Since 2010
Plumbing Services in Pontefract
Emergency plumbing and plumbing services across Pontefract, Knottingley, Castleford, Featherstone and surrounding areas.
Answered by a person 24 hours a day, priced in writing before we start, and all work guaranteed.
Cornel Building Services has worked out of Pontefract since 2010. We are accredited by the Federation of Master Builders, and a Living Wage and Disability Confident Employer.
Answered out of hours, every hour
You know the price before we start
A written price before any work begins, agreed with you. No day rates quoted over the phone, no extras appearing on the invoice.
Plumbing, electrics and roofing, one contractor
A leak that has taken out the lights needs a plumber and an electrician. You call once and we send both, rather than you chasing two trades.
Who we work with
Homes, rentals and commercial property in Pontefract and surrounding areas.
The same trades, the same standards and the same written pricing whether it is a family home, a rental portfolio or a commercial building.
Homeowners
Repairs, replacements and improvements. Priced clearly before we start.
- ✓ Every trade under one contractor
- ✓ Free written quotes, no obligation
- ✓ All work fully guaranteed
Landlords and letting agents
Tenanted property looked after without you having to be there.
- ✓ Direct contact with your tenant
- ✓ Photographs and sign-off on every job
- ✓ Gas and electrical certification
Commercial and healthcare
Maintenance and repairs planned around the people using the building.
- ✓ Out of hours attendance
- ✓ Work planned around occupants
- ✓ 24/7 emergency cover, 365 days
What We Do
Emergency plumber in Pontefract, 24 hours a day
If you have just searched for an emergency plumber near me, or a 24 hour plumber in Pontefract, call us on 01924 266211 and we will answer it.
Most plumbing emergencies happen at the worst possible time.
Pipes burst overnight when the heating has been off for hours or drains back up on a Sunday, the hot water goes on the morning of a school run and so on.
Our line is answered by a person at any hour, not an answering service taking a message for the morning.
That distinction matters, because the person who picks up can tell you where your stopcock probably is and get an engineer moving in the same call.
What counts as a plumbing emergency
Worth calling out immediately:
A burst or split pipe, or water coming through a ceiling
Water you cannot stop, even with the stopcock closed
A drain or toilet backing up into the property
No water at all in the house
A leak anywhere near electrics, sockets or a consumer unit
A gas smell, which is not us, that is the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999, and you should call them before anyone else
Worth waiting until morning, and cheaper for you if you do:
A dripping tap
A slow but still moving drain
A running toilet you can isolate at the valve
One radiator not heating up
We will tell you honestly on the phone which of those two lists your problem is on. Talking someone out of an out of hours callout they do not need costs us a job and earns us the next five.
What to do before we arrive
Four things, in order. They cost nothing and they routinely turn a ruined ceiling into a dry one.
Find your internal stopcock and turn it clockwise.
In most Pontefract houses it is under the kitchen sink.
In older terraces it can be under the stairs, in a hall cupboard, or beneath a downstairs toilet.
If yours will not budge, do not force it, there is usually an external stop tap under a small metal or plastic cover near the boundary or the pavement.Open the cold taps downstairs.
This drains the pipework down and slows the flow at the leak while you wait.Kill the power to any soaked area.
If water is anywhere near a light fitting, a socket or a ceiling rose, switch that circuit off at the consumer unit.
Do not stand in water to do it.Move what you can and photograph what you cannot.
Your insurer will want the photographs, and taking them before anyone starts work makes the claim considerably easier.
Worth doing on a quiet afternoon rather than at 3am: find your stopcock now, check it actually turns, and tell everyone in the house where it is.
Blocked drains in Pontefract
Blocked drains in Pontefract are the jobs we get called out on most.
They are also the jobs where people most often pay for work that was never theirs to pay for.
Is the blockage yours or Yorkshire Water's?
This is worth two minutes of your time before you pay anybody.
Since October 2011, most private sewers and lateral drains in England were transferred to the water companies. In Pontefract that is Yorkshire Water.
| Where the blockage is | Whose responsibility |
|---|---|
| Pipes inside your home | Yours |
| Drains within your boundary serving only your property | Yours |
| The lateral drain beyond your boundary | Yorkshire Water |
| A shared drain serving more than one property | Usually Yorkshire Water |
| The public sewer in the road | Yorkshire Water |
| A blocked road gully or surface water drain | Wakefield Council |
Quick rule of thumb. If more than one house on your row is affected at the same time, the blockage is almost certainly in a shared drain, and Yorkshire Water will usually attend at no cost to you. Call them before you pay anybody.
How we clear a blocked drain
We look before we do anything, because the fix depends on what is in there.
Fat and soap need different treatment to root ingress, and wipes need different treatment again. Once it is clear we flush the run and check it is actually flowing, not just moving.
Drains that keep blocking
A drain that blocks twice in a year is a defect rather than a blockage problem.
Usually it is a displaced joint, a partial collapse, root ingress, or a length of pipe that has lost its fall.
Clearing it again buys a few months.
If yours keeps going, we will tell you what is causing it and what the repair involves, which is a different conversation to another clearance charge.
Burst pipes and leak detection in Pontefract
Where leaks hide
A stain on a ceiling is almost never directly beneath the leak. Water runs along joists, follows pipe runs, and appears at the lowest point it can find, which can be a room away.
Signs worth acting on before anything visible appears:
A water meter that creeps up with every tap in the house closed
A patch of floor or a wall that is warm or damp for no reason
A boiler or system losing pressure repeatedly
A musty smell in a cupboard or under a floor
A water bill that has climbed with no change in usage
Leak detection in Pontefract is most of the work on these jobs.
