Water pipe leak caused by SSE that has costed us 4500 pounds so far. Refund Claim rejected by SSE

MattMattMattUK

Dontpay said:

Thanks guys for the inputs.
I have the events recorded in detailed timeline of what happened since the first time the SSE engineers were called. Fortunately i was on whatsapp chat with them so detailed timelines is available.
I had provided the same with SSE as well when i raised it with them.

Few clarifications:
The leak started happening only after they did the digging work. It was clearly evidedent from the next day as the boiler pressure started dropping. 
It was underground just adjusant to where they did the digging.
The boiler engineer confirmed that it can only be a leak and asked us to reach out to a leak detection company.
The first company took a whole day, said there is a leak but were not capable enough to identify the leak. i had to pay them 915£
We were in constant touch with SSE on whatsapp about the leak
I even asked if SSE could send engineers to check the leak as they are the one's who digged around my house. They said they cant help.
then in April we had to find another leak detection company to try and find out the leak. Luckily these guys were able to find out the leak. A pipe was broken. They had mentioned that the broken pipe was the cause of the leak in their leak detection report. They charged another 750£ but atleast they found and fixed the leak.
All these reports along with invoices were sent to SSE.

If the total costs were £1,665 how did the costs end up being £4,500?

mmmmikey

Did you speak to the water supply company about this? They are sometimes willing to waive their charges even if it's not their fault if you have made a genuine effort to get things fixed quickly. A friend had a not dissimilar issue which I dealt with on her behalf and Anglian Water waived the charges for the lost water, although my friend had to pay for the repairs herself though.

Netexporter

I don't understand how the boiler pressure falling can be connected to a leak in the incoming main as long as the filling loop is isolated. Did you have no water coming through the cold tap?

mmmmikey

....something else has just occurred to me. SSE started digging to find damage to a cable which was in the same vicinity of the water pipe. Do you know what happened to the cable? Is it possible that whatever damaged the cable also damaged the pipe? If it was someone else digging, errecting a fence or doing some gardening in that area you'd know about it, but could it be some kind of subsidence? Or is it possible that the pipe started leaking a bit first and it was that leak that caused some subsidence that damaged the cable? Just thoughts which might trigger something. Or if not, these could well be the kinds of questions SSE will ask.

Scot_39

Netexporter said:

I don't understand how the boiler pressure falling can be connected to a leak in the incoming main as long as the filling loop is isolated. Did you have no water coming through the cold tap?

Some boilers require a nominal dynamic mains pressure to operate  - but its quite low on some maybe 0.1-0.2bar min iirc.

Not sure if monitored by actual pressure switches or just a pre install check though.

MattMattMattUK

mmmmikey said:

....something else has just occurred to me. SSE started digging to find damage to a cable which was in the same vicinity of the water pipe. Do you know what happened to the cable? Is it possible that whatever damaged the cable also damaged the pipe? If it was someone else digging, errecting a fence or doing some gardening in that area you'd know about it, but could it be some kind of subsidence? Or is it possible that the pipe started leaking a bit first and it was that leak that caused some subsidence that damaged the cable? Just thoughts which might trigger something. Or if not, these could well be the kinds of questions SSE will ask.

Good catch, I did not think of that, but it does appear that the OP may be putting the chicken before the egg. 

Dontpay

Thanks guys for your inputs. To address couple of quesitons above.
The leak was undetected for 4+ months and the boiler pressure kept dropping every day. So there were several visits from the boiler engineer (to identify and confirm its a problem with leak), and to provide few temporary alternatives.
We went through crazy period with 2 young kids during peak winter period where we have to reset the boiler pressure every single day, drain the radiators etc to get the boiler started to have some hotwater in our pipes before the pressure drops again. This used to be a daily thing that we had to manage with work, kids etc.
Plus when the SSE engineers visited us to fix the main cable that was broken, they did a temporary fix of putting a temporary wire through our windows to give power supply to our house. This temporary fix was in place for more than 2 weeks before they could come and fix it properly.
The reason for the underground main cable to be suddenly broken was unknown - as thats what was told to us when we asked for the root cause.
For the 2 + weeks we had to manage without enough hot water, not regular heaters running and a window that has to be left open as it was having a wire passing through that.
Then it took another 2-3 weeks of chasing the SSE team to come and relay the patio which they dug in when they replaced the wires, but left without closing the patio as it was the job of a different team to come and fix.
In the meantime with pressure dropping every day and unable to find the leak in december, we have to go with another temporary solution of adding a automatic pressure value that will pump fresh water into the boiler system as the pressure drops.
It was suggested to us with a risk which could cause the radiators to break, as our radiators were a bit old and apparently we were told that adding fresh water into the radiators every day is not good for the health of the radiators. We were told that the risk is the radiators could break in the next 3-4 yrs, but to add pain to our existing problems few radiators started breaking one after the other within 3 weeks and now we had to take an emergency action to replace those and any other old radiators immediately. This is where the extra cost of £2000 odd pounds came from. We did provided a detailed list of expenses covering engineer visits, things that broke, temporary measure that were taken to run our daily life for almost 6 months until in April the 2nd leak detection company identified the problem and fixed it immediately.
All the expenses raised were all invoices with all the details of why it was done so that its easy to prove when SSE raise the same question. 
I understand from few comments above that its going to be tough to fight against SSE. Thanks for you opinions and suggestions. 

