How to locate water leak under garden/drive?

Delta_1984

Hi all,
Last week Severn Trent got in contact to say that the reading they took a few weeks back was unexpectedly high. I checked the meter and it was even higher again. I shut off the water inside the house with the stop tap, and the meter was still going round - therefore there seems to be a leak between the stop tap, which is just inside the front wall of the house and the meter which is in the pavement at the bottom of the driveway (approx 10m).
ST estimate the water loss to be 9000 litres per day! There's no actual sign of where this huge amount of water is going - I can only assume soaking down into the ground. Its a mechanical meter so not much chance that is faulty. They've had an inspector round who has put in a jobcard to dig the pavement around the meter in case it is the joint there (fingers crossed). If not then it is on our property and up to us to fix (ST have said we should be able to claim the water loss back once per property which is a huge relief).
My question is, how should I go about detecting and fixing the pipe - im guessing not a plumber because of digging through the drive etc. I couldn't find anything obvious on Google.
I'm guessing probably better to replace the whole pipe while I'm at it (as it is 50 years old), but would need to look at costs of a local repair vs digging up the whole 10 meters and the impact to the drive - next job is to ask insurance company about what they would cover in this respect.
Thanks for any advice!

grumbler

I don't think that normal house insurance covers this.

Digging the garden is a simple job.  Start with it and check your luck.

Boohoo

Delta_1984 said:

Hi all,
Last week Severn Trent got in contact to say that the reading they took a few weeks back was unexpectedly high. I checked the meter and it was even higher again. I shut off the water inside the house with the stop tap, and the meter was still going round - therefore there seems to be a leak between the stop tap, which is just inside the front wall of the house and the meter which is in the pavement at the bottom of the driveway (approx 10m).
ST estimate the water loss to be 9000 litres per day! There's no actual sign of where this huge amount of water is going - I can only assume soaking down into the ground. Its a mechanical meter so not much chance that is faulty. They've had an inspector round who has put in a jobcard to dig the pavement around the meter in case it is the joint there (fingers crossed). If not then it is on our property and up to us to fix (ST have said we should be able to claim the water loss back once per property which is a huge relief).
My question is, how should I go about detecting and fixing the pipe - im guessing not a plumber because of digging through the drive etc. I couldn't find anything obvious on Google.
I'm guessing probably better to replace the whole pipe while I'm at it (as it is 50 years old), but would need to look at costs of a local repair vs digging up the whole 10 meters and the impact to the drive - next job is to ask insurance company about what they would cover in this respect.
Thanks for any advice!

Do you have a stop tap/c**k between the water meter and your home?
My neighbour has a water meter and their stop tap/c**k is 1 metre inside the property limit on their drive way so when they had an issue with inside stop tap now they could turn off the outside one and fix the inside one.
I am not sure if their water meter has stop tap on the meter to turn the water off but if you have another stop tap/c**k between the water meter and the inside one you could turn that off and check the meter to see if it is still using water.
As for insurance i would read all the t&c's before contacting them as asking them about this they may make a note of it on the system and some people have asked similar questions and that has been put down as claim but not money was/has been paid out.
Another option is if you have home legal protection/insurance would be ask them.

Andy_L

Home insurance may have leak detection included (IIRC "trace and access" was the term they used)
When the did ours, the 1st move for leak detection was poking a camera down the pipes to look for joint displacement or cracks 

GDB2222

The water companies still track leaks by listening for them. With a listening stick.

We had a new mains pipe put in, under the flowerbed. Would you have to dig up the driveway?

SameOldRoundabout

I work for another water company and we usually try and find the source of an external leak for our customers. You won’t get a leak allowance if it’s determined the leak is on your pipe work as opposed to the supply pipes, but some home insurance polices do cover for this. Will ST not help trace the leak beyond the pavement? 

You may indeed end up having to dig up your garden/driveway but the alternative is to have sky high water bills forever. Home insurance should cover this even if they don’t cover the water bill. 9000 litres a day is approx £30 a day! 

Mickey666

Since it has already been confirmed that there is a leak between the meter and the house stopcock AND that section of pipe is known to be very old, it might not be worth bothering to find the leak at all, especially if it means digging up driveway and paving etc.

Might be worth just installing a completely new section of pipe via the easiest route possible.  Pipe is cheap as chips as is digging a trench, it's all the repair of paved areas that can add to the cost of the job.

All depends on the sort of ground between the house and the meter of course, but worth thinking about.

[Deleted User]

If anyone's got a way of finding leaks in underground pipes, would they let the gas board know, they've been trying to find the leak up the road for years.   Last year alone they were looking from March to June, then back again for another couple of months Sept - Oct, and again in December.

FreeBear

jack_pott said: If anyone's got a way of finding leaks in underground pipes, would they let the gas board know,

Strike a match. The resulting crater will narrow it down

[Deleted User]

FreeBear said:

jack_pott said: If anyone's got a way of finding leaks in underground pipes, would they let the gas board know,

Strike a match. The resulting crater will narrow it down

From what I can gather, their difficulty seems to be that it's leaking into the BT cable duct, so from there it can flow up and down the street. They've been poking sniffers down boreholes, and digging up the road for hundreds of yards, but each time they come back they lift the cover off the BT manhole to ventilate it.

Delta_1984

Mickey666 said:

Since it has already been confirmed that there is a leak between the meter and the house stopcock AND that section of pipe is known to be very old, it might not be worth bothering to find the leak at all, especially if it means digging up driveway and paving etc.

Might be worth just installing a completely new section of pipe via the easiest route possible.  Pipe is cheap as chips as is digging a trench, it's all the repair of paved areas that can add to the cost of the job.

All depends on the sort of ground between the house and the meter of course, but worth thinking about.

Thanks, I think most of it is under driveway at the moment so this could be a good option for minimum disruption.