Plumber in Broomhill, Sheffield

A three storey villa with a cellar has a long way for water to travel. Gravity fed showers at the top get little pressure from a loft tank only a few feet above. Heating systems with fifteen or twenty radiators, some original cast iron, collect sludge and air at the high points. Pipes added room by room over the years can leave odd dead ends that hold stale water.

When a villa is split into flats, each flat often has its own combi boiler but they all share one supply pipe from the street. If the supply is old lead or narrow pipe, the flats compete for water in the morning. Upsizing the supply pipe from the boundary often helps more than any shower pump. Yorkshire Water says homeowners own the supply pipe up to the property boundary, and owners share responsibility where a pipe is shared.

Sheffield City Council says you need an HMO licence if five or more people forming two or more households live in a property, whatever the number of floors. Its HMO licence page says the application must include gas and electrical certificates and a sketch floor plan, and the licence normally lasts up to five years.

For gas, landlords in England must have every gas appliance checked every 12 months by a Gas Safe registered engineer and give tenants the record within 28 days. Electrical installations in private lets need an inspection at least every five years.

The water here is soft. Yorkshire Water's checker places Broomhill and nearby S10 postcodes in different supply zones, from around 9 to 28 mg/l calcium, all soft or moderately soft. Check your own postcode on the Yorkshire Water hardness page. Scale is rarely the reason a tap or boiler fails here. Wear and heavy use are.

In a villa split into flats, a leak in one flat often shows in the one below. Each flat should have its own stop tap, but in older conversions it is not always clear which tap controls which flat. Label them. It saves real damage when a pipe bursts at night.

Shared drains are common too. The kitchens and bathrooms of three or four flats may all run into one stack and one drain. A blockage in that shared pipe affects everyone, so the cost of clearing it is usually shared under the lease or by the freeholder.