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Charlie asks about the history
How long the meter has been moving, whether the boiler drops, what the ground looks like between the road and the house. On a fen property the length of the pipe run matters.
Leak detection in Ramsey
Ramsey sits where the clay ends and the peat begins, and its outlying villages are strung along the drains. Charlie finds leaks in both with cameras, microphones and tracer gas.
No find, no fee
Fen supply pipes traced
Report written for the insurer
Booked within two days
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
Ramsey leak detection starts with the ground. The town itself sits on firmer land round the abbey and the Great Whyte, with Georgian and Victorian houses along the main street and estates behind. Ramsey St Mary's, Ramsey Forty Foot, Ramsey Heights and Mereside are out on the peat, where the land has sunk and the houses sit on long private supply pipes.
Peat moves. It dries and shrinks in summer, swells again in winter, and pulls at any pipe laid through it. Leak detection in Ramsey St Mary's and the other fen villages is mostly this: a meter that will not stop and no idea where the pipe even runs.
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How long the meter has been moving, whether the boiler drops, what the ground looks like between the road and the house. On a fen property the length of the pipe run matters.
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A meter test with everything off and a pressure test on the heating settle which system is losing water. Only then does the search begin, on that system alone.
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The camera shows pipe runs and wet areas indoors. Outside, the ground microphone is walked along the supply pipe until the sound peaks. The spot is marked and photographed.
Indoors the camera shows the heat of a leaking hot pipe or the cold of a wet wall through whatever covers it. It gives us the room and usually the line of pipe.
Peat is soft and carries sound differently to clay, but a pressurised leak still makes noise. The ground microphone picks it up from the surface and the loudest reading marks the break.
The heating circuit, or an isolated supply pipe, is drained and filled with a hydrogen and nitrogen mix. The gas finds the hole, rises through soil or screed, and the detector reads it.
A Victorian house on the main street had damp climbing the hall wall with no obvious cause. The meter stood still, the heating lost pressure, and the thermal camera traced a warm line under the quarry tiles to a leaking joint by the old chimney breast. Out at Ramsey St Mary's a bungalow on the peat had a water bill that had doubled. The supply pipe ran a long way from the lane and nobody knew its route, so we followed it with the ground microphone and found the split where the pipe crossed a drain. Earlier this year a converted chapel in the town had water showing on a cellar wall, which turned out to be a supply pipe joint under the front step.
Huntingdon is 20 minutes south west and Chatteris 15 minutes east across the fen. Whittlesey and Yaxley are north and St Ives is to the south east. Ramsey St Mary's, Ramsey Forty Foot, Ramsey Heights, Mereside and Bury are all covered on a Ramsey booking.
Trace and access cover, where your policy includes it, pays for finding the leak and for putting right the damage caused in reaching it. Our report sets out the tests and readings, the thermal images, the method used and the marked leak position with photographs, written so the insurer can act on it.
Yes. Ramsey is well inside the area we cover for leak detection in Cambridgeshire. Expect a visit within 24 to 48 hours, sooner if our engineer is already in Huntingdon or Chatteris that day.
Yes. We start at the meter and follow the pipe with the ground microphone, listening at intervals, until the sound peaks. If the pipe can be isolated we can put tracer gas through it as well.
Not past the boundary. Their responsibility ends at the meter or the boundary stop tap. From there to the house the pipe is yours, and so is the repair. We make sure that repair happens in the right place.
Either is possible and the tests settle it. If the meter holds with everything off and the heating keeps its pressure, the damp is coming from the ground. If one of them moves, there is a leak and we will find it.
Yes, for the detection work. If we test the mains and the heating, scan the house and finds no leak, there is no charge for the visit. You still get our view on what is causing the problem.
Call 07897 020 680 at any hour and tell us about the meter.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.