Common plumbing problems in Costa del Sol homes

Most of my call-outs come down to four things: hard water wrecking heaters and taps, salt air eating fittings near the sea, pipework in empty apartments, and shared systems in blocks where one flat's problem becomes everyone's. None of it is exotic. All of it is predictable.

Hard water, and what it does to a water heater

The water here is hard. Scale builds on the heating element of an electric termo until it works like a jacket, so the element runs hotter, heats slower, and eventually gives up. The tank takes longer to recover, the water never gets properly hot, and the bill creeps up while it happens. On a solar thermal system the same scale settles in the cylinder and the pipework, which is why those want looking at every few years rather than left alone until something stops.

Scale also blocks shower heads, stiffens tap cartridges, and is behind a good share of the drips people live with for months. Details are on the water heater page.

Salt air near the front line

A hundred metres from the sea, fittings age faster. Chrome pits, exposed pipework corrodes, outdoor taps and pool plant seize. It isn't dramatic and it isn't sudden, which is exactly why it gets missed: a fitting that looks tired for two years fails on the third. If you're on the beach side, it's worth someone looking at the outside pipework occasionally rather than waiting.

Empty apartments cause their own problems

A flat nobody uses for four months dries out its traps, so the smell from the drain comes back up into the bathroom. Seals harden. Small leaks run unnoticed until they've been running for weeks, which is how a dripping joint turns into a ceiling repair downstairs. Closing a place up properly takes ten minutes: water off at the stopcock, heater off, and a bit of water down each trap.

If you're not here between visits, second-home care catches the quiet ones before they become the expensive ones.

Blocked drains, and what causes them here

Kitchen blockages are nearly always fat and oil that cooled in the pipe. Bathroom ones are hair, and whatever has been flushed that shouldn't have been: wipes are the worst offender, including the ones sold as flushable. In holiday lets it's worse, because guests treat the toilet as a bin and nobody notices until the next changeover.

A drain that drains slowly is telling you something. Clearing it early is a short job; clearing it after it backs up into the shower is not.

Shared pipework in apartment blocks

In a block, the riser and the main drain belong to the community, and the pipework inside your flat belongs to you. That line decides who pays, so it's worth knowing where the damp is coming from before the conversation with the administrator starts. Water travels: a stain on your ceiling often starts two floors up. Finding the real source, rather than the nearest one, is most of the work.

Pressure problems up the hill

Properties above the coast road often run on a pump and a tank, and the pump is usually the thing that fails. Weak pressure in an upstairs shower, or pressure that drops away when two taps run, generally points at the pump, the tank level or a filter rather than the taps themselves. Villas in the hills above Marbella get this more than anywhere.