Plumber and renovations in Arona

Arona is not one place, it is two. Up the hill, the residential villages — Valle de San Lorenzo, Buzanada, La Camella, Cabo Blanco, Chayofa — with detached houses, flat roofs, water tanks and pumps, and a lot of 1980s and 1990s pipework that is now asking to be replaced. Down on the coast — Los Cristianos, Guaza, Costa del Silencio, Las Galletas, Palm-Mar — apartment blocks, communities, and salt air working away at every screw and every exposed pipe.

The faults we get called to are not the same in the two halves, and it shows when the plumber arrives: up top, tanks, pressure sets and old buried pipework; down below, communal soil stacks, water coming through between floors, and taps eaten by scale and sea air.

• Buried leaks in houses in Valle de San Lorenzo, Buzanada and La Camella, traced with camera and tracer gas before anything is opened.
• Tanks, pumps and pressure sets: no pressure, a pump that will not start, or one that never stops.
• Limescale: water heaters and taps furred up, typical across the whole region.
• Water coming through between flats in the coastal blocks, with a photographic report for the community or the insurer.
• Bathroom and kitchen refurbishment in main homes and rental apartments.

Los Cristianos · Valle de San Lorenzo · Cabo Blanco · Buzanada · La Camella · Chayofa · Guaza · Costa del Silencio · Las Galletas · Palm-Mar · El Fraile · Cho

What changes with the season

Arona has two rhythms a year. From November to March the heavy rain arrives, and with it the calls about flat roofs and terraces: water coming in through a failed joint or a drain blocked with leaves and sand, finding its way down to the flat below. From June to September the problem changes: with the house full, tanks working at full tilt and consumption up, the small leaks that went unnoticed in winter come to light.

Two specific patterns here. In the houses of Valle de San Lorenzo, Buzanada and La Camella, a lot of 1980s pipework is galvanised steel: when it starts to pit it does not burst, it drips inside the wall for months. The usual sign is a skirting board that swells or paint lifting halfway up the wall. On the coast — Los Cristianos, Costa del Silencio, Las Galletas, Palm-Mar — the enemy is salt air: tap connectors and washing machine hoses that crystallise and give way without warning. Replacing them costs little; the damage from one bursting in a rented apartment costs a great deal.

If your property has gone more than twenty years without touching the pipework and you see recurring stains, an inspection before the rainy season costs less than the repair afterwards.