury
- Margate
- Ramsgate
- Broadstairs
- Whitstable
- Herne Bay
- Deal
- Dover
- Folkestone
- Hythe
- Ashford
- Maidstone
- Tonbridge
- Tunbridge Wells
- Sevenoaks
- Dartford
- Gravesend
- Chatham
- Rochester
- Gillingham
- Sittingbourne
- Faversham
For general questions, see our Legionella FAQs or browse all the areas we cover.