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Plumbing and heating in Edinburgh tenements and older homes

About this site

Pipes Up the Stair is a website about plumbing and heating in Edinburgh tenement flats and older homes, written in plain language and checked against official sources.

What it is

A reading site for people who live in, own or rent a flat or an older house in Edinburgh. It explains how shared pipes, drains and heating work in a tenement, what Scotland's rules say, and who to go to. It covers the city as a whole, with six pages on particular areas.

What it is not

It is not a plumber, heating engineer or gas engineer. It takes no calls, books no work, does no installs or repairs and gives no quotes. It has no connection with any Edinburgh plumbing firm with a similar name, and it does not speak for Scottish Water, the City of Edinburgh Council, SGN, the Gas Safe Register or Home Energy Scotland.

How pages are checked

Every number and rule on a page comes from a source linked on that page: Scottish Water, the Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland, legislation.gov.uk, the City of Edinburgh Council, the Scottish Government, Historic Environment Scotland, Home Energy Scotland, SGN, HSE, the Met Office and appliance makers' own advice. Pages were last checked on 5 November 2026, and that date is shown on each page. Scottish Water's pages were checked as archived copies of its official pages, and each page says so where it relies on them. Rules and grant amounts change, so check the source before you act.

The site does not test products, does not review firms and does not publish readers' stories. Safety advice is kept to what an occupier can safely do; anything involving gas, flues, wiring or shared parts of the building is for a qualified person or the owners together.

The pages are written by the site's small team, credited as "the Pipes Up the Stair site team". No named author is given because no single person signs them off.

A few pages carry a "reference shelf" link to one of four US businesses: PlumbingSupplyAndMore, Central Plumbing & HVAC, SoftPro Water Systems and Quality Water Treatment. All four are run by the same team as this site, and every link says so beside it. They are shown as US reference examples of a part or a service; nothing on this site suggests they deliver to Scotland or that a US part suits a Scottish home. The links carry no tracking codes.

Pictures

Most pictures are real photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited on the picture credits page. Where no suitable photograph existed, a photo-realistic AI-generated picture is used and its caption says so.