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.
HERTFORDSHIRE, BEDFORDSHIRE & CAMBRIDGESHIRE
Bathroom Fitters in Hatfield
A bathroom quote is only worth what the survey behind it is worth. We get the floor up where we need to, look at what the waste actually does, gauge your incoming pressure, then write a scope that lists every item. The price you agree in week one is the price you pay in week three.
Vantage Plumbing and Heating is based in Stevenage and works right across AL10 and AL9. We are Gas Safe registered under 956889, which matters more on a bathroom than people expect, because plenty of Hatfield bathrooms sit next to a boiler or cylinder that has to be altered as part of the job.
Hard water decides half the specification
Affinity Water’s Hatfield and Potters Bar zone document, reference AF023, puts the supply at 280 mg of calcium carbonate per litre and classifies it as hard. Third party postcode figures across AL10 and AL9 run a little lower, in the mid two hundreds, but the band is not in dispute. Hatfield water leaves limescale.
In a bathroom that shows up in four places, and all four are dealt with at specification stage rather than after the event.
Glass. A frameless screen with no protective coating will look permanently cloudy inside two years, and scrubbing does not bring it back once the scale has etched in. We specify treated glass and tell you it still needs a squeegee.
Brassware. Cheap chrome plating over a soft base pits under limescale. Solid brass bodies with proper plating cost more up front and last far longer.
Thermostatic cartridges. This is the one that generates the callouts. Scale builds inside, the mixing element sticks, and the shower runs cold then scalding. A serviceable cartridge from a brand that still sells spares in five years is worth more than a fancier tile.
Cylinders and immersions. If your hot water comes from a cylinder, we check the immersion and the internal condition before designing around it. A heavily scaled cylinder will undermine a good new shower.
Where the property suits it, an inline scale reducer on the incoming main protects the whole bathroom rather than just the shower.
Get a fixed price before we start
Call and talk to an engineer, or send us the details and we will come back to you with a price.
Mains pressure, pumps and unvented cylinders
The single biggest technical decision in a Hatfield bathroom is where the hot water comes from, and it is decided by the property, not by preference.
If you have a combi, the flow rate at the boiler is your ceiling. You cannot pump a combi, and fitting a rain head that wants more litres per minute than the appliance can deliver is how people end up disappointed with a bathroom that was otherwise done well. We measure the flow before we design the shower, not after.
If you have a vented cylinder with a tank in the loft, the pressure is whatever the head of water gives you, and in a two storey New Town house that is not much. A twin impeller pump is the usual answer, and the constraints are noise and siting. In a Roe Green flat, or anywhere with a neighbour below, pump position is a design decision rather than an afterthought.
If the house has the incoming main to support it, an unvented cylinder gives balanced mains pressure to both taps and removes the loft tanks entirely. It needs the right main, somewhere safe for the discharge pipe, and annual servicing. We will tell you which of the three routes your house can take before you choose a suite.
The properties where the job gets interesting
Hatfield covers more build eras in a small area than almost anywhere else we work, and the bathroom job is different in each of them.
Salisbury Village and De Havilland Grange. Built on the old aerodrome and de Havilland factory site, De Havilland Grange from around 2000 and Salisbury Village from around 2003, the latter delivering a thousand homes over five years across twenty six house types in Georgian, Victorian and cottage styles. Two houses on the same road can look related and be laid out completely differently inside. The common work here is upgrading a builder specification bathroom or turning a box room into an en suite. The critical check is the floor structure, because we do not cut anything until we know whether we are dealing with solid timber joists or an engineered floor system where notching in the wrong place is not an option. The second check is the soil stack position, since en suites on these plots often need a pumped waste rather than a gravity run, and that has to be designed in, not improvised.
Ellenbrook. Newer housing on the northern side of the former aerodrome, next to Ellenbrook Fields. Same generation of construction, same floor structure caution, and generally good mains pressure, which makes these the easiest houses in Hatfield to put a decent walk in shower into.
