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Trust the meter, not the ground
With everything in the house off, Charlie reads the meter, waits and reads it again. Movement means a leak on your side. The stop tap test then shows whether it is the supply pipe or something inside.
Leak detection in Canvey Island
Canvey sits below sea level behind its wall, so a leaking pipe does not leave a dry patch to spot. Charlie finds it anyway, with thermal imaging, acoustic listening and tracer gas.
No find, no fee
Bungalows and chalets
Castle Point covered
Tell us what you have noticed and where. We ring you back to talk it through. No find, no fee.
No find, no fee
24/7 enquiries
Non-invasive methods
Reports for insurance claims
Leak detection in Canvey Island has one feature no other Essex town shares: the ground. The island is reclaimed marsh and the water table is high, so a supply pipe can leak for months without the surface looking any wetter. The meter is the only honest witness.
The housing is mostly single storey. Bungalows and the old holiday chalets that became permanent homes run every pipe at ground level, often in a solid floor or a shallow void, and a leak shows only as a falling boiler gauge. Essex and Suffolk Water supply the island.
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With everything in the house off, Charlie reads the meter, waits and reads it again. Movement means a leak on your side. The stop tap test then shows whether it is the supply pipe or something inside.
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If the supply holds, the heating is pressurised and watched for a drop. On a Canvey bungalow with a solid floor, a drop means the pipe in the screed has gone, and the camera is next.
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The ground microphone follows a supply pipe through wet soil, because the sound travels whatever the ground is like. Tracer gas follows a heating pipe through the floor.
In a bungalow the camera covers the whole heating circuit from one level. A leak shows as a warm bloom that spreads beyond the line of the pipe, and a mains leak as a cold streak.
Saturated ground does not stop the microphone. A pressurised leak makes a hiss that carries through wet clay as well as dry, and the reading still peaks directly over the break.
When the floor is solid and the heating is losing water without a sound, the circuit is drained and filled with a hydrogen mix. The gas rises at the split and the detector marks it.
A bungalow near the seafront had a meter turning with everything off and no wet patch anywhere, which is normal on this ground. The ground microphone followed the supply pipe under the front garden to a corroded joint by the pavement. One of the old holiday chalets, now a permanent home, had a boiler dropping to zero every few days, and the thermal camera with tracer gas placed the leak at a heating pipe in the shallow floor void under the kitchen. In a block of flats on one of the estates a wet ceiling turned out to be the bath waste in the flat above, parted from its trap and only showing after a long soak.
Benfleet and Hadleigh are across the creek, Leigh On Sea and Southend On Sea a few minutes further east, and Basildon up the A13. Leak detection Essex estuary towns book onto the same run.
If a leak has damaged your floor or walls, trace and access cover on your buildings policy normally pays for finding it and for opening up to reach it. Our report sets out the meter and pressure tests, the thermal images and the marked spot.
Yes. The surface tells you nothing on reclaimed ground, so we ignore it. The meter test proves water is escaping and the ground microphone hears where, because the hiss travels through saturated soil as well as dry.
Slightly. A void lets the leak drip rather than soak, so the camera looks for a cold wet area on the boards rather than a warm bloom in screed. The microphone and tracer gas still confirm the point.
The report is written for that purpose. It records the tests we ran, the readings, photographs of the marked spot and a plain description of where the leak is and what it has affected. That is the evidence an insurer asks for under trace and access cover, and it goes to you by email so you can send it straight on with the claim.
No. They are responsible up to the stop tap at the boundary and no further. If the stop tap test shows the loss is on their side, you report it and they fix it. If it is on your side, we trace it.
Nothing for the detection, because it is no find, no fee. We will say what we think is behind the problem, whether that is a roof, a drain or condensation, and you can act on that.
Call 07897 020 680 and tell us what the meter and the boiler are doing.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.