Dontpay

I don't understand how the boiler pressure falling can be connected to a leak in the incoming main as long as the filling loop is isolated. Did you have no water coming through the cold tap?
the leak was found on the hot water circuit pipes and the hot water was leaking through that.. so boiler pressure kept dropping to 0 within hours.

Netexporter

Dontpay said:

I don't understand how the boiler pressure falling can be connected to a leak in the incoming main as long as the filling loop is isolated. Did you have no water coming through the cold tap?

the leak was found on the hot water circuit pipes and the hot water was leaking through that.. so boiler pressure kept dropping to 0 within hours.

So nothing to do with the leak in the mains pipe, as I suspected.

MattMattMattUK

Dontpay said:

Thanks guys for your inputs. To address couple of quesitons above.
The leak was undetected for 4+ months and the boiler pressure kept dropping every day. So there were several visits from the boiler engineer (to identify and confirm its a problem with leak), and to provide few temporary alternatives.
We went through crazy period with 2 young kids during peak winter period where we have to reset the boiler pressure every single day, drain the radiators etc to get the boiler started to have some hotwater in our pipes before the pressure drops again. This used to be a daily thing that we had to manage with work, kids etc.
Plus when the SSE engineers visited us to fix the main cable that was broken, they did a temporary fix of putting a temporary wire through our windows to give power supply to our house. This temporary fix was in place for more than 2 weeks before they could come and fix it properly.
The reason for the underground main cable to be suddenly broken was unknown - as thats what was told to us when we asked for the root cause.
For the 2 + weeks we had to manage without enough hot water, not regular heaters running and a window that has to be left open as it was having a wire passing through that.
Then it took another 2-3 weeks of chasing the SSE team to come and relay the patio which they dug in when they replaced the wires, but left without closing the patio as it was the job of a different team to come and fix.
In the meantime with pressure dropping every day and unable to find the leak in december, we have to go with another temporary solution of adding a automatic pressure value that will pump fresh water into the boiler system as the pressure drops.
It was suggested to us with a risk which could cause the radiators to break, as our radiators were a bit old and apparently we were told that adding fresh water into the radiators every day is not good for the health of the radiators. We were told that the risk is the radiators could break in the next 3-4 yrs, but to add pain to our existing problems few radiators started breaking one after the other within 3 weeks and now we had to take an emergency action to replace those and any other old radiators immediately. This is where the extra cost of £2000 odd pounds came from. We did provided a detailed list of expenses covering engineer visits, things that broke, temporary measure that were taken to run our daily life for almost 6 months until in April the 2nd leak detection company identified the problem and fixed it immediately.
All the expenses raised were all invoices with all the details of why it was done so that its easy to prove when SSE raise the same question. 
I understand from few comments above that its going to be tough to fight against SSE. Thanks for you opinions and suggestions. 

From what you have now posted I am not really sure there is a fight to be had with SSE, I really cannot see them having any liability. 

a) There was some kind of ground disturbance, that damaged the power line so it stopped working and it very likely damaged the water pipe as well, causing the leak.
b) A temporary fix is normal, the immediate issue is to get power back on, there is a lot less work involved in the temporary fix than in the permanent one. The window not being able to be closed should not really be an issue, a bit of duct tape and cardboard could have stopped any airflow. 
c) The pressure drop causing the other issues was related to a fault with your heating system. 
d) The fact that you had issues with the topping the radiators was there regardless, it was just previously masked by the system topping up automatically, which stopped when the leak meant the pressure was too low. 
e) It is not SSE's fault you employed an incompetent leak detector.

From what you have said I cannot see SSE having any liability, in a best case scenario you pay be covered by your home insurance, in a worst case you might just have to take this on the chin.