Birchwood. Established residential by 1957, and typical of the New Town in that the original bathroom is small, upstairs and directly above the kitchen. The interesting part is almost always underneath. Lifting the floor tends to reveal original waste runs at shallow falls, sometimes reduced in diameter along the way, and a soil connection that has been worked around by three previous trades. If you want to move the WC more than a short distance in a house like this, the waste needs redesigning properly rather than persuading.
The university quarter and its shared houses. The University of Hertfordshire opened the de Havilland Campus in 2003, and the letting market around it is substantial. Bathrooms in shared houses take a hammering, so the specification is different: durable rather than delicate, serviceable cartridges, extraction that will clear steam from four or five people showering in a morning, and floor finishes chosen for water tolerance. That is a different brief to a family bathroom.
Old Hatfield. Fore Street, Church Street and Park Street, in the conservation area that the New Town planners deliberately left untouched, with a run of individually listed buildings on Fore Street and Hatfield House itself listed at Grade I. Bathrooms here are the most involved work we do in the town. Floors are rarely level and joists are rarely where a modern plan assumes. New soil pipework on an external elevation is a planning question rather than a plumbing one, and internal alterations in a listed building can need consent in their own right. We work with what the building will accept, and we say so plainly if a layout you have seen online is not going to be possible.
Roe Green. The first New Town neighbourhood, built between 1950 and 1955 with 124 houses and 81 flats in the initial phase, put up with minimal brickwork because of postwar material shortages. In the flats, everything comes back to the stack and to the neighbour below. Waste routing is constrained, tanking under a wet room floor has to be done to a standard that assumes the worst, and we would rather over specify the waterproofing than trust a tray seal in a first floor flat.
What a full bathroom refit involves
Two to three weeks is the honest timescale for a complete strip out and refit. Anybody quoting one week is leaving something out.
Week one is strip out, first fix and structure: everything out down to the substrate, the floor checked and strengthened where it needs it, waste and supply re run, and the electrical first fix in. Electrical work is carried out by qualified electricians and certificated as part of the job.
Week two is the wet work. Tanking to walls and floors in the shower zone, floor levelling or building up, then tiling. Tiles need time to set before anything is fitted against them.
Week three is second fix and finishing. Sanitaryware, brassware, screens, silicone and a proper clean. We run the shower long enough to know the waste is coping before we leave.
Floor build up catches people out. A wet room needs falls formed into the floor, and with shallow joists that can mean the finished floor level changes at the door. Better to know on day one than when the door will not close.
Designed, supplied and fitted by one team
A written scope before anything comes off the wall, our own fitters, and a 2 year guarantee on our work.
The Lea, the tunnel and what is under the ground
Two bits of Hatfield geography turn up in real jobs. The first is the River Lea over at Mill Green, where the mill has ground on the same site since medieval times. On the low ground near the river the water table sits high, which matters the moment a bathroom job needs anything outside: a new gully, a soakaway or a rerouted external waste is a different proposition there than it is up on the Birchwood side, so we dig and look rather than assume.
The second is that the A1(M) runs underneath the town in the Hatfield Tunnel, with the Galleria built over the top of it. In the streets above and around that corridor, services are not always where a standard drawing would put them, so anything involving a new external connection gets checked on site before it gets priced.
What it costs
A bathroom price with no scope attached is meaningless, which is why you will not find one here. What we will do is be clear about what moves the number.
A refit that keeps the existing layout, uses the existing waste positions and swaps like for like sits at the lower end. Moving the WC, converting a bathroom to a wet room, adding an en suite with a pumped waste, or upgrading to an unvented cylinder all add cost, and so does anything that involves opening up a floor in an older property where nobody knows what is under it.
Sanitaryware and tiles are the part you control, and we are happy to fit what you have bought elsewhere as long as it is fit for the job. What we will not do is give you a low number at survey and find extras once the walls are open.
Plumbing and heating work alongside the bathroom
Most bathrooms involve a heating alteration: a towel rail moved or replaced, pipework altered in a wall, a radiator relocated to make a layout work. Those belong at first fix rather than chased in afterwards.
If your boiler is at the end of its life, a refit is the sensible moment to deal with it, because the system is already drained and the disruption is already happening. We can quote both together.
Recent bathrooms we have designed and fitted
A few of the finest rooms from our own jobs. Tap any photo to see it full size, or see every room in the gallery.
