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Talk it through on the phone
Charlie asks what you have noticed and when it started. A damp skirting, a hot patch in the floor, a bill that doubled. He can often tell from that whether it is heating or mains.
Leak detection in Histon
Charlie brings the thermal camera, the listening kit and tracer gas to Histon, and leaves with the leak marked.
No find, no fee
Marked to the inch
Report for your insurer
Booked in 24 to 48 hours
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
Histon and Impington run into each other, and so do their pipes. The village grew up around the Chivers jam works, so there are rows of late Victorian and Edwardian houses for the factory workers, 1930s semis along the main roads and a lot of postwar infill. Each period used a different pipe and a different floor.
Cambridge Water supplies Histon rather than Anglian Water, which matters when you are working out whose pipe has failed. The meter at the boundary is theirs. The pipe from there to your kitchen tap is yours, and in older Histon houses it is often old metal pipe jointed to copper or plastic somewhere under the path.
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Charlie asks what you have noticed and when it started. A damp skirting, a hot patch in the floor, a bill that doubled. He can often tell from that whether it is heating or mains.
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The meter is read with the house shut off and the heating is put under test pressure. Whichever one moves is the system with the leak. Nothing is opened up until that is known.
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Camera first to see where the pipes go, then listening gear or tracer gas to find the break. The spot is marked, photographed and the repair explained in plain terms.
The camera sees surface temperature. A heating pipe under a Victorian floorboard shows as a warm stripe, a wet patch behind an Edwardian wall shows cold. We read the pattern.
Contact microphones on pipework and a ground microphone on paths and lawns pick up the noise of escaping water. The loudest point is the leak, and that is where the mark goes.
Heating loops under screed or inside solid floors are drained and filled with a hydrogen mix that is lighter than air. It escapes at the leak, rises, and the probe finds it.
In one of the Victorian rows built for the jam works, the owner noticed a soft floorboard and a musty smell in the hall. The heating was losing pressure, so we pressure tested it, scanned through the boards with the thermal camera and found a corroded joint in the void beneath. In a 1930s semi on the main road the meter turned with everything off. We listened along the supply pipe with the ground microphone and found old metal pipe leaking where it had been joined to copper under the front path. In a post-war house in Impington a bathroom waste was dripping onto the kitchen ceiling, found with the camera before any plaster came down.
Cottenham is next door and Waterbeach a short hop across the A10. Cambridge itself is 10 minutes south, and Cambourne sits out on the A428 to the west. Impington, Girton, Milton and Oakington are covered as part of a Histon visit.
Trace and access is the part of a home policy that pays for locating a hidden leak and for the floor, wall or path that has to be opened to reach it. Our report covers the tests, the thermal images, the method used and the marked leak position, which is the evidence the insurer asks for.
Cambridge Water. They own the meter and the pipe out in the road. Anything on your side of the boundary is your responsibility, including the run under the front garden. We can find the meter and show you.
Yes, and they are among the easier houses to work on. The pipes sit in the void under the boards, so the thermal camera picks up the warm or wet area and a single board can be lifted exactly where we mark.
Normally within 24 to 48 hours of your call. Leak detection in Cambridgeshire takes us past Histon on the way to Cambridge jobs, so it is easy to fit in.
Yes. Flats share supply pipes and sometimes heating, so the first job is working out whether the water is yours or coming from above or next door. The report says clearly which property the leak belongs to.
No. If the tests and cameras show the system is tight and the damp is something else, you pay nothing for the detection. That is what no find, no fee means here.
Call us on 07897 020 680, any time of day or night.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.