Leak detection in Sawston

Leak detection in Sawston, Whittlesford, Duxford and Great Shelford

Charlie covers leak detection in Sawston with the camera, microphones and tracer gas in the van, and visits are usually booked within 24 to 48 hours.

No find, no fee

About 15 miles away

Insurance report written

Nothing opened blind

Get a quote

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

Sawston was a working village before it was a commuter one. The paper mill and the tannery brought rows of cottages and terraces along the High Street, and the estates behind them went up in the decades after the war. The estate houses have copper laid in solid floors, which corrodes where it touches the screed.

Cambridge Water supplies Sawston and the villages round it. The meter and the main in the road are theirs; the pipe from the boundary to your stop tap is yours. On the larger plots along the Babraham and Pampisford roads that pipe can be long, and a leak on it turns the meter long before it wets the lawn.

Typical housing in Cambridgeshire covered by Complete Leak Detection Acoustic leak detection on a driveway outside a Cambridgeshire house

How we find a Sawston leak

1

The call

Tell him what you have seen and when it started. Pressure dropping on the boiler, a meter that turns overnight, a warm patch on a tiled floor. That decides what to test first.

2

The test

Meter reading with all taps off, then a pressure test on the heating. Within a few minutes one of them has shown the loss, and the search is confined to that system.

3

The search

Thermal imaging maps the pipework through the floor or wall. Acoustic listening or tracer gas then finds the break itself. Charlie marks it, photographs it and explains the opening up.

Three ways of seeing through a floor

Thermal imaging

The camera shows temperature, not pipes, but a warm pipe or a cold wet patch tells you where the pipe is. It is the quickest way to cut a whole house down to one room.

Acoustic listening

Water under pressure leaving a pipe makes a sound. Ground microphones hear it through turf, paving and concrete, and we walk the line until the sound peaks.

Tracer gas

A heating circuit is emptied and filled with a hydrogen and nitrogen mix. The gas comes out at the break and rises through screed, tiles or laminate to a probe on the surface.

Leaks we have traced near Sawston

A 1960s estate house behind the High Street had a warm patch in the dining room floor and a boiler that needed topping up weekly. The thermal camera showed the heating pipe running under the patch, and tracer gas placed the pinhole where the copper had corroded in the screed. On a plot along the Babraham road the meter was turning with the house shut off. The supply pipe was forty metres long, so we listened along it with the ground microphone and marked the leak under the gravel drive, a few metres in from the boundary. In Great Shelford a cottage had a ceiling stain under the bathroom, traced to a shower waste that had dropped off its trap.

Nearby places we cover

Linton is the next village along the A1307 and Cambridge is 15 minutes north. Whittlesford, Pampisford, Duxford, Stapleford and Great Shelford are all part of a Sawston visit. Cambourne and Histon are on the far side of the city but still an easy run.

If you are claiming on trace and access

Trace and access cover pays for finding a hidden leak and for the damage caused in getting to it. Our report sets out the tests we ran, what the thermal camera and the gas showed, and exactly where the leak is, with photographs.

Questions people ask

Usually within 24 to 48 hours. Leak detection in Cambridgeshire takes our engineer past Sawston on the way to most Cambridge work, so it is easy to fit into the diary.

If the leak is on the road side of the meter or boundary stop tap, it belongs to Cambridge Water and they fix it. If it is on your side, it is yours. We can tell you which before you ring anyone.

Very likely. A warm patch on a solid floor that does not match a radiator position usually means a heating pipe in the screed has failed. The thermal camera confirms it in seconds and tracer gas pins the exact point.

Yes. Shops, workshops and the units on the industrial estates have the same problems as houses, just with bigger pipes and more floor area. The report works for a commercial policy as well as a home one.

You pay nothing for the detection. We will have tested the mains and the heating and scanned the rooms, so if there is a leak we will have found it.

Get a Sawston leak found today

Phone 07897 020 680 and tell us what the house is doing.

Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.