City of London — commercial

the City of London coverage

Working in the Square Mile

We work commercially across the City of London — the office core around Bishopsgate, Fenchurch Street, Leadenhall and Gracechurch Street, the Barbican and London Wall, Aldgate, Blackfriars and the riverside, and the fringes into Shoreditch and Farringdon.

This is fit-out and refurbishment work almost exclusively: sealant packages that sit inside a main contractor's programme, alongside dryliners, glaziers, flooring and M&E. We are a two-person owner-run team, which means we are a defined, predictable presence on a floor rather than a fluctuating labour supply.

Access, permits and out-of-hours

City buildings run on booked goods lifts, permits to work, sign-in systems and out-of-hours restrictions. We send RAMS on request and evidence of £2 million public liability cover in advance, book induction properly, and work to the building's rules on hot works, noise and access.

Our hours are Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm, which covers the early starts most occupied City buildings require. Where sealing has to happen outside those hours because of tenant occupation, tell us at quote stage so it is priced and planned rather than negotiated on the night.

The buildings we seal here

The City runs from Victorian and Edwardian stone-faced banking halls through 1960s and 70s concrete-framed towers to contemporary glazed high-rise, often on the same street. Internally it is glazed partitioning, raised access floors, exposed services and open-plan floor plates with metres of exposed junction detail.

Externally it is curtain walling, structural glazing, stone cladding and rainscreen panels, with joints that can only be reached from a cradle, MEWP or scaffold. Access is booked and expensive, which is precisely why the joint needs to be right the first time.

What the City books us for

Curtain walling and facade joint sealing, movement and expansion joints in framed structures, and stone cladding perimeter pointing where specified.

Internally: acoustic sealing to partition perimeters, heads and service penetrations in meeting rooms and boardrooms, floor line and wall junction mastic across open-plan floors, washroom and tea-point sealing, and full sealant packages on Cat A and Cat B fit-outs.

Every sealant service we offer,
available across the City of London

A specialist trade,
not a general builder

Local conditions

On a City facade, the material in a joint is trivial next to the cost of reaching it. Cradle time, MEWP hire, permits, road closures and out-of-hours supervision are the real budget, and a joint that fails early means paying all of it twice.

That is why we prepare rather than rush: cut out fully, clean the joint faces, prime where specified, fit correctly sized backing rod and tool the bead properly. The extra hours on the first visit are cheap insurance against a second mobilisation.

City facades routinely combine powder-coated and anodised aluminium, glass, natural stone and composite panels. Acidic-cure silicone can attack those coatings and stain porous stone permanently — a defect that is remedied by panel or stone replacement, not cleaning.

Every facade joint we seal here uses neutral-cure, low-modulus, UV-stable product, primed where the manufacturer requires it, with colour agreed against RAL or stone reference before ordering.

Fit-outs in occupied buildings run to a sequence that does not wait. Acoustic perimeter seals at partition heads and first board layers become inaccessible once boarding and decoration are complete, and a seal applied late is a seal that does nothing.

We agree the sealing stages with your site manager up front and attend more than once where the sequence demands it — first fix, then penetrations after M&E, then snagging — instead of sealing everything visible in one pass.

In the City, sealant is inspected — by the main contractor, the client's team, and everybody who walks a marketing suite. A wandering line across a curtain walling grid or an inconsistent floor junction on a hundred-metre plate reads as a defect even when it is watertight.

We set bead widths out before starting, work in continuous passes, and check each lift or run before moving on. It is the reason we keep the team to two people and do not subcontract.

The same order of work,
every job in the City of London

1. 01

   Call, email or send photos

   Tell us the job and the address. Photos or drawings are usually enough to price small and mid-sized work.

   

2. 02

   Free quote in writing

   A fixed written price with the products named — no day-rate guessing and no pressure to commit.

   

3. 03

   Booked to suit the site

   A date agreed around your access, trades or household, inside our Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm window.

   

4. 04

   Preparation first

   Old sealant cut out, substrates cleaned and dried, backing rod fitted where the joint needs depth control.

   

5. 05

   Sealed, tooled, cleared up

   Continuous beads tooled to profile, edges cleaned off, and the area left tidy with cure times explained.

   

Questions

Do you work in the City of London?

Yes — commercially, across the City core, Barbican and London Wall, Aldgate, Blackfriars, the riverside and the Farringdon and Shoreditch fringes. We travel in from Chatham, around 35 miles east.

How quickly can you get into the City?

Journey time is around an hour to an hour and a half depending on the crossing and time of day, so we plan arrival around delivery windows and traffic. Our hours are Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm, and we will confirm honestly what dates we can hold.

What does sealant work cost in the City of London?

Quotes are free and fixed in writing, priced from measured runs against your drawings, with access assumptions, out-of-hours requirements and congestion or ULEZ costs stated openly rather than added later.

Do you offer out-of-hours or weekend work?

We work Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm, which covers most early-start requirements in occupied buildings. If the work must happen outside that window, tell us at quote stage so it is planned and priced properly. We are not a 24-hour emergency service.

Can you work to a main contractor's programme and permit system?

Yes. RAMS are issued on request, we hold CITB and CSCS accreditation and £2 million public liability cover, and we work to building sign-in, permit and goods-lift booking arrangements.

Do you provide cradles or MEWPs for facade work?

No — we work from the access provided. We will tell you at quote stage exactly what access each joint needs so it can be booked and priced properly.

Which sealants do you use on curtain walling?

Neutral-cure, low-modulus, UV-stable silicone from Mapei, Illbruck, CT1 or Arbo, matched to the specification and confirmed by RAL or stone reference before ordering.

Do you do fire-stopping as well?

No. Fire-rated and intumescent sealing is a separate discipline that we do not offer or advertise; it should be priced with a dedicated fire-stopping contractor even where the interfaces look similar to acoustic joints.

Do you guarantee the work?

We do not advertise a guarantee. We specify to the facade or system detail, prepare thoroughly and size joints for movement, and we will tell you plainly what service life the detail should give in its exposure.

Do you take on small City jobs as well as full packages?

Yes — single-floor washroom or partition sealing, snagging works and remedial resealing are all worth asking about, and are quoted the same way as a full package.

Free estimate

Free fixed quote for City of London sealant packages

Send the fit-out or facade drawings, your programme and the access arrangements. We will measure the runs, name the products, state the access we need and issue RAMS on request.

Mon–Sat, 7am–7pm · Sunday closed · spsilicone@mail.com · Based at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent ME4 4QX