Surrey is a short hop down the A3, M3 or M25 from our office in Chiswick, and we're in the county most weeks. The housing here is very different from inner London, and so are the Legionella risks. Bigger houses, bigger hot water cylinders and more bathrooms that nobody uses.
Big houses, big cylinders, spare bathrooms
A lot of Surrey's rented homes are detached and semi-detached family houses, from Edwardian villas in Weybridge and Reigate to 1930s semis in Ewell and newer executive homes on the edge of Guildford and Woking. Many still have a vented hot water cylinder fed from a cold tank in the loft, or a large unvented cylinder that serves three or four bathrooms.
That's where the risk tends to sit. A guest en suite or a shower in a converted loft might go weeks without being run, and the water in that branch slowly drops to room temperature. When the house is let to a family who only use the main bathroom, those outlets become exactly the kind of stagnant spot Legionella likes. Cylinder thermostats set low to save energy make it worse. Part of our assessment is simply walking every room and asking which taps actually get used.
Large lets and house shares
Guildford has a big student market around the university, and there are shared houses for young professionals in Woking, Staines and Epsom too. Shared houses bring more people, more showers and more turnover, with rooms empty between tenancies over the summer. If your property is licensable as an HMO, check your district or borough council's rules, because each Surrey council sets its own licence conditions. Our post on whether landlords need a Legionella risk assessment covers the basics.
Schools, care homes and business parks
Surrey has a lot of independent schools, some with boarding houses, sports halls and swimming pools, alongside its state primaries and academies. School water systems are mostly about long holidays. Six weeks of summer stagnation is a real risk if no one's flushing, so the written scheme needs to say what happens before term starts again. Boarding houses add showers that are used hard in term time and not at all in the holidays.
The county also has plenty of care homes and nursing homes, many in extended period houses where the plumbing has grown in stages. Residents are more vulnerable to both Legionella and scalding, so hot water has to stay hot for Legionella control while TMVs bring it down to a safe temperature at the outlet. That balance needs regular TMV servicing and careful monitoring. Our article on Legionella in care homes, schools and dental practices goes into more detail.
Then there are the offices and business parks around Guildford, Leatherhead, Redhill, Camberley and Staines. Hybrid working has left some floors quiet for days at a time, and kitchenettes, showers and accessible toilets on those floors can need a flushing routine. Our Legionella maintenance visits can take that off your facilities team's list.
Water supply in Surrey
Surrey is split between several water companies. Four companies supply different parts of it (Thames, Affinity, SES and South East Water), so neighbouring towns can be on different suppliers. Nearly all of it is hard water. If you want to know exactly what comes out of your taps, use your supplier's postcode checker.
Hard water means scale in showers, taps and calorifiers, so descaling is part of normal upkeep here. In warm summers, cold water tanks in hot lofts can also creep above 20°C. We cover that in our post on keeping cold water cold in summer, and our remedial works team can insulate, relocate or replace tanks that won't stay cool.
Getting to you
Most of Surrey is within easy reach of Chiswick via the A316 and M3, the A3 or the M25. Parking is rarely a problem outside town centres, though Guildford and Kingston-fringe streets can be tight. Rural properties and large estates are fine too, we just ask for directions to the plant room or loft hatch before we arrive.
Towns we cover in Surrey
- Camberley
- Caterham
- Cobham
- Dorking
- Egham
- Epsom
- Esher
- Ewell
- Farnham
- Godalming
- Guildford
- Haslemere
- Leatherhead
- Oxted
- Redhill
- Reigate
- Staines-upon-Thames
- Walton-on-Thames
- Weybridge
- Woking
Have a look at our Legionella FAQs, or the full list of areas we cover.