mains water leak to house (consumer side)

[malumbu]

Water bills and meter reading suggest a small leak, a few litres and hour, from the meter to the house. There are no obvious areas of damp eg soggy soil, verdant grass, algae or damp under the hall floor. It's a 1930s house, with the original lead mains. I baulked at the idea of replacing it years ago as it seem to involve a lot of digging up the garden, lifting floor boards. Please don't lecture me on lead poisoning.

There are specialist companies who can find leaks (sonics, trace gas and the like) but haven't a clue how much it costs to locate and repair. There hasn't been any particularly major ground movements or subsistence, most neighbours who had problems were due to some mechanical disturbance like building works, and there the water would come to the surface. Lead has the great advantage of being very flexible and does not corrode.

Anyone advise from their own experience? A few minutes of Googling wasn't that helpful. For example it could be a connection leak where the pipe was disturbed when the meter was fitted.

[Lemming]

If you're not on a metered supply and have a leak, usually sooner or later the Thames Water moonlight listening squads will identify it - and you will receive a command to have to leak fixed. They used to offer some money towards fixing the leak; you could opt for either replacing the entire supply line or just fixing the leak. As this is in the case of an unmetered supply then of course it is in their interest to get it fixed so you use less water - and make you pay for most of the fixing.

As you're on a meter (and therefore are paying for water used by quantity anyway) I wonder if they zone in on leaks with demands to fix in the same way that they do unmetered supplies. After all - use more water, they get paid anyway.

The leak could be anywhere, there are no guarantees a contractor will find it quickly - indeed Sod's law requires that it will be somewhere awkward. Ours was a slow drip, a small leak, which involved pulling up a few floorboards just inside the house, jackhammering concrete just outside the house, bridging the leak with some polypipe, re-concreting. I think the cost was about ?650 but this was going back some years.

Given the opportunity again, I would have gone for the 'fully replace' option rather than fix the leak. It was more expensive, but the subsidy Thames offered if you had that done was also more generous. Then: you know it won't happen again - and we'd have much better flow of water in the house for showers and stuff, rather than it forced down a furred-up 100 year-old lead pipe.

Some contractors have mole-type horizontal drilling equipment, which means they can get the new supply to the street without having to dig trenches.

[Drxyster]

I had a similar problem in 2013, the meter was showing water use, but I knew that we were not using any water.

I turned off the water where it entered the house by way of the stop-cock. Meter did not show any flow of water.

It therefore showed the leak was internal. I was unable to find the leak any where in our flat. I contacted a company called ADI leak detection services located in High Wycombe 0800 731 3834,they use a sound detection system to locate the leak, which they did, underneath the tiled concrete floor in the kitchen. They suggested disconnecting the pipe from the boiler and running a new pipe at floor level along two walls, leaving the old pipe in place but not connected.

Unfortunately very expensive ?735.60 including vat. But problem solved without digging up the kitchen floor.

Incidentally I removed the skirting on both walls and we ran the new copper pipe at floor level placed the skirting on top of the pipe and painted pipe and skirting so it hardly shows. GOOD LUCK.

[malumbu]

Thanks both, really helpful, so not silly prices then and may be worth just bypassing the leak with polypipe. I'll take some further meter readings and of course contact Thames Water, it would be nice if they do help but it feels like this is for us to do.

On a separate matter Bennison Heating managed to do a magic job installing 22mm gas piping when the boiler was replaced without removing a very fitted kitchen. Still not sure how you did it Peter.

[Yeslovewhatcanigetu]

We?ve had problems with our water over the last few days which has now been confirmed as a sewer blockage. Thames Water have been surprisingly good actually throughout. They?ve sent people out promptly who were very helpful and sorted things quickly. We?re now on the way to sorting it so even if it?s client side I?d definitely get onto them, they may be more helpful than you expect.

[mac4]

I'd suggest following:

- Turn off water at your stopcock in the house. If leak stops then its leaking between the meter and the stopcock.

- If leak is suspected inside the house check all ball valve overflows in case a ball valve seat is worn (quite

common and easily replaced). IE the external overflow from any water tank in the attic space and all toilet

cisterns. Be aware some toilet cisterns dont have an external overflow but their overflow discharges into the bowl

itself.

Also check that any external overflow pipes have a visible outlet and are not discharging into a gutter or downpipe

where you won't be able to see if they were dripping.

- If that doesn't find a leak then it must be somewhere from internal piping.

[malumbu]

Between the meter and the stop cock. Cheers.

[malumbu]

Thames Water should come and check, and in theory replace the supply up to the house (not all the way to the stop cock). But they are being crape at the moment, not picking up calls, then when using call back putting me back in the same queue. Blaming it on Covid-19 but they were being crape in terms of direct contact yonks ago. Their online registration seems to have reverted to a user interface from the early days of the Web. Don't you just hate people who have to revert to social media to whinge about a service provider!