Investigation
Leak detection in Wiltshire
The damp patch is almost never above the leak. Water runs along a joist, down a pipe sleeve or across a membrane and surfaces where it finds a way out, which can be several metres from where it went in.
What it involves
Finding the source without taking your house apart to look for it.
We start with the boring questions, because they solve a surprising number of jobs: what does the meter do overnight with everything off, has the water bill jumped, does the heating lose pressure, is the damp worse after a shower or after rain. The pattern usually tells you which system is failing before any equipment comes out of the van.
Then it is instruments. Thermal imaging shows temperature differences where a heating pipe is leaking under a floor or where evaporation is cooling a wall. Acoustic equipment picks up the sound of pressurised water escaping through a pinhole, which carries along the pipe far better than it does through the building. Tracer gas is used where a pipe can be isolated and charged, and it will find a leak that nothing else has.
Moisture mapping ties it together. We meter across the affected area in a grid and plot where readings peak. Water spreads outwards from a source, so the peak is the best clue you have, and it stops the guesswork of opening three floors to find one pipe.
The output is a location, a photograph, and a recommendation for the least destructive access. Where the leak is on a section of pipe that is going to keep failing, we say that too rather than patch one hole in an old run.
Questions
Asked most often.
+Will you have to dig up my floor?
Not to find it. Detection is non-destructive. Access to repair the pipe may need a small opening, but the point of the exercise is to make that opening as small and as accurate as possible.
+Do you fix the leak as well?
Yes, in most cases, and we then dry and repair the damage it caused. That is the whole reason for doing all of it in one place.
+Does insurance cover leak detection?
Many policies include trace and access cover, which pays for finding the leak and making good afterwards. We provide the report either way.
+What if you cannot find it?
It happens, usually with intermittent leaks. We tell you what we have ruled out, what the readings show and what the next step is, rather than guessing at an answer.
Coverage
Leak detection across Wiltshire
Finding a leak in a 1970s slab-floor estate house and finding one in a stone cottage are different pieces of work. Here is what changes.
Trowbridge, Westbury and Bradford-on-Avon
TROWBRIDGE · WESTBURY · BRADFORD-ON-AVON
In the Trowbridge and Westbury terraces the pipework is usually accessible from below, running between joists under a suspended timber floor. That is genuinely helpful — lifting one board in the right place beats excavating a slab. The catch is that water leaving a pipe in a floor void travels the length of the joist bay before it shows, so the wet ceiling downstairs tells you very little about which end of the run failed.
Salisbury and Swindon are covered too — call 07971 435221 and we will tell you straight away whether we can get to you and when.
Water in the building now?
Mon–Fri 8:30am–5pm — emergency callouts outside these hours.