Landlords, letting agents & managing agents
Surveys that say which of the three damps it actually is, work that meets Part F, and commissioning figures in writing — so the file stands up if a tenant, a council or an insurer ever asks. Across Beckenham, Bromley, Penge and South East London.
A black bathroom ceiling is not really a decorating problem. It is a disrepair claim, a renegotiated sale, a void month, or a tenant who has stopped answering the phone — and by the time it is any of those, the question is no longer whether you fixed it. It is whether you can show when you were told, what you found, what you did and when you did it.
That is a record-keeping problem as much as a ventilation problem. Most contractors hand you a paper invoice and nothing else. We do both halves, and the record builds itself.
The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act lets a tenant take you to court directly, and damp and mould is a category 1 hazard. Repainting it is not a defence — the cause has to be dealt with, and you need to be able to prove it was.
You get a report naming the cause and a commissioning certificate proving the fix works.
You are the one taking the call, and you are carrying it with the landlord and the tenant at the same time. What you need is one contractor who goes out, reports back in writing, and gives you something you can forward the same afternoon.
You get a dated record per property, in an account you can pull it out of at any time.
Communal extract that has not been touched since it was fitted, flats with no working ventilation, and a Section 20 to get through before anything can happen. A specified job with a measured outcome is a great deal easier to consult leaseholders on than “we will put some fans in”.
You get a survey of the whole block, a specification you can consult on, and figures at the end that show what was actually delivered.
A survey that flags condensation or mould takes the momentum out of a sale and puts a number in the buyer’s head. Nine times in ten it is a ventilation shortfall, not rising damp — and that is a fixable, provable, quotable thing.
You get a fast survey, a written cause and a fix that closes the point out before exchange.
Surveyors and damp specialists: if you diagnose but do not install, send it over. We do not survey for damp causes in competition with you — we take the ventilation half, do it properly, and hand your client back a measured figure with your name still on the diagnosis.
Not a look and an opinion. A damp and mould survey with the readings written down as they are taken: relative humidity, surface temperatures at the cold spots, moisture readings, and the airflow the existing extract is actually achieving.
Why it mattersA measured airflow is the difference between “there is a fan in there” and knowing whether it moves the air the room needs. Most of the ones we test do not.
A written report naming the cause, not the symptom — a ventilation shortfall against the Approved Document F minimum, a cold bridge, a defect, or an occupancy load the fabric cannot carry.
Why it matters“Tenant lifestyle” is the answer that ends up in front of a judge. A figure against a standard is the answer that ends the argument.
Extract upgrades, continuous mechanical extract, positive input, or full heat recovery where the property warrants it — then commissioning with a calibrated anemometer and a certificate of the rate measured at each valve.
Why it mattersA system that meets the figure on paper regularly fails on site. The certificate is what stops the same property coming back next winter as a claim.
Worth saying plainly, because plenty of people will imply otherwise. Awaab’s Law is named after Awaab Ishak, who died in 2020 after prolonged exposure to mould in his family’s flat. It came in through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, and the first phase of it took effect for social landlords on 27 October 2025 — fixed legal timescales to investigate a reported damp or mould hazard, report the findings in writing and start the work.
For privately rented homes it is not in force. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 gives the government the power to extend it, and the published roadmap puts that in a later phase, subject to consultation. No commencement date has been set. Anyone telling you there is one is guessing.
It is worth knowing now, because the record it will ask you for is the record you should be keeping anyway — and the properties that will struggle are the ones with no before-and-after figures on file. Everything above already produces that record. Nothing needs to change when the timescales land.
Not legal advice. Awaab’s Law currently applies to social housing; the extension to privately rented homes under the Renters’ Rights Act follows its own timetable, and the regulations are amended from time to time. Check the current position, or take advice, for what applies to your properties today. What we can tell you precisely is what a property needs under Approved Document F, and prove by measurement that it is achieving it.
We built our own engineer’s app, and every client gets the portal side of it. It is not a brochure — it is where the job actually lives, and the readings land in it as the engineer records them on site.