★★★★★
Rated 4.9 on Google by the people we work for
Why choose Vantage
Rated 4.9 on Google from more than 700 reviews across Google, Checkatrade and Trustatrader. Qualified, accredited engineers, a fixed price before any work begins and a labour guarantee on every job, from an established local company with an office team you can actually reach. No job too small.
Gas Safe registered
Company registration 956889. Every gas engineer carries their own Gas Safe ID card, and you can ask to see it.
Refcom F-Gas certified
REF1024550. Legally required for air conditioning installation and servicing, and we hold it.
CHAS Elite accredited
Veriforce CHAS assessed for health and safety, which is why commercial clients and landlords use us.
City & Guilds and BPEC qualified
Qualified, insured engineers on every job. No subcontracted strangers.
700+ reviews, 4.9 on Google
Across Google, Checkatrade and Trustatrader. Read them before you book.
Labour guarantee on every job
12 months on repairs, installations and everything else. Two years on a full bathroom refit. If anything we did develops a fault, we come back and put it right.
Fixed price before we start
The price is agreed with you before any work begins. No hidden extras on the invoice.
24/7, answered by a person
The emergency line is answered every day of the year by someone who can send an engineer, not a call centre.
Fully stocked vans
Five vans carrying the parts that fail most often, so most jobs are fixed on the first visit.
An office team behind every job
An established local business with multiple engineers and a dedicated office team to keep you informed.
Vaillant myREWARDS and Ideal Max accredited
Accredited installer status means extended manufacturer warranties on the boilers we fit.
Emergency response within the hour
Our average response to an emergency call is under an hour across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
Trusted & Accredited Professionals
Frequently asked questions
How long is the room out of use?
Two to three weeks for a full strip out and refit. Old Hatfield properties can run longer if the floor or the waste routing needs remedial work.
Can I have a rain shower on my combi?
Only if the boiler can deliver the flow it needs. We measure the flow rate at the property before specifying, because a combi cannot be pumped.
Do I need a pump?
If you have a vented cylinder and a loft tank, usually yes. If you are on a combi, no. If your incoming main is strong enough, an unvented cylinder can remove the need for one entirely.
Will limescale ruin a new shower screen in Hatfield?
Untreated glass will scale badly at 280 mg per litre. We specify treated glass, recommend a scale reducer on the main, and choose brassware and cartridges that survive hard water.
Can you fit a bathroom in a listed building in Old Hatfield?
Yes, but layout options are narrower and new external soil pipework is a consent question. We survey first and tell you what the building will realistically allow.
Do you do bathrooms for landlords near the university?
Regularly. Shared houses around the de Havilland Campus need a hard wearing specification and serious extraction rather than a delicate finish, and we spec them accordingly.
Areas we cover for bathroom renovation around Hatfield
Ellenbrook, Salisbury Village, Birchwood, Roe Green, South Hatfield, Old Hatfield, Essendon, North Mymms, Brookmans Park, Welham Green, Bell Bar, Newgate Street, Wildhill, Lemsford, Colney Heath, Welwyn Garden City, Potters Bar and St Albans.
Nearby: Bathroom renovation in Welwyn · Bathroom renovation in Hertford · Bathroom renovation in Codicote
A dripping tap or a failed shower valve is a different job to a refit. Our Hatfield plumbing page covers that side of it.
Get your Hatfield bathroom priced properly
Call 01462 506374 or send us the details and we will arrange a survey, measure your pressure and give you a written scope before any money changes hands.
Bathrooms we have fitted near Hatfield
Real rooms, photographed by us when we handed the keys back. Pick one to see every photograph of it and how it was built.
Calacatta Viola marble bathroom with a freestanding bathWatford, about 10 miles from Hatfield
Sage green panelled bathroom with a slipper bathShillington, about 17 miles from Hatfield
White marble-effect en suite with a backlit mirrorShillington, about 17 miles from HatfieldRelated services
Designed, supplied and fitted
Rooms we have designed and fitted
Level access, tanked properly
Electric, mixer and digital
VAT relief and grants explained
Every rate, published