Terms
In short
Chalk & Cistern offers general information about water, heating and plumbing rules in Portsmouth and south-east Hampshire; using the pages does not make it your plumber, engineer or adviser.
Updated
Using the pages
You are welcome to read, print and share links to any page for your own household or tenancy. The text, illustrations and infographics belong to Chalk & Cistern; please link to a page rather than copying it wholesale. Quoted regulations, utility wording and makers' instructions remain the work of those who published them.
Figures are dated and linked to their sources, but rules and published data change. Before acting on a figure that matters to you, open the linked source and check it is still current.
Not professional advice
Nothing here is plumbing, heating, legal, financial or medical advice for your situation. Every home is different: the age of the pipework, the boiler model, the tenancy agreement and the supply zone all change the answer. For work on water fittings, use an approved plumber; for a dispute about a tenancy, a pipe or a bill, take advice from someone who can look at the facts. On health questions about water, follow the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the NHS or your doctor.
Gas and safety
Chalk & Cistern never gives instructions for work inside a gas appliance. The law requires anyone doing gas work to be competent and anyone doing it as a business to be Gas Safe registered; treat anything inside a gas appliance as a Gas Safe engineer's job. The few tasks the pages describe, such as topping up boiler pressure from a filling loop or bleeding a radiator, are taken from makers' user guides; follow your own appliance's manual, and stop if anything differs. If you smell gas or suspect carbon monoxide, get everyone out into fresh air and ring the national gas emergency line straight away.
Shops and prices
Some pages link to products sold by two US water-treatment shops that share owners with this site. Those links are there as reference models to compare. Chalk & Cistern does not sell anything, takes no orders and makes no promise about a product's price, availability, delivery to the UK, warranty or compliance with UK water regulations. Any purchase is between you and the shop, on the shop's own terms. Any price mentioned is the shop's US listing on the date stated and may have changed.
Changes
These terms may be updated when the site changes. The version on this page is the one that applies when you read it.