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Narrow it down by phone
Charlie asks how fast the boiler pressure drops, whether the meter moves overnight and what the floors are made of. In a Kesgrave estate house the answers usually point at the heating or the supply pipe.
Kesgrave leak detection
Most of Kesgrave was built from the 1960s onwards on concrete floors, so leaks hide in screed and under block paving. Charlie finds them with cameras, microphones and gas.
Nothing dug up to look
Usually booked within 48 hours
No fee if no leak
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
Kesgrave is one of the newest towns in Suffolk. The old village along the Main Road is small, and almost everything else, from the post war estates to Grange Farm, sits on solid concrete floors with the heating laid in the screed. When a pipe fails there is no floorboard to lift, just a boiler that needs topping up.
Anglian Water supplies the town, and the pipe from the meter at the boundary to the house is yours. On a Kesgrave plot that run often passes under a block paved drive, and a leak there can go on for months before the paving sinks.
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Charlie asks how fast the boiler pressure drops, whether the meter moves overnight and what the floors are made of. In a Kesgrave estate house the answers usually point at the heating or the supply pipe.
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The mains is isolated and the meter watched. The heating gets a cold pressure test. Whichever one falls has the leak, and that decides whether the search is indoors or out on the drive.
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Thermal imaging maps the pipe runs in the floor, then tracer gas or the ground microphone finds the exact point. Charlie marks it, measures it from fixed walls and photographs it.
With the heating run hot, the camera shows every pipe in a screed floor as a bright line through carpet, laminate or tiles. A leak reads as a smudge where warmth spreads sideways.
Block paving carries sound well. The ground microphone is moved along the drive in short steps and the leak noise peaks directly over the break, so only a few blocks come up.
Where the floor is tiled and the camera cannot see enough, the heating is drained and charged with a hydrogen mix. The gas works up through the screed and the detector picks it up at floor level.
A Grange Farm house had a boiler that needed topping up every few days and nothing visible anywhere. The thermal camera mapped the heating pipes in the screed and showed one run warmer than the rest by the kitchen door, and tracer gas confirmed the leak there, so the repair was one tile and a small square of screed. Along the Main Road an older house had a water bill that had doubled; with the stop tap closed the meter still crept, and the ground microphone followed the supply pipe under the block paved drive to a failed joint near the boundary. A post war bungalow had an underfloor heating loop leaking under the bathroom.
Ipswich, Woodbridge, Trimley St Mary and Felixstowe are all within easy reach of Kesgrave along the A12 and A14, and Martlesham, Rushmere St Andrew and Playford are on the same visit.
A leak under a screed floor is exactly what trace and access cover was written for. The report sets out the test results, the thermal images and the marked position, with the measurements an insurer or a builder needs to open the right spot. Finding and making good are normally covered.
Call 07897 020 680 and we will tell you straight away what the visit will involve.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.