Leaking copper pipe, underneath a plastic insulation pipe?

PurplePow

We own our top floor flat but the flat downstairs is rented out. The tenants moved out and a maintenance company knocked on our door and said we have a leak going through to downstairs. My OH went downstairs to have a look and another guy said it'd been like this for 3 years but they kept painting over it. In a later conversation with the landlord he also mentioned this. We've owned our flat for 1.5 years.

After listening closely in our kitchen we could hear an occasional drip under the sink somewhere. We removed the back of the kitchen cupboard to get at the pipes but they were mostly hidden by the plasterboard. Later that evening I noticed the plasterboard was a bit damp in one area, it hadn't been like that earlier that day, and the plaster came away easily revealing all of the pipe work and the outside wall. The wall was damp and we could see a small leak coming from a pipe:

http://mybuilder-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/276655_2a0ebac159.jpg

My OH has a friend training to be a plumber and he came out just to look at it. We removed the green tape and it turns out the green pipe is a plastic insulation pipe surrounding a copper pipe, and after taking some of this insulation pipe off it's evident the leak could be anywhere along this copper pipe, which may go through into the next room which is the bathroom. Since removing a little bit of the green plastic pipe, the leak is much further and is not really a 'drip' anymore but almost a constant pouring. We keep turning the water off at the stop tap.

Is there any easy way to deal with this and find the leak without potentially smash up walls in our flat? It was built in 2000.

Thanks.

irnbru_2

GemmaC25 wrote: »

The wall was damp and we could see a small leak coming from a pipe:

Cut back the green sleeving around the T.

It's hard to tell if the T section to the left of the leak is a compression joint or soldered - guessing it's soldered.

PurplePow

irnbru wrote: »

Cut back the green sleeving around the T.

It's hard to tell if the T section to the left of the leak is a compression joint or soldered - guessing it's soldered.

Yep as mentioned above, we cut this back and it's coming out of the sleeving still at the right, so it's not the T section at all. My question is, is it possible to find where the leak is as this green casing is covering the whole pipe?

googler

The obvious place to look first is at the joints at each end (bathroom and kitchen) to see if it's leaking from those.

It's obviously leaking into the area between pipe and insulation, and by stripping back the insulation, you've let it flow out faster.

There's no two ways about it; you have to work back from each entry and exit point to narrow it down, otherwise you're just storing up the problem for later.

PurplePow

googler wrote: »

The obvious place to look first is at the joints at each end (bathroom and kitchen) to see if it's leaking from those.

It's obviously leaking into the area between pipe and insulation, and by stripping back the insulation, you've let it flow out faster.

There's no two ways about it; you have to work back from each entry and exit point to narrow it down, otherwise you're just storing up the problem for later.

Thought this would be the case, guess I will need to take the bath out and knock into the wall

System

We had a similar problem in the kitchen recently. leak was at the rear of the kitchen units (somewhere). Called out Homeserve who we had insurance with. Their answer was to tell us to get somebody to rip half the kitchen units out to enable them to get to the leak. That was the end of that contract!

Called a local plumber. he took one look and then dropped a plastic pipe down the back of the kitchen units and bypassed about 10 feet of copper pipe thus fixing the fault. The only thing that needed removing ws the dishwasher to give him space to work.

My advice, get a local plumber who can think somewhat laterally

Dognobs

!!!!!! wrote: »

We had a similar problem in the kitchen recently. leak was at the rear of the kitchen units (somewhere). Called out Homeserve who we had insurance with. Their answer was to tell us to get somebody to rip half the kitchen units out to enable them to get to the leak. That was the end of that contract!

Called a local plumber. he took one look and then dropped a plastic pipe down the back of the kitchen units and bypassed about 10 feet of copper pipe thus fixing the fault. The only thing that needed removing ws the dishwasher to give him space to work.

My advice, get a local plumber who can think somewhat laterally

I was going to say the plastic idea, use push fits job done. bypass the leak.

keystone

You have no alternative but to strip it back until you find the source IMHO. Whole job looks like an except from the Bodgers Manual.

Cheers