Air conditioning in Gravesend

Why does a Gravesend job start with the conservation area map?

Because the town centre is made of them. Gravesham Borough Council's 2009 management plan for the town centre covers eight conservation areas: Riverside, designated on 18 December 1980 and nearly 16 hectares in extent, Harmer Street, High Street, the Hospital and Commercial Quarter, King Street, Milton Place, Queen Street and Upper Windmill Street. A second plan covers the 19th-century suburban areas: Darnley Road, designated on 1 February 1990, Pelham Road and The Avenue, from 15 February 1995, and Windmill Hill, from July 1975 and nearly 17 hectares. The council has made Article 4 directions in most of these areas that remove the usual freedoms over windows, doors and other features, and its guide for owners dates from April 2020. In any of them, an outdoor unit cannot be fixed to a wall or roof facing the road, and the rear is where the search begins. Sources: Gravesham Borough Council; town centre plan; suburban plan; Riverside map; Windmill Hill map; Darnley Road map; Pelham Road map; Article 4 guide; Planning Portal.

What kind of homes does Gravesend have?

Terraces and semis in almost equal measure. The 2021 Census counted 41,724 households in Gravesham: 13,799 in semi-detached houses, 12,511 in terraces, 6,837 in detached houses and 6,745 in purpose-built flats, with 1,020 in houses divided into flats and 399 above shops or in other commercial buildings. A terrace gets one outdoor unit as permitted development, which is why a family in one of the streets off Darnley Road wanting two bedrooms and a living room cooled usually ends up with a multi-split. The newest homes are at Northfleet's end of Ebbsfleet Garden City, where the 4,000th home was an apartment at Keepmoat's Cable Wharf; new flats bring a management company and a one-unit-per-block rule with them. Sources: Census 2021; Planning Portal; Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.

How hot does Gravesend get?

Hot enough to make the record books. On 10 August 2003 the Met Office station at Gravesend-Broadness, sited on sandy soil on the Swanscombe peninsula, recorded 38.1°C, and for a while that stood as the highest temperature ever measured in Britain, until 38.5°C from Brogdale near Faversham was confirmed from the same day. KentOnline notes that Gravesend often topped the national temperature table in the years that followed; the Broadness site closed in August 2018. The town's position on the south bank of the widening Thames, opposite Tilbury, is part of why. For bedrooms that means the 26°C sleep threshold is passed on more nights than the averages suggest, and our air conditioning in Dartford page shows the shape of the year from the nearest station still open. Sources: KentOnline; Met Office; Wikishire; MHCLG.

What rules does a Gravesend landlord work under?

The national ones. Gravesham's own policy states that it runs neither an additional HMO licensing scheme nor a selective licensing scheme; only larger houses in multiple occupation need a licence, under the mandatory national scheme. Dartford's Article 4 directions on shared houses stop at the borough boundary, so they do not reach Gravesend. What does travel is the ordinary law: a tenant needs the landlord's written consent before a unit is fixed to the building, and a leaseholder needs the freeholder's. Sources: Gravesham Borough Council; Dartford Borough Council; LEASE.

What we fit and look after in Gravesend

The whole of our service list reaches Gravesend. Pick one for the detail.

From first call to first cool night

1. Tell us about the room

   A call to 01322 952910 or the form with your postcode in it. Which room overheats, what the building is, and whether the outside wall is yours to drill.

2. Survey, then a figure in writing

   We measure the room, choose a position for the outdoor unit, calculate the sound at the neighbour's window, look inside the consumer unit and ask about leases, landlords and covenants. The price arrives in writing with the electrics itemised.

3. Consents settled first

   If a freeholder, landlord, management company or council has a say, we wait for it, and we supply the drawings and sound figures they will ask for.

4. Installed, tested, shown to you

   Units, pipes and the new circuit are fitted; the pipework is pressure tested and evacuated before charging; the system runs in both modes while we measure it; the certificates are yours and so is a tour of the remote. After that, a service once a year.