your new bathroom, designed, supplied and fitted, free design consultation included
Applies to full bathroom renovations designed, supplied and fitted by Vantage Plumbing and Heating. The discount comes off the quoted price and is shown as a line on your written quote. Fixed price agreed before we start. Cannot be combined with any other offer.
Bathroom Fitters in Codicote
Talk to somebody who will survey the room before pricing it
A bathroom quote given over the phone is a guess. We come and look at the floor, the pipework and the pressure, then price the job properly.
Vantage Plumbing and Heating works out of Stevenage, a short drive from Codicote, and we handle the whole renovation: strip out, first fix, tiling, second fix, sealing and the clear up. Gas Safe registered, reg. 956889, company number 13248357, and 12 months on our own workmanship.
Pressure and flow matter more here than most people expect
Before anything else, we test the water. A bathroom designed around pressure the property does not have is the most expensive mistake in this trade.
Codicote sits on a chalk ridge on the dip slope of the Chilterns, and the northern and eastern parts of the parish rise above 120 metres, with high points nearer 140 metres. Height above the supply feeding you affects what arrives at the tap. The Codicote Neighbourhood Plan also flags water supply capacity as a genuine constraint on the village. None of that means your water is poor. It means we measure static pressure and flow rate at the property rather than assuming a figure, because the answer decides whether you can have the shower you actually want.
If the flow is strong, a mains fed layout works and a good thermostatic mixer will perform. If it is marginal there are two honest routes. An unvented cylinder stores hot water at mains pressure and gives you a proper shower and a bath that fills in sensible time, provided the incoming flow supports it. Or you keep the vented cylinder and fit a twin impeller pump, cheaper to install and noisier to live with. We will tell you which the property suits, and we will not fit a big rainfall head to a system that cannot feed it.
Hard water, and what it does to a new bathroom
Affinity Water supplies the village, and the water comes off chalk. Third party data from WaterGrade, which aggregates water company and Drinking Water Inspectorate figures, reports Codicote at around 290 mg/l of calcium carbonate and names Codicote Treatment Works as the source. We flag that as a third party number rather than one we pulled from Affinity Water directly, but nothing about the geology suggests soft water: the parish sits over a chalk Principal Aquifer, and the Mimram running through it is a chalk stream.
Hard water shapes three decisions in a bathroom refit.
Glass. Untreated shower glass in this village will be cloudy within a year. We specify glass with a factory applied protective coating and we tell you plainly that it still needs a squeegee after use.
Brassware. Cheap chrome plating and hard water do not get on. We steer people towards valves and taps with serviceable cartridges, because the cartridge is the part that fails, and replacing one rather than the whole tap is the difference between a small job and a retile.
Thermostatic showers. Scale on the thermostatic element is what makes a shower start running hot then cold. Where a property does not already have scale protection on the incoming main, we will usually recommend adding it as part of the bathroom rather than as a separate visit later.
What a bathroom renovation in Codicote actually involves
Day one is protection and strip out. Floors and stairs covered, the route from the door boarded, and the old suite, tiles and floor out. In the older properties this is the day surprises appear, and we would rather find them in week one than week three.
Then first fix: moving and renewing hot, cold and waste pipework, the electrical first fix for lighting, extraction and any underfloor heating, and getting the walls and floor properly flat and ready. Electrical work is carried out by qualified electricians and certificated as part of the job. Boarding and tanking come next, particularly in a wet room, where the tanking is the single most important part of the whole job and the part nobody ever sees.
Tiling follows, then second fix, where the sanitaryware, screen, brassware and radiator or towel rail go on, then grouting, silicone and commissioning. We test everything under real use before we call it finished.
A full bathroom, stripped back and refitted, is typically two to three weeks. Anybody promising you a week either has a very small room or is not doing the preparation properly. We give you a schedule at the start and tell you which days will be noisy and which day the water is off.
The properties where the job gets more interesting
New Street and the Newtown terraces. Nineteenth century terraced housing, with more of the same era in the southern part of the village. Two things come up every time. The original waste ran externally at the rear and the bathroom was usually a later addition, so the soil connection is rarely where a modern layout wants it, and moving a WC means thinking about fall across the whole run rather than the last metre. Second, solid floors and shallow joists limit the build up available for a former or for underfloor heating. Where the depth is not there we use a low profile system rather than raising the floor and creating a step and a door that will not close.
The Elms, The Chestnuts, Bury Lane and Valley Road. Post-war expansion housing, and generally the most straightforward bathrooms in Codicote. Timber floors with reasonable joist depth, sensible pipe runs, and enough space to consider a walk in shower without losing the bath. The catch in stock of this age is the original waste pipework, often small bore and cobbled together by decades of partial improvements. We renew it rather than connecting new sanitaryware to old plastic and hoping.
The High Street and the properties near the church. Codicote’s historic core runs around St Giles Church, which has a twelfth century core and a fifteenth century tower, with The Bury standing beside it. There is a designated Conservation Area over the historic village centre and there are listed buildings within it, including The Goat and the Robin Hood and Little John. If your property is listed, internal alterations can require listed building consent, and that includes work you might assume is nobody’s business but yours. North Hertfordshire District Council is the authority to speak to. We tell you when a scheme needs a conversation with them before it needs a fitter.
