water leak - question about locating the leak

fairy2

Hello. We have been told by our water company that we have a leak. We needed to try to ascertain if it was in or outside the house. We did our best by turning off internal stopcock. We then discovered there was more than one (odd I know) and drained the water tank down too. As the water meter was still turning this proved there was a leak (according to the water company). Unlike what I am reading on other threads on the board our water company is not interested in mending any leak in the water supply pipe once it is "our" pipe. This is a bit of a catch 22 argument as the leak has only been ascertained by our meter reading (there is no visible water leak) which means it is our leak and our problem. We have a deep forecourt to the water meter which is in the pavement and have been quoted up to £5,000 to replace the water supply pipe.

The level of insurance cover we have depends hugely on if the leak is inside or outside the party. We do no think it is an obvious internal pipe due to the test above but we cannot tell if it is a leak in the main water supply pipe inside (or rather under) our house. We need to try to ascertain this.

As I have said already the water company is not interested in assisting us at all but they think a "normal" plumber would be able to come to ascertain where a leak was even in the supply pipe - and they could tell if it was in the supply pipe between (1) the road and our house in our forecourt or (2) under the house from the front to the back of the house (where the stopcock is in the kitchen at the back of our house). They can do this with " equipment". This it all sounded very vague to me and I don't see how a plumber could do this with pipes buried in the ground and under the floors in our house without smashing up all the floors (many of the floors are tiled!) I wanted to know if any plumbers could tell me if this was possible as it sounded a little but of a fob off answer. Many thanks.

macman

Where is the other stopc*ck (the one not in the kitchen)? It would normally be near where the supply enters the property. Turn off the supply there and do a meter flow test. If it's still moving then the leak is upstream from that and downstream of the meter.
It's not always necessary to access the old supply pipe, it may be easier simply to replace it using a different route.

matelodave

We had a leak last year which was somewhere between the meter and the internal stopvalve. We had no idea of where the pipe was (either in the drive or under the house).
I contacted our insurance company (Aviva) and ascertained that we were covered on the buildings part of our policy.
They arranged for a management company to send a plumber out who was equipped with a tracer - he poked a cable up the pipe from the meter end and used a receiver unit to locate the pipe (which was about 15" down, right next to the foundation).


He told me that they had to dig at least one hole to try and locate the leak and if unsuccessful would then try replace the pipe using a mole device. I was concerned as there is 45' of block paved drive between the meter and the stopvalve and I didn't want it all dug up. We also have a heatpump unit located outside the house exactly where the stopvalve is located inside. He did say that it was sometimes possible to insert a thinner pipe into the existing pipe but it wasn't water regs compliant.


He did an amazing job of gauging where he thought the leak was, digging down in the 8" wide gravel soakaway between the house & the drive, located the pipe and leak, fixed it. He managed to remove and reinstate the concrete kerb without disturbing a single driveway block. I've got photos of him with his head & shoulders wedged in the narrow slot that he dug.


It just cost me the £200 excess on the insurance and it's impossible to see where the repair was carried out

fairy2

Unfortunately we have 75 foot tarmac driveway so digging will cause a lot of damage and we have been told that usually supply pipes are just replaced not repaired due to issues like this. I agree that a repair is much better if it is feasible.

Just spoken to our insurers ad they can send company to trace and it costs between £200-900 which is quit a chunk of the £2,500 we might otherwise have under the policy to replace the supply pipe which we have been quoted £5000 for.

We do have a very very slight dripping tap in bath but water company said this would not cause the one litre an hour loss.