Low water pressure in W4 caused by problems at Thames Water treatment centre

Tap photograph by Jos Speetjens, courtesy of Unsplash

Taps not running, or low water pressure across a wide area of south west London

Households in W4 may have found their tap water has not been running, or their water pressure is low, as a result of an issue at Hampton Water Treatment Works.

Thames Water put out a notice on Wednesday afternoon (19 November) to say the following postcodes may be impacted:

KT1, KT8, KT12, SW4, SW6, SW8, SW13, SW11, SW14, SW15, SW17 SW18, SW19, TW1, TW2, TW3, TW4, TW7, TW8, TW9, TW10, TW11, TW12, TW13, TW15, TW16, TW17, W3, W4, W10, W12.

“Our specialist team is on site investigating the cause of the disruption and working to restore supplies as quickly as possible”, they said.

By the evening they were reporting that they were “continuing to make progress” in restoring the Hampton Water Treatment Works back to normal.

Last night they said their teams were carrying out essential water quality testing to ensure it was safe before bringing the site back into service.

This morning (20 November) Thames Water reported their teams had worked throughout the night “carefully monitoring and gradually increasing the water supply” as it began to feed the network of pipes again.

“You should now have water flowing normally through your taps although some may still experience low pressure as the water in the pipe network continues to stabilise and the system fully recharges”, they reported at 7.30am.

“We know how disruptive it is if you lose your water supply, so we’ll work hard to get things back to normal as soon as we can” they say.

Thames Water did not explain what exactly the problem was or what had caused it.

Ongoing problems

In case of ongoing problems, for customers living in high-rise flats, they advise some residents may be experiencing low pressures, in which case they should contact their building’s managing agent ‘who will be able to reset your internal pumps to improve this’.

‘If your water is flowing but looks a little different (for example, slightly discoloured), please see our advice on after an incident’.

Update Friday 21 November at 08.15

Thames Water say the water should now be flowing normally since they have carried out ‘vigorous airing of the mains throughout the night and have seen significant improvement across the network’.

They say they are currently moving water around the system as the network continues to recover from the Hampton outage.

If you are still experiencing no water, contact them on 0800 316 9800 or report the issue online.

If your water is flowing but looks a little different (for example, slightly discoloured), please see our advice on after an incident.

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