The older timber framed buildings near the High Street. The Goat still trades as a pub, and buildings of that fabric tell you what to expect. Nothing is square, nothing is where a drawing says it is, and a wall may be doing structural work you cannot see. Bathrooms in buildings like this are slow, careful jobs. We price them that way rather than cutting the tanking short to claw back time.
St Albans Road and the bungalows. Everything on one level, which sounds simple and is not. The waste has to find its way out without a first floor to help, extraction usually goes through the roof space, and loft runs need proper insulation. Bungalows also make good en suite conversions where a bedroom can give up a corner, and that is one of the more popular jobs we do in the village.
Node Court and the outlying properties. The 1928 thatched model dairy farm at the edge of the village is a reminder that not every property here fits a standard specification, and the same goes for the scattered houses at Nup End, Drivers End, Potters Heath, Hogsnorton and Rabley Heath, which sits in AL6 rather than SG4. These get a full survey, always.
One local point on drainage before you add a second bathroom
The Codicote Neighbourhood Plan states that the village’s sewers are regularly overwhelmed, and Hertfordshire County Council has identified Codicote as a surface water hotspot. That is not a reason to abandon an en suite, but it is a reason to make sure any new WC or shower is connected properly, with the right fall and the right connections, rather than added to an existing run that is already working hard. If we think an existing soil stack or drain run is not up to what you are asking of it, we will say so before we start, not after.
What it costs
A published bathroom price is either a guess at a room nobody has seen or a number with the risk built into it, so we do not print one. What we will give you is a clear, itemised, fixed quote after a survey, split so you can see labour, materials and any specialist work separately.
The honest ranges look like this. A like for like refit in one of the post-war properties, layout unchanged and mid range sanitaryware, sits at the lower end. Moving the WC, changing the layout, converting to a tanked wet room, or working in an older or listed property all push the number up, because each adds days rather than fittings. Underfloor heating, an unvented cylinder or structural floor work are separate line items and we show them as such.
If you have a budget, tell us at the survey. It is more useful to design a good bathroom around a real number than to send you a quote you were never going to accept.
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Plumbing and heating alongside the bathroom
Most bathroom projects touch the heating. A towel rail replacing a radiator changes the output of the room, and on an older system that has never been cleaned, opening it up is when sludge gets disturbed, so we often recommend a system clean and a magnetic filter at the same time. If the boiler is on its last legs it is far cheaper to replace it while the floor is up than to lift a new tiled floor a year later.
Areas we cover for bathroom fitting around Codicote
Codicote, Nup End, Drivers End, Potters Heath, Hogsnorton, Rabley Heath, Welwyn, Digswell, Ayot St Peter, Kimpton, Whitwell, Knebworth and Old Knebworth. Ask if your village is not listed.
Nearby: Bathroom renovation in Knebworth · Bathroom renovation in Welwyn · Bathroom renovation in Datchworth
If you need a plumber for something smaller than a full bathroom, general plumbing in Codicote is where to start.
Why Choose Vantage?
With a 4.9 rating on Google and more than 700 reviews across Google, Checkatrade and Trustatrader, fully qualified and accredited engineers, transparent pricing, and a 2-year labour guarantee on every job, Vantage delivers reliable, high-quality workmanship you can trust with fast response times, and genuine local service.
- Five-star Google reviews
- Gas Safe Registered No. 956889
- CHAS Registered
- City & Guilds qualified
- Checkatrade approved
- 2 year labour guarantee on every job
- Fully stocked vans most jobs fixed on the first visit
- Established local business with a dedicated office team and multiple qualified engineers
- No job too small
- Transparent pricing with a fixed price provided before any work begins
- 700+ reviews across Google, Checkatrade and Trustatrader, 4.9 on Google
Frequently Asked Questions
How long are we without the bathroom?
Typically two to three weeks for a full strip out and refit. Period properties and wet rooms sit at the longer end because the preparation and tanking take proper time.
Can I have a mains pressure shower?
Often yes, but we test flow and pressure at your property first. Codicote sits high on a chalk ridge and the Neighbourhood Plan flags water supply capacity as a constraint, so we measure rather than assume before recommending an unvented cylinder.
Will limescale wreck a new bathroom?
It will mark glass and shorten the life of cheap brassware. Around 290 mg/l calcium carbonate is reported for the village, so we specify coated glass, serviceable cartridges and scale protection on the incoming main where there is none.
Do I need permission for a bathroom in a listed building?
Possibly. Internal alterations to a listed building can require listed building consent, and Codicote’s Conservation Area covers the historic centre around St Giles Church and the High Street. North Hertfordshire District Council handles both.
Can you build a wet room in an older house?
Yes, but floor build up is the deciding factor. In the nineteenth century terraces around New Street there is often limited depth, so we use low profile formers and low profile underfloor heating rather than raising the floor.
Do you do en suites in bungalows?
Regularly. The St Albans Road bungalows and similar single storey properties in the village convert well, as long as the waste route and the extraction are planned properly at the design stage.
Get your Codicote bathroom priced
Call 01462 506374, or use the fixed-price quote form, and we will arrange a proper look at the room. You will get a fixed quote, a schedule, and a straight answer about what your water pressure will and will not support.