Pool & Gym

Mon-Fri: 6am-10pm

Sat-Sun: 8am-10pm

Children under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult. You will need to sign in at the fron desk to get the code for the door.

Insurance

Building insurance is paid for by the Freeholder on behalf of the Leaseholders. Contents insurance is the responsibility of the tenant.

For those with wooden floors it is worth checking with your contents insurance if this is covered under the contents insurance as it is usually part of buildings insurance but the excess is quite high and may not be worth claiming on.

“Economy 7” Electricity

All flats where originally fitted with an “Economy 7” electricity supply, which gives 7 hours of electricity on a low tariff during the night, primarily for storage heaters. In each corridor in the Electricity supply cupboard there's a timer switch, and also an Electricity meter for each flat. The meter records both peak and off peak electricity units used, and the timer (also one for each flat) determines what is peak and off peak. The timer's fitted are analogue, the electricity company choose not the fit the more modern radio digital timers as they felt the dense structure of Metro Central would make them unreliable. However the analogue units are not with out problems, for instance if there's been a power cut since they where last reset they're likely to show the wrong time.

To ensure you're not paying more for your hot water than necessary, you need to make sure that the Maxistore timer attached to your imersion heater is set with roughly the same time as your electricity timer in the corridor, otherwise you could be heating your water using peak electricity.

The storage heaters don't have this problem, they're controlled directly by the timer in the corridor, so the main elements only turn on when you're using off peak electricity.

 

Water Heater

At the time of conversion in 1996-8 St George fitted all flats with a Gledhill Accolade Hot Water tank and Electric “Economy 7” immersion heater.

These are also fitted with a Maxistore timer switch.

No Hot Water - Boiler packed up - The most common problem with the electric immersion heater is to find that you have no hot water, it's usually caused by the elements tripping.

NB: If you are unsure about any of this ask a professional to do this!

There's also a thermostat in there to adjust the temperature, but don't set it too high or the elements will keep tripping out.

Thanks to zappomatic who contributed towards this FAQ.

Storage Heaters

Dimplex Storage Heaters where fitted to all flats during the conversion. There are a mix of higher specification heaters which include storage as well as instant heat convector heaters, and the smaller ones which are just storage heaters. The heaters have automatic charge controls, but they also have a couple of controls on the top. One is used to control the input, it’s best not to set this above around eight, as you risk the heater tripping. There’s also an output control on the left, this controls how quickly heat is released from the storage blocks after their charge. It’s best to leave this set to it’s lowest, so that you still have heat left in the evening, but this will depend on what time you’re getting your Economy seven electricity and therefore when your heaters are being charged.

More details of the storage heaters can be found on the Dimplex website.

A good supplier for replacement storage heaters is TLC. It’s worth considering Dimplex’s more recent DuoHeat product, it’s got improved controls, and looks better. At just under £300 they’re around £70 more than the equivalent CXL Model that where fitted orginally.

Quite a few residents have removed the storage heaters entirely, and opted for under floor heating. This frees up space but is expensive. If you’re got advice on under floor heating please post to the bulletin board.

Here are the instruction manuals for some of the heaters:

FLX
XL6 XLS6N
FCX

Virgin Media

Each flat has Virgin Media cable outlets and a Virgin Media phone socket (as well as a BT one). The cable connectors are the ones with 2 screw terminals; one labelled TV, the other FM. If you subscribe to Virgin, this is what your set-top box plugs in to.

The cable also carries analogue TV which you recieve by simply connecting the outlet to the aeriel socket at the back of your tv. You'll need a cable with an F connector on one end and a coax connector on the other, like this one. The TV channels available for free are BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4, C5, Virgin 1 and News 24.

Using a similar cable you can also connect the FM outlet to your hi-fi. Please note that both TV and radio channels are on different frequencies to those broadcast by Crystal Palace, so you'll need to re-tune.

Recycling at MCH

The recycling area at MCH is located on the railway side of the East Block, at the Vantage end. The recycling bins take mixed recycling of paper and cardboard, glass and metal. You no longer need to sort your recycling, just throw it all in the same bin. For further details please see the following sites:
 
http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/environment/RecyclingPages/ (general information and full check list of products you can recycle)
http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/environment/RecyclingPages/HomeComposting.html (wormeries, possible if you have a balcony) You can also register on http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/ to stop junk mail into your mailbox.


Marketing Brochure

The Marketing brochure produced when Alexander Flemming House was originally converted to Metro Central Heights by St George 1996-97.