Outside Tap Installation in March
Ground movement in the fen peat is often the reason older clay drain runs crack or drop out of line. An outside tap is one of those things you don't think about until you haven't got one. Washing the car with a bucket, dragging a hose through the kitchen, filling the paddling pool from the bathroom tap — it's a hassle. Getting one fitted is a quick job that makes life easier all year round.
As the practical hub of this corner of the old Isle of Ely, the town sees plenty of trade and rental properties where reliable plumbing matters most. Your plumber tees off your internal cold supply, drills through the wall, and fits the tap with a double check valve (backflow prevention — it's a water regulations requirement). It's a tidy job that doesn't disrupt your day.
Whether it is a terrace near the river or a bungalow on the outskirts, the same fen pattern of hard water and high water table runs beneath the town. Most March properties suit an outside tap on the kitchen wall or garage side. For bigger gardens, we can run the pipe further to a tap on a boundary wall or outbuilding. An indoor isolation valve is always fitted so you can shut off and drain the run before winter, plus pipe lagging where it crosses any unheated voids inside the property.
March grew up as a railway town around Whitemoor yard, and the dense Victorian terraces that housed the railway workers still make up much of the older stock. Cambridgeshire winters aren't the harshest in the country, but cold snaps still catch out outside taps that haven't been properly drained down. Water sitting in the spout can freeze, expand, and split the brass body or the copper pipe behind the wall — usually first noticed when the next thaw produces a leak inside the kitchen wall. Your plumber always fits an isolation valve on the indoor side of the run so you can shut off and drain the supply before December, plus pipe lagging on the indoor run where it crosses unheated voids.
The old course of the River Nene runs right through the middle of the town, and the riverside and low-lying streets carry their own damp and drainage quirks. For larger March gardens around Eastwood or Estover, we can run the supply further down the side of the property to put the tap closer to where it's actually needed — near a vegetable patch, greenhouse, or boundary wall. We can also fit a hose union connector on the spout so a garden hose clips on without an adaptor, and double-tap blocks for properties that want one tap for the hose and a separate one for filling watering cans.