The reason that matters when you manage property is simple: the record you would have to produce is the same record we have to keep anyway to do the job properly. So you get it as a by-product, dated, rather than reconstructing it from an invoice eighteen months later when somebody asks.
One property or two hundred — tell us what you have and where, and we will tell you what it needs.
Talk to us about a portfolioVentilation is the only thing in a house that quietly stops working without ever breaking. Nothing trips, nothing leaks, nothing makes a noise — the filters load up, the airflow halves, and the first anyone knows is a black line round the bathroom ceiling two winters later.
So we do not sell a callout. We sell a visit that ends in a measured figure, the same way the installation did.
Filters to the manufacturer’s interval, heat exchanger drawn and cleaned, condensate trap checked, and the unit re-balanced — then every valve re-measured and the figures written down.
A loaded filter set can take a third off the airflow before anyone notices. Re-measuring is the only way to know it is still doing what it was commissioned to do.
Performance tested at the grille with a calibrated anemometer against the Approved Document F rate for that room, cleaned, and re-commissioned. If it cannot make the figure, you get told why.
Most of the fans we test in older properties do not hit their rate. A test is what turns “there is a fan in there” into something you can act on.
Filter changed, airflow checked at the diffuser, heater and controls tested, and the loft conditions round the unit looked at while we are up there.
A PIV pushing through a blocked filter is a fan heating a loft. They are cheap to service and almost never are.
Filters, coils, condensate and drainage, electrical connections and a performance check before the hot weather finds the fault for you.
Refrigerant circuit work — recovery, charging and leak testing — is carried out under F-Gas certification by our refrigerant partner, because it is illegal to do otherwise. The work listed above needs no F-Gas certificate and we do it ourselves.
One visit per property per year, planned round the summer rather than squeezed into the winter when everything else is going wrong. Each one ends with a dated certificate carrying the measured figures, filed against that property in your account.
That is the record that answers a complaint before it becomes a claim: not “it was serviced”, but what it was achieving, on what date, against what standard.
Ask about a service planYou do not need the ventilation lecture. You need the ductwork in between the joists before the boards go on, on the day you said, and the numbers for building control at the end of it.
We quote portfolio work rather than publish a rate, and it is worth explaining why rather than just saying it.
A portfolio is not a bigger version of one house. What decides the price is how many properties there are, how far apart they sit, what the access arrangements are, and how much of the paperwork you actually need — and those four vary so much between one agent and the next that any published figure would be wrong for most of the people reading it. We would rather give you a number we can stand behind than one we have to revise once we have seen the list.
Rates for landlords, letting agents and managing agents are quoted excluding VAT, which you reclaim, so you can compare us against anyone else on the same basis. Everything is confirmed in writing before any work starts.
So you can see the shape of it before you ring, and tell roughly where your own portfolio sits.
This is the big one. Several properties surveyed or serviced in the same trip is a genuinely different day from the same number scattered across three boroughs — the saving is the road, not the work, and it is real enough to be worth passing back to you. Clustering by postcode when you book is the single easiest way to bring a portfolio quote down.
A visit that establishes the cause, takes the readings and tells you the fix is a shorter job than one that produces a full written report with dated photographs and the reasoning set out. You do not need the full report on every property — take it on the ones that are already contentious, and the summary on the rest. That choice is yours and it changes the price.
Whether we collect keys, whether a tenant needs to be in, and how much notice the tenancy requires. A no-access visit is a wasted trip for both of us, so we would rather build the arrangements into the quote than discover them on the morning.
Whether the wet rooms have an outside wall behind them decides more of the cost than anything else in this work — a wall fan is a couple of hours, an inline fan with a ducted run is most of a day. Age and type of stock tells us how likely that is before we arrive, which is why we ask.
Reactive callouts cost more per visit than scheduled work, because scheduled work can be routed. Units on an annual plan get done in batches at a time we choose, and that is worth a better rate to you. It also means the servicing actually happens rather than being remembered after a tenant complains.
