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Start with the meter
Before any equipment comes out, Charlie turns off every outlet and watches the meter. If it still moves, the leak is on the supply side. If it stops, the heating or an internal pipe is the suspect.
Leak detection in Grays
Charlie covers Grays and traces water and heating leaks with thermal imaging, listening equipment and tracer gas. Nothing is dug up until the leak is marked.
No find, no fee
Visits in 24 to 48 hours
Report written for insurers
Thurrock 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
Grays has three kinds of housing and they leak in three different ways. The Victorian terraces around the town centre have had their plumbing replaced piecemeal, so old lead and new plastic meet under the same floor. The interwar semis sit on suspended timber. Chafford Hundred, built from the 1990s, has heating pipes set in screed.
Essex and Suffolk Water supplies Grays. The company owns the main and the pipe up to the boundary stop tap; you own everything past it. A leak on your side can drain through the chalk under Thurrock without showing, so the first sign is usually a meter that keeps turning overnight, which is how most leak detection Essex jobs start.
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Before any equipment comes out, Charlie turns off every outlet and watches the meter. If it still moves, the leak is on the supply side. If it stops, the heating or an internal pipe is the suspect.
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A thermal camera pass over floors and walls shows where pipes run hot or where a damp patch is cooling the surface. That cuts the search to one or two spots.
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Ground microphones or tracer gas confirm the exact position. Charlie marks it, photographs it and writes up what he found, so the repair is a small hole in the right place.
Heat shows through concrete and laminate. A warm line where no radiator sits is a buried heating pipe, and a break in that line is where to look. Cold damp patches behind plaster show the same way.
A pressurised supply pipe hisses at the leak. The ground microphone picks that up through tarmac, paving and the chalk under Grays gardens, and the loudest reading sits over the break.
A hydrogen and nitrogen mix is put into the drained pipe. It finds its way out at the leak and up through the floor, where a hand probe detects it.
A house in Chafford Hundred had a boiler that needed topping up twice a week. The heating pipe sits in the screed, so we mapped it with the thermal camera, drained the circuit and put tracer gas through it. The gas surfaced by the kitchen door, and that was the only place opened. In a Victorian terrace near the town centre a meter kept turning overnight and the water drained away through the chalk without showing. The ground microphone found the split where old lead met new plastic under the front yard. An interwar semi had a wet patch under a landing carpet, which turned out to be the bath waste dripping into the suspended floor, not the heating.
From Grays, we take in Chadwell St Mary, Tilbury, Aveley, South Ockendon and Stanford Le Hope on the same run, along with Chafford Hundred, Little Thurrock and Orsett. Basildon is a short hop up the A13.
Most home policies carry trace and access cover, which pays to find the leak and open up to reach it. Our report gives the insurer the readings, the thermal images, the exact position and the method used, in one document.
Essex and Suffolk Water. The company deals only with the main and the pipe up to your boundary stop tap. From there to the house the pipe is yours, and so is any leak on it. We find the exact spot so the repair is small.
Our engineer arrives with the thermal camera, acoustic listening kit and tracer gas in one van. He checks the meter and the boiler first to separate a supply leak from a heating leak, then works through the floors, walls or garden until the reading peaks over one spot. That spot is marked and photographed, and the written report follows for your plumber and your insurer.
Usually, yes. Shared supply pipes and stacked bathrooms make flats awkward, but thermal imaging shows which ceiling or wall is wet and where the water comes from. The report names the flat and the pipe for the freeholder or managing agent.
You pay nothing for the detection work. No find, no fee is the arrangement. If the damp turns out to be condensation, a blocked gutter or a failed seal, we will say so.
Yes. Shops on the High Street, retail park units and warehouses off the A13 all get the same equipment. Commercial pipework runs under yards and car parks, which is ground microphone work, and we can work around trading hours.
Ring us on 07897 020 680, day or night, and describe what the meter or the boiler is doing.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.