A customer in a Newtown apartment block had no hot water and leaks from their Meibes HIU, and five different engineers had already been out to try to diagnose it. We found the hot water valve had been patched with sealant and a hose clip, replaced it, and had them back up and running.
A customer in an apartment block in Newtown, just north of Birmingham city centre, was having problems with their heat interface unit: no hot water, and leaks. Five different engineers had been out to try to diagnose it before they called us. The unit is a Meibes HIU on the building's heat network. With it opened up, the problem was on the hot water side: the PM valve, the brass valve that lets heat from the network through to the hot water heat exchanger, had a joint wrapped in sealant and a hose clip, an earlier attempt to stop a leak. We replaced the valve with a new one and had the customer back up and running.
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HIU service £95, £115 or £170 depending on the package. Emergency HIU repair £225 including up to 3 hours. Parts are quoted first.
No travel charge within 10 miles of B20 2JS. Further out, £2 per mile may apply — always agreed before anything is booked. Full price list
Smell gas now? Do not use this form or wait for a reply. Call the National Gas Emergency Service free on 0800 111 999 (24 hours). If you are using a mobile, make the call from outside. Open doors and windows, do not switch electrics on or off, do not smoke or use naked flames, and turn the gas off at the meter if it is safe to do so, unless the meter is in a cellar or basement. Once the supply has been made safe, we can trace and repair the fault.
The call came from an apartment block in Newtown, just north of Birmingham city centre near Snow Hill. The customer was having problems with their heat interface unit: no hot water, and leaks. Five different engineers had been out before us to try to diagnose it, and the customer was still without a working unit.
Apartments like this one are on a heat network. A central plant heats water for the whole building, and each apartment has a heat interface unit, or HIU, that takes heat from that supply for its own radiators and hot water. There is no boiler and no gas in the apartment, and this unit is a Meibes.
We moved the expansion vessel aside to get into the unit, in the second photo. The fault was on the hot water side, at the PM valve: the brass valve that lets heat from the network through to the plate heat exchanger when a hot tap is opened. A joint on its body had been wrapped in sealant and a hose clip, in the third photo, an earlier attempt to stop it leaking. A valve in that state was never going to give reliable hot water, and the sealant only hid the leak.
We replaced the PM valve with a new one. The old and new valves are side by side in the fourth photo, and the new one is in place in the fifth, with no sealant and no clips. With the unit back together the customer was back up and running.
HIUs are specialist kit, and the hot water side of a Meibes unit is nothing like a combi boiler. Our HIU service and repair page explains what we do. Elsewhere in the city we traced no hot water from a city centre HIU to a failed flow switch.
An emergency HIU repair is £225, which covers the callout and up to three hours of labour to find and fix the fault. Parts are quoted before we fit them. Annual HIU servicing starts at £95. Details are on our price list.
It is the brass valve on the hot water side of the unit. When a hot tap is opened it lets heat from the building's heat network through to the plate heat exchanger that heats your water, and closes again when the tap shuts. If it sticks, fails or leaks, you get no hot water, poor hot water, or water where it should not be.
Not properly. Sealant and a hose clip around a valve joint might slow a drip for a while, but they hide the problem rather than fix it, and a leak inside the casing can reach the electrics or the heat meter. The right fix is to replace the failed part, which is what we did here.
A heat interface unit is not a boiler. There is no burner and no gas, and the hot water side works through valves, a plate heat exchanger and the building's heat network rather than anything a gas engineer sees every day. Finding the fault means knowing how that particular make of unit works, which is why we have a dedicated HIU service.
Yes, once a year. A service cleans the strainers, checks the valves, the expansion vessel and the pressure, and catches leaks and sticking parts early. Most manufacturers need it to keep the warranty valid, and it costs far less than an emergency callout.
Job attended and photographed by our engineers, October 2026. Written up by Saeed Iqbal, the engineer who leads Synergy Gas & Plumbing (Gas Safe registered 594385). More of our work across the city is on our Birmingham page, and every job we write up is on the case studies index.
Service from £95
HIU service £95, £115 or £170 depending on the package. Emergency HIU repair £225 including up to 3 hours. Parts are quoted first.
No travel charge within 10 miles of B20 2JS. Further out, £2 per mile may apply — always agreed before anything is booked.
A heat interface unit in a city-centre flat had stopped giving hot water. We traced it to the flow switch, ordered the correct part, came back and fitted it. Tenant back in hot water.
Read the case studyA routine Complete service that found dark system water and no inhibitor. The customer was shown the water, agreed to the fix, and the system was dosed before we left. A five-star review followed the same day.
Read the case studyA tenant called with no hot water and asked for both immersion elements to be replaced. We drained the cylinder down, took out two scaled and corroded elements, fitted new ones and tested them. Hot water back the same visit.
Read the case studyWe diagnose HIUs across the city centre. £225 emergency repair including up to three hours' labour, parts quoted first.
