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Water leak but where? Any ideas welcome
Standing in the kitchen this at 0700 morning it sounded like a tap was running outside or upstairs. Water flow in the pipe kind of noise.
No taps on.....
Turned the stopcock off under the sink and opened all house taps. Water definitely off.
The noise persists and seems to come from the stopcock itself. Is louder when the stopcock is open as it resonates further up the pipework.
The stopcock is joined to an old lead pipe which runs somewhere under the house.
Everything is bone dry but the sound of water moving in a pipe persists.
Problem being: shared valve outside with 3 other properties. No water meter to easily check for leaks.
Now what I've read is that there is most like a leak from the main shared valve outside and the home and the sound is travelling up the pipework.
The other neighbours pipework is not making any noise.
My choices seem to be:
house insurance which is £650 excess for leaking pipes.
Emergency repair up to £250 via bank which doesn't include making good.
I don't want to splash out money on a plumber or the above to be told the leak is outside my property boundary and within a neighbours area.
As said. There is no water leaking from stopcock or the pipework after it.
Wwstd?
Thanks
I'd start by asking my neighbours to turn everything off as well and see if the noise continued. with no water meter it's not so easy to prove you have a leak
By agreement with your neighbours can you turn off the communal stop valve to check whether the noise stops? At least you would then know if it's the water main or something else....
shared valve outside with 3 other properties
Call the water company to come an inspect the shared equipment?
But in the meantime, also this to help rule out other issues:
By agreement with your neighbours can you turn off the communal stop valve to check whether the noise stops? At least you would then know if it’s the water main or something else….
You've got gremlins in your water pipes.
Turn water supply off - silence; turn on - noise which is them trying to escape.
Be careful - and scared.
*poss crap idea, and requires logic check and turning main stop cock off ( and could do using each house stopcock to check each house *possibly).
Get a clear bit of pipe that fits a tap, (etc) with no leak, run it up vertically so it fills with water and overflows, then off at stopcock, presumably(logic check required), if pressure is holding the clear pipe will not drain.
*will need to match system highpoint with tube
We had a similar situation recently but for the first time ever I had payed for the home cover option.
Long story short, the actual leak was nowhere near where I thought it was. It was under the floor in the cellar. After lots of talk of possible fancy ways of detecting its location, the young lad used a listening stick!
+1 Local water company will investigate for you, FOC. The phoneline is probably open now 🙂
Thanks. I'll ring Severn Trent and see what's what.
good luck.
It took me a year and four visits by ST engineers to get them to identify that we had a leak- after three fruitless searches and insisting the obvious flow of water was a spring they finally fitted a meter to the communal stop tap on the fourth which showed it was leaking- it then took another two weeks before they returned to “agree” the leak at which point we and our neighbours were given a legal notice to get it fixed ourselves within two weeks.the contractor assigned by the insurance company found the leak with a listening stick in about 10 minutes
A few days ago I was woken to a Severn Trent team digging the pavement next to the end of our drive. The chap told me that our neighbour had reported a leak so they had come out to investigate. He said he hoped it was at their end (i.e. Severn Trent's) or it would be the neighbour's responsibility. Quite efficient and sympathetic I thought. Anyway, all dug up, fixed and tidied up with no hassle.
FYI the nuclear option is to get a moling firm in to run you a new supply pipe, bypassing the old (and avoiding having to find the leak). Cost me about £1000 a couple years back.
I’d start with getting a water meter fitted, personally. Should be FOC. Will diagnose if there really is a leak.
And yeah, our leak had the same symptoms - sounded like a tap running even with the stopcock off. We had a meter and our own isolator out front so could verify there was indeed a fair flow. No one was interested in finding the leak, could have been anywhere under our concrete floor.
FYI the nuclear option is to get a moling firm in to run you a new supply pipe, bypassing the old (and avoiding having to find the leak). Cost me about £1000 a couple years back.
I did this about 10 or 15 years ago as we had a leak under some outbuildings - new feed from the meter on the road, 100m across a paddock and under the house to create a new rising main in the utility room. Boosted our water flow marvellously!
Sadly I had a water bill for about £600 as well as the cost of the new pipe installation.