Most of the capital draws some of the hardest water in Britain.
Limescale is heating's slowest, most expensive disease. It coats heat exchangers a layer at a time, forcing the boiler to burn more gas for the same warmth, and it's the source of the kettling rumble our engineers hear from Croydon to Crouch End. A service catches scale early, when treatment is cheap; left for years, it ends in a heat exchanger replacement that costs more than a decade of servicing.