We trace the leak without opening up more of the property than we have to, then tell you what the repair involves before we start it.
Frozen pipes, and how to stop them bursting
Pipes freeze where they are cold and unheated: lofts, garages, outhouses, and runs clipped to an external wall.
They rarely burst while frozen, they burst when they thaw, which is why the damage usually shows up on the mild day after a cold snap rather than during it.
Cheap and worth doing before winter:
Lag every pipe in the loft and the garage, including the ones you cannot easily reach
Leave the heating on a low setting rather than off if the house will be empty
Turn the outside tap off at its internal isolating valve and drain it
Check your loft insulation is not sitting on top of the pipes, which insulates them from the house rather than from the cold
A burst pipe in Pontefract is the single most common reason our phone rings in January, and almost all of it is preventable with the list above.
If a pipe has frozen and not yet split, turn the water off at the stopcock before you thaw it, and thaw it gently.
A blowtorch on a frozen pipe is how a small problem becomes a flooded kitchen.
Bathrooms, showers and taps in Pontefract
Full bathroom installation
A bathroom is not one trade.
It is plumbing, electrics, tiling, plastering and often joinery, and on most jobs it is the gaps between those trades where the timeline falls apart.
Waiting a week for a tiler after the plumber has finished is the normal experience.
As bathroom fitters in Pontefract we cover all of those trades under one contractor, which is the main reason people use us for bathrooms rather than a single trade plumber.
One point of contact, one written price, one programme.
Showers
Electric, mixer and power showers, fitted and repaired.
The most common mistake we get called to correct is a shower chosen without checking the water pressure and hot water system first, which is how a new shower ends up performing worse than the old one.
We check that before anything is ordered.
Repairs are usually the valve, the cartridge, the pump or the element.
Where the unit is worth keeping we repair it rather than pushing a replacement.
Taps, inside and out
Dripping taps, stiff handles and taps that have lost pressure are usually washers, cartridges or ceramic valves, and usually one short visit.
Outside taps are worth a note, because they are the one small plumbing job with a regulation attached.
Under the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, an outside tap needs backflow protection, normally a double check valve, to stop garden water being drawn back into the drinking supply.
We fit them with an internal isolating valve too, so you can shut the tap off and drain it before winter.
Toilets, waste and soil pipes
Running cisterns, weak flushes, leaks at the base and blockages, mostly in one visit.
Behind the toilet sits the part nobody thinks about until it fails.
Soil stacks crack, joints on waste runs work loose, and seals perish.
The usual first sign is a smell indoors with no visible leak, or a damp patch on an external wall below a pipe.
We trace it and repair or replace the section.
Water heaters, cylinders and cold water tanks
Unvented cylinders, vented cylinders, instantaneous heaters and cold water storage tanks, installed, repaired and replaced.
When we size a cylinder we size it to the property and the number of bathrooms, so the hot water holds up when two showers run at once.
On repairs the usual suspects are immersion elements, thermostats, expansion vessels and pressure relief valves.
If a limescale has built up on an element, replacing it without addressing why it happened just buys time.
Heating and boilers
Radiator replacement, valves, towel rails, underfloor heating pipework and system draining and refilling are all plumbing work, and we cover all of it.
Gas is different.
Work on a gas appliance has to be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer, so boiler repairs and servicing are arranged through one.
Call us either way and we will get it sorted.
Plumbing for landlords and letting agents
Tenanted property has a different problem to an owner occupied one.
You are not there, the tenant is, and the job still has to be evidenced.
How we work with landlords and agents:
Direct contact with your tenant to arrange access, so you are not the switchboard
Photographs and a written sign-off on every job
Out of hours attendance, which matters when a tenant has no water on a Sunday
Work priced in writing before it starts, for your records and your accountant
Two obligations worth knowing if you let property in the area.
Rented homes in England need an Electrical Installation Condition Report at least every five years.
Any gas appliance needs an annual gas safety check by a Gas Safe registered engineer. If the property has a stored water system, you also have a duty to assess the legionella risk.
How we price plumbing work in Pontefract
Almost nobody in this trade publishes their pricing, which is exactly why it is the question we get asked first.
How it works with us:
Quotes are free, and there is no obligation
You get a price in writing before any work starts
If something unexpected turns up once we open things up, we stop, tell you, and price it before continuing
No day rates quoted over the phone and no extras appearing on the invoice
Areas we cover from Queens Avenue
We are based at The Stables, Queens Avenue, Pontefract, WF8 4SF, and we cover Pontefract and the towns around it.
Pontefract - WF8
Knottingley - WF11
Castleford - WF10
Featherstone - WF7
Ackworth - WF7
Darrington - WF8
Wakefield - WF1, WF2
If you have searched for a plumber near me from any of those towns, we are a local firm with a real address in Pontefract rather than a national call centre routing your job to whoever is available.
We also work further across West Yorkshire on planned jobs.
If you are not sure whether you are in the patch, call and ask.
Recommended Seasonal Jobs
Winter is coming - get your home ready now.
Plumbing
Keep your pipes flowing smoothly and avoid nasty surprises this winter.
Heating
Stay cosy - book a Cornel heating check before the cold sets in.
Roofing
Fix small problems now for a roof that can stand up to winter weather.
Radiators
Upgrade your home with new radiators for warmer, more efficient heating.
Gutters
Clear away autumn leaves and prevent blockages before heavy rain and frost.
Boilers
Keep your boiler running safely and reliably when you need it most.
Electrical
From lighting to safety checks, our electricians keep your home powered up.
Chimneys
Enjoy safe, crackling fires with a freshly swept chimney this winter.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Clear, honest answers to the things people ask us most. If you can’t find what you need, just get in touch - we’re happy to help.