There is no portfolio rate on installs and we will not pretend otherwise. Every property gets looked at and priced on what it needs. What you do get across a portfolio is one point of contact, one format of quote, and work scheduled around your tenancies rather than around us.
Send these five things and you will usually have a written quote inside a working day. It is the information we would otherwise have to come back and ask for, which is what turns a one-day quote into a one-week one.
If it is one property with a tenant already complaining, say so and we will treat it as that rather than as a portfolio enquiry — those need answering quickly and the paperwork matters more than the price.
Almost always the landlord, and the law does not turn on who caused it. Under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 a rented home must be fit to live in for the whole tenancy, and damp and mould is a category 1 hazard under the HHSRS. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 puts the structure and the installations on the landlord as well. "The tenant dries washing indoors" is not a defence: a household of four puts 10 to 15 litres of water a day into a home just by living in it, and the question the law asks is whether the property can deal with that. If it cannot, the property is the problem. Where a tenant genuinely is doing something unusual, the way to establish it is a survey with readings in it — not a letter.
Yes, directly, and that is what changed in 2019. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act gives the tenant their own right to sue for an unfit property — they no longer have to persuade the council to act first. A court can order the work done and award damages, usually a proportion of the rent for the period the property was unfit. The practical consequence for a landlord or an agent is that a dated survey, the works, and commissioning figures showing the ventilation now performs are the difference between a defensible file and an indefensible one.
Not yet, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you somebody else's obligation. Awaab's Law is a social housing duty under the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, and its first phase — covering damp and mould and emergency hazards — came into force for registered providers on 27 October 2025. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 carries the power to extend it to the private rented sector by secondary legislation, but that has not been done and no commencement date has been set. What already applies to you today is the Fitness for Human Habitation Act and section 11, which is a lower profile duty and a higher practical risk, because a tenant can act on it now.
Approved Document F sets minimum extract rates for wet rooms and a whole-dwelling rate set by the number of bedrooms. Intermittent extract is 60 l/s in a kitchen without a cooker hood ducted outside, 30 with one, 30 in a utility, 15 in a bathroom and 6 for a WC. The whole-dwelling rate runs 19, 25, 31, 37 and 43 l/s for one to five bedrooms. Those are minimums, not targets, and the only figure that means anything is the one measured at the grille after installation — a fan rated at 15 l/s on the box will not be moving 15 l/s through four metres of flexible duct with a bend in it. We measure every terminal and give you the readings in writing.
Where the property has a kitchen or a bathroom — so, in practice, yes — it needs mechanical extract meeting the Part F rates unless there is another compliant system doing the job. An openable window is not extract ventilation. If you are altering a wet room, replacing windows, or converting a loft, that work triggers the requirement in its own right. The loft conversion is the one that catches people out: turning a cold roof space into a bedroom moves the dew point down into the building, and it is the commonest way a house that was fine develops a mould problem the following winter.
By measuring rather than by looking. Condensation, penetrating damp and rising damp look similar on a wall and have completely different remedies, and fitting ventilation to a leak fixes nothing. A survey takes surface and air readings, finds the cold surfaces the moisture is landing on, checks the existing extract actually moves air, and says which of the three it is — with the readings, dated photographs and the reasoning written down. That report is what you send a tenant, a council environmental health officer or an insurer, and it is worth having before the argument rather than after it.
Yes, and that is most of what we do for agents. Surveys can be run as a batch across a set of addresses, the reports come back in one format so they can be compared, and the work is scheduled around tenancies rather than around us. Every unit we install gets a QR label so that whoever is standing in front of it — a tenant, a contractor, the next agent — can see its make, model, filter spec, service history and next service date without ringing anyone. Servicing then runs as a plan, because the airflow falls as filters load and nothing on the wall tells you that has happened.
Send us a message with what you have noticed at home. We will tell you honestly whether you need a survey, a system, or neither.
Or see what it costs — unlike most in this trade, we publish our prices.
Trained on the systems we install
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